And the day was going so well!!!
Chocolate waiting at our B & B
Musician at Leominster
View from our B & B window in Llanwrtyd Wells
This morning we awoke to
another brilliant day with wall to wall sunshine and packed, ready for the trip
to Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales.
Llan words are pronounced "thlan”
We said goodbye to the lovely
young couple who ran The Chase Inn in Bishops Frome who have been licensees
there for about 2 months after moving there from Bristol,
and headed off through Bromyard to Leominster
pronounced “Lemster”.
Leominster was a cute little
town and we found an “Indian” musician performing in the town centre. He was
very good and played various instruments including guitar and various flutes.
His playing of the pan flute was brilliant.
During the trip we were
exchanging emails with various people in Australia filling us in on the
political turmoil which resulted in the Prime Minister losing a ballot for the
position of leader to the previous incumbent, Kevin Rudd.
At least the labour party
will have a much better chance of winning the next election to be held in
September.
During the to’ing and fro’ing
with Australia we learnt
that Lleyton Hewitt was playing in the second round at Wimbledon
so we found a pub with a big screen TV and sat down to watch the match.
Unfortunately it didn’t last long as Lleyton was bundled out in 4 sets.
We then left Leominster and headed towards our B & B
at Llanwrtyd Wells in the Welsh countryside. We encountered quite a lot of road
works on the way with loose stones on the road. And red lights stops. It was
obvious when we crossed into Wales
as the countryside changed dramatically to very hilly and tree covered countryside.
Just beautiful.
Things were going well until
we rounded a bend and heard a strange noise which sounded like we were on a
rough road so Mick quickly pulled into a small roadside lay by to check the car.
The road had a steep bank down on the left and a steep bank up on the right as
the road had been cut into a steep hillside. Lyn checked her side and announced
that the front nearside tyre was flat.
Mick had checked the car when
we picked it up in London
to check the location of the spare wheel and found it under the car at the rear
however he was unable to find a jack or wheel brace. He assumed that the car
rental people had removed them in the same manner as they had taken the
handbooks and assumed that they did not want people messing about with them
Luckily we had mobile phone
reception so we got out the paperwork for the rental and rang the emergency
number. We had to press 3 for tyre problems, yes the usual call centre menu
system, and give all the details to the guy. Fortunately we had a pretty
accurate idea as to where we were. The difficulty was that we had to spell the
Welsh town names as they don’t look like they are pronounced. We were only a
few miles east of Builth Wells fortunately. Pronounced "Bilth".
The guy asked if we would
like a tow truck or a tyre change. Mick went for the tyre change which he
thought could be handled more quickly as it only required a guy in a van with
tools. He said that they would organize it and someone would ring us.
We decided to make ourselves
a cuppa whilst we waited as we always carry hot water, milk, sugar, coffee and
tea with us.
After about 15 minutes the
RAC (NRMA or RAA equivalent) man rang to ascertain our exact location and said
he would be with us in 20 minutes. He arrived after about 25 minutes with a big
jack and wheel brace and worked out how to get the tyre from under the car and
put the spare on which fortunately was a full sized tyre but on a steel rim. He said one needed a degree to work out how the french do things on cars. The Peugeot is a French car.
It turned out the jack and
special tool for getting the wheel stud covers off were in a black plastic box
inside the wheel under the car.
He was very nice bloke and we
had a good chat about his kids who now live in Australia. This happens quite a lot
over here. Most people we engage with have relatives or friends in Australia or
know someone who has. Most aspire to going there or wish they had when they
were younger.
Wheel replaced, we thanked
the RAC man and headed off to our B & B.
After a few hiccoughs we
arrived to a lovely place in the country and sat down with the owners, Bernie and John for a
cuppa.
Tomorrow we’ll have to work
out what to do about the flat as they didn’t give us any instructions about
getting it fixed.
Awkward spot to have a flat tyre. This is a 100kph+ road
Red Kite Sculpture in Llanwrtyd Wells 
Now triple glazing 
Michael, I need to straighten out your misconception about the election and the Labor Party. They rolled that red headed bitch because they figured that their anticipated loss of seats COULD be lessened with Rudd bullshitting to the beguiled followers as Ju_liar did not have any followers left. The political commentators are still predicting a land slide victory to the Libs in the upcoming elections as Labor has really messed up the country and put us into a huge National Debt.
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