What I did on my holiday : Wales in November

[bunn]

 Off to the South Wales valleys again for a long weekend.  November may seem an odd time to go to Wales, but we were quite lucky with the weather and the place we were staying is pleasingly sheltered, at the bottom of a deep valley by a small river. 

We went to Hay on Wye book shopping - well, philmophlegm went twice.  The second time we took the hounds as well, as they  were not too happy about being left on their own the first time, and Az when trying to let himself out, managed to fiddle the door so that it locked itself from the inside and we had to climb in through a window when we got back to rescue them!   In retrospect I should probably have walked them more before we left, but unfortunately Az had hurt his leg looning about in the field that morning, so I wanted him to rest.  He had other ideas of course... 

I did some walking round Hay with hounds - while Pp stripped the bookshelves and made a truly Monstrous pile of second hand books.   Actually, some of the bookshops are dog friendly, but I felt it was probably a bit much to ask of the shopkeepers to accommodate two large dogs, and also that the hounds would probably find bookshopping rather dull, so instead we went exploring and met some horses, sheep and a horde of excited piglets.    The Swan Hotel in Hay has a nice warm dog friendly bar.  :-) 

On Sunday we took a walk through the forest of Mynydd Ddu in the Grwyne Fawr valley.  A rather longer walk than we had planned, due to the nonexistence of various paths marked on the OS map : it ended up being about 2 and a half hours, which is getting to the limit of what both the hounds and Pp are capable of nowadays.   But fortunately we got back in the nick of time for lunch at the Crown in Pantygelli, which not only does a mean Sunday lunch, but is dog friendly and just had room for us in front of the fire.  Hurray!  

Comments

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the perfect break to me!

[tena524.livejournal.com]

Sounds lovely. I especially envy you dog-friendly bars... unheard of in this foolish country.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It would be great if it were easier to work out which ones were dog-friendly! Some of them have 'dogs welcome' in the window and on their website, but usually you just have to go in and ask, which is a pain if you don't know the area, particularly if it's cold and you don't want to risk having to sit outside!

To find the one in Hay, I had to go to the tourist information office, who told me sadly that it is illegal for dogs to go in pubs. I explained to them that they were wrong about that, which surprised them a little.

None the less, they then rose impressively to the occasion and got out a list of places that offer bed and breakfast, because the B&B lists say if you can take a dog, and if the bed and breakfast is dog friendly they usually have at least one bar that is too... That turned up two pubs, and the Swan was one of them.

[thecatsamuel.livejournal.com]

It sounds a fantastic holiday - for humans AND dogs!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

What she said! :-)

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Ooh - dogs, pub lunch, sitting by the fire... sounds like heaven.

I wish I had a nice, well-behaved dog that I could take into a pub, but I have visions of him doing wall-of-death around the bar.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Give him a few years, mine are 11 and 12 now! Although Mollydog was *just* about pubbable when I adopted her at 5, I definitely had to keep her on lead and watch her like a hawk: her skills at theft at that age were phenomenal and her nose is exactly at table height!