I decided to give Dean a surprise weekend away for his birthday, rather than a present, as when you are travelling the world with a tiny backpack, we can't accumulate any more stuff! We packed our new backpacks on Friday night and were out of the house at 6.20am, bound for Heathrow Airport. Dean was quite confused as I had assured him that we weren't flying anywhere, however, once we got to Heathrow, we headed straight for the rental car shuttle bus, where we arranged to hire a car. It was here that I gave Dean the first part of his present, an Ordnance Survey map of the Brecon Beacons National Park and all was revealed.... We were going hiking in Wales! We set off in the car, and after a minor half hour detour (we realised we were on the M3 not the M4!), we were well on our way. We arrived at the National Park and were ready to go at 11.45am, where we started hike. The hike I had mapped out covered 19.5km and involved 850m of ascent, so we were in for a long day! This was also our first time using a map and compass to navigate, as the trails are faint at best and there is no on else around for as far as the eye can see.... The countryside was beautiful, we shared the hike with many sheep, and we made a game out of sneaking up on them, then laughing at them scrambling away as soon as they realised we were so close (So cruel, yet strangely hilarious!)... Once we reached the top of out first peak, the views were amazing. We could see the rolling hills and green valleys right out to the horizon, it was quite stunning. According to our map, on the top of the 4th peak we ascended there should have been a trail leading south east which would send us back towards our car. Of course the undergrowth had obviously grown over since the map was made... there was no trail to be seen. So we decided to just rely on the compass and make our way that way. This worked for about 5kms, however, we arrived at our final turn and realised that we would need to head straight down a very steep ridge into a dense forest to head in the direction of our car. So that's exactly what we did! The undergrowth was so thick that we couldn't actually see the ground beneath our feet, and kept stumbling into concealed holes and straddling thorny thistle plants (Dean especially - Ouch!). We finally made it to the dense forest on our map and found there was a barbed wire fence all around it, so we couldn't get through. This meant we had to follow the fence line, practically crawling as the trees were so low that we couldn't stand up properly. After about an hour and a half of this we finally happened upon a little farmhouse, and a man stepped out of the front door just as we were approaching and informed us that we were only 20 minutes walk from our car. Hallelujah!! By this stage we had been walking for 8 hours and were utterly exhausted. I was bleeding from my arm, thanks to a nasty thorny plant, and both of us were covered in scratches and had to stagger as our leg muscles started to seize up! Seeing our car parked that night was like a heaven. We both looked at each other then looked at the car and began to sprint, falling in a heap on the hood of the car and laughing hysterically as we thought about what we had just done.... We drove from here to The Bear Hotel in Crickhowell, where I had booked us the Executive Suite, with a Jacuzzi and also made a reservation for dinner in the hotel restaurant, renowned as the best restaurant in Wales. We tidied ourselves up and went to dinner, where we struggled to keep our eyes open. However, restaurant and food was so superb that, and we couldn't help but order a starter, main and dessert as well as polish off a bottle of red, and finally a dessert wine to top it all off. We slept like logs that night, not surprisingly, and were nice and stiff the next day - Deans Birthday! He opened the present he received from his family - an iPod! The look on his face was classic - he wasn't expecting that at all! We left the hotel and went for a drive around the town - stopping off at Tretower Castle and Raglan Castle - both medieval castles built in the 1100s and learnt about medieval medicine and watched a display of archery - and Dean even got to have a go.... It was good fun! Then we headed back to London, where we got stuck in traffic and it took 1.5 hours to drive less than a km to the rental car drop off! We finally got home at 10pm, and collapsed into bed (again!). I think we will need another holiday to get over the one we just had! We can't believe that it's only 4 more weekends until we head off to Egypt and start living out of a backpack again! We have actually bought new packs in preparation for our trekking in Nepal - only 35L, (half the size of our current ones) so we are definitely going to have to downsize our personal items! Over the next four weeks we will be organising our visas for India, Nepal and Egypt and organising to ship all of our stuff we have accumulated home! Fun! But it is all very exciting to be on the move again - we cant wait! Anyway I think I have rambled on for long enough.... Will post our photos soon. Nadeane & Dean