Day 34: Sunday, 13th October 2013: Newtown & LLanidloes

We slept in today! We had trouble keeping the heater going last night, so it was quite cold when we went to bed. It didn’t take long to warm up in bed with the very warm doonas. Last night we had a look through the many brochures that we found in the lodge, for ideas of what we might do in the next week. Today, we headed to Newtown – the nearest big town, hoping to find the tourist information centre open, but had no luck. So we decided to go to Llanidloes to see if there was anything there. It is a much smaller village, so not much open there at all, but we stopped at a local restaurant for a coffee and asked for suggestions there. The waitress suggest a dam, but we weren’t sure what she said, so we asked the same question at a newsagent and the assistant suggested Llyn Clywedog – the reservoir suggested by the lady in the restaurant. So that is where we headed. The Clywedog reservoir (Welsh: Llyn Clywedog) is a reservoir near Llanidoes, Wales. Completed in 1967, the reservoir was built near the B4518 road, Powys, to supply water to Birmingham and the English Midlands. The reservoir was formed by damming the Afon Clywedog, a tributary of the River Severn, its concrete buttress dam is the tallest concrete dam in the UK, with a height of 72 metres and a length of 230 metres. We went to a lookout where you could get a good view of the dam wall and from which we saw the ruins of the Bryntail Lead Mine, so we decided to go and look around that site as well.

the mine ruins

a view from the top of the dam

the mine ruins from the top of the dam

one of several pheasant we saw on the side of the road

the wooden bridge to the mine ruins

the ruins with the dam wall in the background

another misty view

this building is in the middle of the road in Llanidloes

 It was very misty and started drizzling with rain, so we didn’t stay long, but headed back to Newtown to get some supplies and have lunch, then back to the lodge. We have certainly experienced some cold wet weather today! Our afternoon was spent relaxing and keeping warm.