Red Kites and Reservoirs March 17^th 2002

What a tremendous day out!!

Not too much top-off opportunity, but some of the scenery and driving was absolutely excellent. This day out was everything that's great about a club drive; good company and great driving.

1 Silver, 4 Red, 2 Green, 2 different shades of Blue, 1 Burgundy and 1 white

We were lucky enough to have 3 "new" arrivals (new to me anyway).

In fact, we had so many cars, we found some difficulty finding parking areas to fit everybody in

Click here to see the route Definitely to be recommended, whether in a group or singly.

Anyway, we set off from M4 Junction 37 and as soon as Bob's wheels hit the tarmac, he was off like a startled rabbit.

Everybody had excellent maps and directions provided by Ros and Bob, but 15 minutes later it was; "Mark; are you receiving me? Over." (no reply). We had lost the main group at a wrong turn on the first junction. It was here that we found out that the Walkie talkies I'd brought along were as good as useless in the terrain.

So we pulled into a garage forecourt near Ammanford and waited for them to catch up.  

Once we'd re-grouped, we drove past the first viewpoint because the visibility on the top of the mountains was too poor to make it worthwhile.

When we got to the second viewpoint, the skies were clear and we all squeezed into the little car park to stretch our legs and take in the magnificent view. It was Damn cold up there, but it gave Colin a chance to show off his SAS training by walking around in shirt-sleeves while everybody else shivered in coats and poured hot drinks from flasks.

Just as we left the car park, we started a drive down some amazingly twisting roads (see picture).

Clean round the bend. Who needs the Alps?

Then it was on to Llandovery for a lunch fit for a king (the King probably didn't wait so long to be served). We spent about 2 1/2 hours there chatting and eating.

Next it was off to the Red Kite reserve. When we arrived, a warden told us we probably wouldn't get to see any as they usually eat in the morning and the weather was just against it. Luckily Ros had brought one with her (see picture). However, we were incredibly lucky and one of these magnificent birds flew almost right over us and landed to join another in a nearby tree, so we saw 2 real ones and a paper one. In fact, it's a miracle we did see any real Kites in view of Clive's efforts to scare off any local wildlife with a frighteningly loud jacket.

Maureen and Bram left us at this point and headed home. They said they had commitments, but I think it was probably because we weren't going fast enough for them

Then it was off Llyn Brianne reservoir. The kindest way to describe the sky when we got there was probably "brooding". Clive gave a brief talk on the fact that this was where our (South Waleans') water supply actually comes from.

The terrain around the reservoir is made up of very impressive looking black rock, so whilst we were there I decided to do some posey artistic pictures of our Silver Eunos. This came to an abrupt halt when I managed to ground out the chassis on the edge of the tarmac parking area; not too hard but nerve crunching at best.

We then set off on the last section of the drive including about 7 miles of single-track road with passing places.  We were car # 8 out of the 10 remaining at this time and the pace was pretty smart with Bob resuming his mission. It was easy to keep up the pace having somebody in front clearing the way, but I don't think we'd have been going anywhere near as fast if I'd been #1 through some of those lanes!