An Interesting cave adventure - china helmet supplier

Today was a pretty hard day. We’re both exhausted. We left the Giffords this morning after yet another restful night’s sleep. We didn’t see the Ashes this morning, but I remembered a funny story. Over here they have these meals called ploughmans, which is basically just a hunk of bread and a hunk of cheese and a few veggies. Geoffrey said he liked to go to McDonald’s every so often, and they once decided to make ploughmans of their own. The name—McPloughman. I found that amusing.

Anyway, we left this AM and went to take a few daylight pics of Pomparles Bridge before heading on to Brent Knoll. We found it without trouble and made the climb up all right, except that, like many places we’ve been, it’s muddy and through farmland. We didn’t see anybody walking the dog up there though. Odd for us. But there was a great view, although a tad misty, of the Glastonbury area and across the Bristol Channel towards Dinas Powys and Cardiff. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time up there, but we enjoyed it. A good hike.

Then we took a little side trip to Cheddar. A great place full of cheese. A little touristy but seemed pretty respectable. You could tell they had their fair share of tour busses come through though. But we got some cheese and had a toasted cheese sandwich at the little café there. Good stuff. That would end up being lunch. We didn’t know at that point whether it would be or not. Get while the gettin’s good, you know.

So we left Cheddar to head into Wales. We crossed the Bristol Channel on a toll bridge that cost dad gum four and a half pounds. Never seen a toll that big in the states. But we drove up to Monmouth and a little outside to this hill called Little Doward. We were going to find Arthur’s Cave somewhere in a hillside. You never know what to expect at these places—how well marked they will be or the general obscurity of the stuff we’re looking for. There were a few signs up to Little Doward, but no real markings and we had to hunt a while for the cave.

The site is near a quarry so there were a few muddy dirt roads circling the hill. But we just walked around in the general area where it should be (using Ashe’s guidebook) and got lucky. We found a cave at long last that met all the criteria. It was in the right area, not very deep, and near the quarry. But, like I said, markings were nonexistent for the cave so we can’t be 100% sure.

It was a nice little hike though. We walked by a nature preserve somehow on the way out and saw some big ol deer. Took some pics. So we found our car (we had to park in somebody’s “driveway” a little ways up the hill) and headed down to a little “town” outside of Newport called Redwick. We’re staying at the Brick House tonight. A big old house in the middle of the woods. Very nice though. A lot of antique furniture and a real nice atmosphere.