stevetheangler

Saturday 23rd July, Liz and I set off for a weekend’s camping with a bit of fishing at a site we’ve visited at this time of the year, every year since 2019.

The original visit back in 2019 was for a break to relax before my impending operation due in September of that year and we enjoyed being there so much that we’ve returned annually since… and having a small fishing lake on site also makes it welcoming!

Located just outside Llandeilo (about 25 miles north of Swansea, South Wales) at Trapp it is in a rural area and sits just below Cennan Castle and so is a secluded and quiet place. Its also quite basic with a wooden shed holding the single loo and shower (which are kept very clean and tidy) being the only facilities available to tourers/campers but there is also one poolside cottage available for booking with the usual facilities associated with same and which comes with its own private bit of bank for fishing.

See: https://www.trappfishery.com/ for fuller details…

So this year’s trip…

Travelled down on the Saturday (23rd) leaving home at 1000 and arriving onsite at 1400 having had a mid-trip break for a cuppa and sandwiches. We left in dry weather and arrived to a medium drizzle which fell non-stop albeit easing at times, increasing at times all the rest of the day, night and continued past lunch time on Sunday by which time we’d aborted the mission and were returning home and it was 1500 when we left the rain just as we reached Ludlow and ran into the dry where it seemed they’d not seen a drop of rain at all and so it remained until we reached home… The pool like many places currently had been quite low on arrival BUT Saturday morning the site manager greeted us with the words ‘The tide’s come in!’ and the pool was full due to how much rain had fallen!

BUT none of the planned weekend’s fishing was done at all because…

The tent had leaked – and we discovered that the tent’s large side window was actually mesh/netting, not plastic as we’d thought and the zip over curtain was fitted INSIDE the tent … so rain passed through the mesh and ran down the curtain inside the tent… errr design flaw! Seems that previous years in this tent we’d not been subjected to rain! Also small leaks in the material added to the dampness on the inner floor, etc. Actually we were lucky that in the main our bedding was dry where it mattered (and we sleep on air beds, so raised from the floor) with just the parts of the coverlet that dangled down getting wetted…

So Sunday morning, we rose, dressed and headed into town to find a place for breakfast which ended up being a Tesco cafe and to discuss what to do and decided, as forecast was for more rain and what was already falling was quite heavy, to call it quits and head home, which we did … and decided we needed a new tent fairly urgently as we are off to the Shrewsbury Folk Fest over August Bank Holiday weekend.

A bit of Googling came up with two possible tent replacements – the Eurohike Genus Air 400 tent from Go Outdoors and the Halfords 4-man Air Tent from Halford’s … and the Halford’s tent won on two points (1) it had a sewn in groundsheet compared with GO’s loose/separate one and (2) the Halford’s tent was in stock, the GO was not available other than instore and our local stores had no stock. This morning we went for a Wetherspoon’s breakfast and then to Halford’s where we purchased the tent .,. now awaiting suitable conditions to pitch it on the back lawn to test it out, make sure all is there (last time we didn’t test pitch a new tent involved us driving 90 miles to our destination site only to discover there were no poles … so a drive back 90 miles to our GO to collect the poles we should have been given … and then drive 90 miles back to the site!).

New tent: https://www.halfords.com/camping/tents/halfords-premium-4-person-inflatable-tent-508302.html

One other thing that went ‘bad’ on the ‘break’ … the local pub (400 yards from site) has been closed since covid in 2020 – although it was rumoured to having been due to re-open late 2021 that never happened it seems so we had to travel out to eat as on weekend camping trips we only take the kettle, single burner stove, sugar, milk, tea/coffee for early morning and evening drinks, our food we eat out – and almost the nearest place we found that did food past 6pm here was Llanelli or Swansea both equidistant from the site (25 miles). There WAS a closer (5 miles) place which looked large when we eat there in 2021 but at that time Wales was still in lockdown (England had come out of it that same week as I recall) and dining then was outdoors and they were doing large numbers of covers but the only times we could enter the building at that time was to use the loos and what we saw was spacious … so we headed there again BUT the inside dining area was literally 20 seats and they had to be pre-booked… so despite the big building it seems the main parts are reserved as function rooms, seemingly spending most of their time unused! Strange to me, as losing a lot of potential income??

Oh well, sorry if this is all a bit disjointed …

Planning to fish on Thursday now we’re back home.

Oh, and our depleted club pool … a pump shooting a jet of water has been installed to aerate but, as I said there’s been no or very little rain here, so expect the level’s dropped further now with the abstractions … we need that Welsh rain here!!