As January can be a depressing month, Grant & myself have planned a little excursion to break up the Winter Months. Llandovery is a place we always stop off when we're on our travels back and forth from West Wales. The Westend cafe is normally the stop off point, it's always fun and hugely popular with the motorcyling fraternity in South Wales and it was here a couple of months back we said we should have a night out in Llandovery, as there's quite a large selection of hostelries for a small town. So, all these months later....we now begin our mini road trip.......

We left the ranch around Six p.m. and headed over the Brecon Beacons in miserable weather. The joy of it all was assisted by being stuck behind "Cheddars" - This is the name we give to those drivers that like to go at 30 mph in 60 mph zones. They will sometime though, go up to 50 mph and then drop down to 20 mph. They also seem to do a risk assessment before and during every corner. There's not a lot of room to overtake and it can test your patience.

It's only about an hour to Llandovery even with the "Cheddars" making life a bit slow. So we parked up and checked into our hotel of choice, The Castle. I've driven past it a million times and couldnt believe how big it was inside. It's a really nice place with several lounges and a large function room. The lounges had nice comfy couches and a nice log fire burning away in each room. The staff were friendly and very helpful and it gets the thumbs up from me.

Nightlife.

We do our usual thing, sling the bags in the room, which was very nice by the way...and then head out into the night. The rain had even stopped and so we began visiting the local hostelries. Llandovery is a bit of a sleepy town but it has a good history. Loads of aggro took here in the past, there was fun and games with the Romans, who built a fort here sometime between 50 & 60 AD. Much later the Normans came along and built the local castle which still stands, they did that around the year 1110. There's now also a 16 foot stainless steel statue of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd Fychan, he had led King Henry the IV a merry dance and had proved to be a bit of nusisance. For his sins, Llewelyn was made an example of. He was half hanged, disemboweled in front of his own open eyes, then beheaded and quartered. His remains were then salted and sent off to other troublesome parts of sunny Wales. It was a different sort of entertainment back in those days. The town is a bit quieter these days and our first port of call is The Bluebell. It was a bit quiet but everyone was friendly. Grant made a quick £30.00 on the slotties, so that cheered us up.

We then had a wander up the backstreets as I knew there were a couple of boozers up there. The next one we went into was a bit of a football type pub, big screen and Carling Lager.........normally I would have gone into reverse gear, but we thought we'd stick it out for a quick one. Fluctuations were at a mimimum, and with the lack of any decent beer on display I asked if they had any Newcastle Brown...."We havent sold that since 1988.." came the reply. I'm not sure what historical event happened on that date to stop the sale of Nukie...so I had to settle for Ice Cold Guinness and Grant had some cold cooking lager.

We then decide to the west of the town towards the rail track and try our luck in The Lord Rhys, by the railway crossing. This is a bit more like it, there's a few bods in here but at least they've got decent beer and this time it's Rhymney Export on draught. That's a local brew from down our neck of the woods, it's good but I dont think they've got round to exporting it around the planet as yet, so you'll all have to wait a bit longer to try it out. There was a Chinese takeaway attached to the pub, so Grant tried it out and chowed out on some Beef & Rice - It was good apparently. Next up, we were after local information on the late night hangouts and our friendly barman was all too willing to share the info - He pointed us in the direction of a place up the road and told us to be there before 10.30 as it got busy. We'd passsed this place earlier on and it was quiet then, now it was pretty full and the party was in full flow. It was great fun. Sometime later, the door opened and a bearded chap led about 20 ladies into the place. He then joined us at the bar. 'That's quite a harem you've got there". - " They're from all over the world this lot, I'll go get a Brazilian for you" and he then did bring back a Brazilian lady from the dancefloor, we said hello and she went back to dancing with her friends. Somehow we got talking to some Korean ladies and it was during this time that I thought things werent quite what they seemed. I went back to the bar and our bearded friend was standing grinning like a cheshire cat. As I talked to him an extremely tall lady walked past and I said to him 'Is she a....." and before I finished he said 'They all are, mate!" - Right.

It wasnt long after we left and headed backl through the sleepy streets to our hotel. We had a nightcap of Perroni Lager and told our friendly barman the tale of our visit to the hot spot. "Oh yes" he said, "you wont believe what goes on around here!"