Monks, Knights and Romans.

Monday 31st August 2020 - Mamhilad, between Pontypridd and Abergavenny.

I feel a bit bad because I didn’t visit the birthplace of my ancestors in Tibberton.  It was closer to Gloucester than where we were and it probably didn’t have any other redeeming features and we wanted to get cracking on with our Wales tour.  You are probably relieved that I am not prattling on about my family history anyway.  Instead I will find something else to prattle on about.

We scheduled a few stops of interest on our journey.  First was Tintern Abbey.

What a glorious morning we had.  The Abbey, like most other places, was only open to limited visitors who had booked online more than 24 hours in advance, however, no-one needed to pay to see the Abbey because it was wholly visible from all sides.  We stopped in the car park for morning coffee and enjoyed the view as well as the sunshine.  The Wye valley does look glorious.  The Abbey story is similar to many other Abbeys.  It was a Cistercian Abbey and was ruined by the Dissolution of Monasteries. 

Next location was Chepstow.  We passed the racecourse and parked close to the centre and the old but substantial ruined castle.  I think we will see a few castles on our trip.

The interesting fact about the castle was that it was built by William Marshal who was the first knight of the realm to sign the Magna Carta.  He was by all accounts a brave Knight who fought to defend Henry II, Richard I and John in various battles.  The town was compact and had some nice old houses, especially going down to the riverside.  We had lunch and moved on again.

This time to Caerleon.  We are starting to feel more like we are in a Wales now.  It is a small town near Newport that has a very interesting history.  It’s Roman Amphitheatre is still quite visible.

The Romans fortified the town to fight off the Silures tribe.  There is an old Roman Bath and a Museum here too. 


Caerleon also has a castle.  We couldn’t see much of it although the walls can be seen on other sides.  The interesting thing is that according to Geoffrey de Monmouth (an 11th Century historian) the true location of Camelot and Alfred Lord Tennyson stayed here whilst he wrote stories of King Arthur that repopularised the myths in the Victorian Age.

Finally we moved on to our new CL.  One that has electricity this time.  It is in a small village north of Pontypool.  We all should know what Pontypool is famous for?  It’s Front Row of Graham Price, Bobby Windsor and Charlie Faulkner, who played 19 times together for Wales and also played for the British Lions in the 70’s.  More importantly Max Boyce sung a song about them.  Max Boyce was funny.  I remember him telling stories and repeating with pride, “I was there”.  He is worth a look up on YouTube.  I warned you that I would find something else to prattle on about!

Why, why, Wye or Monnow?

Saturday 29th August 2020 - Newland Village, Nr Coleford.

Bore da! (Good morning).

A better day today.  

Here’s a picture of our site. We are the only people here....it’s good for social distancing.

We were keen to get our walking boots on and decided to head to Monmouth.  We packed a lunch and walked over Offa’s Dyke.....well it was probably there once upon a time but we didn’t see any evidence of it.  I had the impression that Offa was a Welsh King who was keeping out the English but it turns out that he was the King of Mercia, trying to keep out the Welsh during the mid 700’s AD.  We carried on down to the Wye River and back into Wales and up to Monmouth.

We crossed the River Wye by the old rail bridge onto the Welsh side of the river and walked into the town.  We arrived in the town for lunchtime.

The only Medieval Gatehouse Bridge still intact in Britain.  The river here is the Monnow.....I thought that if there had been two bridges they would be ‘stereo’!!  Sorry.


The Shire Hall with a statue of King Henry V who was born in the Castle below.



There was not much left of the castle.  Overall it was a lovely town with a good mix of shops.  There is some good history connected to the town in addition to King Henry who memorably is remembered for his pre Battle of Agincourt speech where he seemed to want to swap his Kingdom for a horse?  I also recall a story of the Duke of Monmouth - he was the illegitimate son of Charles II and was given the title by his father.  He didn’t come from Monmouth and neither did he live here.  He started a Protestant rebellion in an effort to surplant the legitimate heir, James II, as the King of Britain.  He failed and lost his head in the process.

Sunday 30th August 2020.

Today was another bright pleasant day.  I started with a cycle ride into Coleford to get the Sunday Newspaper.  I subscribe to get vouchers and I don’t want to waste them! Later in the morning I did a small repair job on the van......to glue a knob onto the drivers window to secure it.  I can’t be too specific about how it fell off in the first place as someone could be incriminated......needless to say, it wasn’t me!  

We went out for a Sunday lunch treat at the Ostrich Arms in Newland.  It was a nice old pub and the food was really good. It’s only the second time we’ve eaten out since the Covid outbreak.  Janice had the rack of Welsh Lamb and I had the Beef Wellington......no it wasn’t rubbery, before you ask.

We had another good walk to burn up some calories around the village of Clearwell and into Coleford and back.  Clearwell was a small village but had a Castle, Caves, an Old Iron Ore Mine and a Secret Garden but all were closed or very quiet.  There’s no crush of staycation tourists here.  Coleford is twinned with St Hilaire de Riez, in Vendee, France which is near to where my elder brother lives.  He tells me that the relations between the towns were good until on a recent twinning visit when the Coleford contingent had the temerity to win the boules match amidst French claims of cheating!  Entente cordiale!

Moving on again tomorrow.  We have somewhere booked but we need to decide our route and where we could visit enroute, as we go into Wales proper. I am starting to feel more Welsh already.....I can feel a chorus of ‘Bread of Heaven’ welling up inside me!

Iechyd da

Friday 28th August 2020.  Newland Village, Nr Coleford, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England.

First of all I must apologise for spelling Iechyd da completely wrong.  Apparently it means ‘cheers’ in Welsh, so I might have used it as a goodbye...but cheers is also a good way to sign off a blog post.

As you can see we are still in England.  We started our journey at 6.30am to avoid Bank Holiday traffic and we succeeded.  The biggest part of the journey was on the A14 to get to the M6, it’s a bloody long road from the east coast even though it has been improved over recent years.  We did dip our toes into Wales in Monmouth....we actually called into the Lidl there before we crossed the border again to find our small ‘certified location’ (CL) for the Caravan Club.  I’ve explained before that these are small sites of up to 5 caravans or motorhomes.  They can be very different and we prefer them because of the variety and they are often off the beaten track.  This one certainly is.  Actually we had booked a Caravan Club proper site for this weekend  on the Gower Peninsular but we were called last weekend to say that they were flooded and were cancelling our booking.  I had to phone around many CL’s before I found this one that could fit us in.  This one is not full because it doesn’t have electric hook ups and most people won’t go anywhere without electricity nowadays.  We can manage quite nicely without power so we aren’t too bothered and it is half the price to stay overnight.  We have actually booked for three nights and as it happens we are the only van staying.  The field looked rather wet but we are parked on a large gravel area so there is no risk of getting bogged down.  The weather has been pretty bad in Wales through August apparently, according to the owner, so my theory is that September will be good.

We haven’t done much since our arrival.  An obligatory afternoon snooze after the early start was in order and a little walk into the village.  We were impressed by the church which was open to visitors.  Many churches have been closed except for fixed times and services.  The church is titled the Cathedral of the Forest.

Due to the family connection to the area we were scouring the grave stones for the names of any Vernons.  Nothing so far but most of the gravestones were too worn to read anyway.  It seems a bit of a sad old person thing to be doing but that’s where we seem to be at now.  A further update from the family genealogist, brother David, indicates that my Grandfather’s Welshness was either due to his parents getting lost on a particularly dark night or going to Wales to do Missionary work amongst the heathens!  Following the revelation that Thomas Vernon was a Yeoman I looked up what that meant.  It was an assistant to nobility, hence Yeoman of the Guard or of the Chamber but later it became a name given to a person who owned a piece of land worth over 40 shillings (£2 in decimal money).  I suspect that Thomas was an owner of a small piece of land that he farmed and Janice has been laughing at the image of a man in a smock, chewing a piece of grass saying “ooh arrrgh’.  I think she is being disrespectful to the Vernon family name.  Disgraceful, she obviously thinks that the Vernon boys all behave the same!

The forecast is dry for the next couple of days so we hope to get some walking done, into Coleford and the Forest beyond.  We are enjoying the countryside from what we have seen so far.  Lots of woodland with a few open fields and proper hills and valleys.  We have managed our obligatory Friday gin and tonic x2 and made a lovely pasta, pesto and prawn meal, accompanied by plenty of pepper, paprika and Parmesan.  We could have a theme of eating alliterative meals on the trip.  We do like to have a food theme but I think that could be rather limiting.  We have bought a crumbly Caerphilly cheese, which made us ponder whether the Welsh only had mild cheese and also whether the strength of cheese of a country could affect their history.  The analogy is that the French have strong cheeses (Roquefort etc) and they managed to conquer England and the English have some strong cheeses (eg Stilton) and we conquered the Welsh, who only had a mild crumbly Caerphilly to respond with?  Anyway, we will keep our eyes open for decent Welsh cheeses and will certainly try a Welsh Rarebit if I can get my hands on one (I thought it was a word for a Welsh floozy).

That’s enough for now.

Iechyd da!

Seatbelts on Boyo!

 Off Janice and I go on another ‘lifestyle’ trip in the motorhome (which we have now decided to call a dormobile).  If you haven’t guessed we are going to travel around Wales.

I have previously blogged about the Vernon family history and worked hard to find a French connection to William the Conqueror to secure our rightful place at the table of nobility.....well I tried.  Well, it may seem to be rather a come down but I can now reveal that I am actually..........Welsh.  My paternal grandfather was born in the border town of Knighton, which is split by the English/Welsh border.  He was born approximately 100 yards on the Welsh side which means that I can qualify to play for Wales........I never thought the words would come out of my mouth.

We had often said that we must travel around Wales and Covid and international travel problems as they are this year seems to be a very good time.

We have actually been away in the dormobile for a week seeing Janice’s family on holiday in Suffolk so tomorrow we are driving across country to the Forest of Dean area, which is still in England between Gloucester and the Welsh border town of Monmouth.  The area has a significance for the Vernons as the earliest direct relative we can trace was Thomas Vernon, born at Tibberton in 1732.  He married Anne Fluck (a stroke of Fluck!.....the cleanest pun I could manage!) and apparently they both signed their names which is better than many more recent Vernons could do.  Thomas was a Yeoman but I’m not too sure what that involves so I think I need to Google it.

We will get up early in the morning to avoid too much Bank Holiday traffic and I will seek to keep my few regular sufferers (sorry, readers) updated on our movements.  As normal we have no particular idea where we will end up.  I have some ideas but may reveal them as we go.  It could all change.  I need to apologise to any Welsh people who could stumble across the blog that no racial slur is intended and any humorous misspelling of words and especially place names is not intended to insult the Welsh nation or culture.

It’s a lovely country and we intend to enjoy it to the full.  Yakidah!