The trail up Sugarloaf mountain begins.
The hills and mountainsides are covered in farms, with lots of horses and sheep.
Look on the left. Thats real live holly there. It occurred to me that even though we all know what holly is and looks like, its not actually native to canada, then I go up a mountain
and lo, theres a holly. Which is actually quite wicked live in person. Those leaves are damn thorny.
Grass growing on top of a post.
The town in the distance; thats Abergavenny.
Someone's old farm shed.
It was 5 or so, so we were hungry so Fuzzbe and I stopped for a break.
The path I was following followed in parts the remains of old roman and medieval walls. This is a portion of one.
A lot of the trails actually led through people's property. It was pretty weird wandering randomly through essentially someone's back yard.
There was a lot of mist about, so landscape photos were quite challenging. Particularly of distances. Took a lot of fiddling to get anything good.
I climbed the first bit and reached a bit of a plateau. Then I looked up and saw the actual summit of sugarloaf.
Naturally we took the steepest ascent. Where there was also a trickle of water, that I think was the start of a river, possibly the Gavenny? Naturally I walked through the marshy bit next to it and my feet got soaked.
But we made it!
This is Fuzzbe on the monument at the summit.
I was there too!
It was really windy.
At the top, we see exposed rock. The neatest part, you can see the layers and the angle they're at. This here mountain was built up by plate tectonics, then weathered by glaciers, time, and the elements.
Little bit of canadiana.
But it was a monument, so I didn't want to leave an inukshuk on to of it.So I moved it to a little nook in on the pedestal it was on.
Epic sheep.
Gorse.
Near the summit, it was really short and scrubby. But as I started to make the descent, i noticed more of these pants, but they grew a lot taller. It was pretty neat to actually see adaptation to environmental conditions at work in such a small area.
Signs there are in both welsh and english.
The pub/inn/hostel i was staying in. Black sheep backpackers is the name of the hostel part.
Welsh countryside from the train ride back.
All in all, an excellent weekend.