Gorge-ous girls

Apparently 4 whole days was way too long to go without a holiday so after landing home from Marbella on Monday, I set off again on Saturday. This time was a road trip and me and Laura were bound for Wales! When planning a UK break, we had originally thought to go to Wales for a beach break but after a bit of reading, we decided to stay nice and close to the border and booked an apartment in Cardiff instead. We then looked into activities we could do while we were there and fancied something adventurous. Gorge walking was something that neither of us had done before (or even heard of actually) but it looked fun from videos we saw online and after keeping a close eye on the weather forecast for the weekend (we didn't fancy doing it in the rain), we booked on with a company called Blue Ocean. For anyone interested, this company was perfect for a small group like ours because a lot of the other companies had minimum group booking sizes. So after a 3 hour drive spent singing old songs and debating hot topics, we arrived in Brecon Beacons.

After a little picnic in the sunshine, it was time to wetsuit up! Well, that's always fun and games - getting those things on and off. But after a minor wrestling session, we were all ready to go. Obviously my wetsuit had no pockets to slip my iPhone 8 plus in, so the photos I've included are not of us or from our actual day, but I thought you'd like to see an idea of what we got up to. I've done a lot of activities like this before; me and my family are all for adventure and so we've abseiled, gone caving, done underground rock climbing, completed the fastest, longest zip line in the world, gone tobogganing through the forest and done possibly every water activity you can think of (body boarding, surfing, water obstacle course, blobbing, jet skiing, banana boat, speed boat, kayaking, snorkelling, fly boarding). So I'm not exactly a rookie when it comes to this stuff (even if I'm not totally the outdoorsy type either) and my verdict on gorge walking is that it was nothing like I expected it to be. I thought it would be all about how daring you were; being up high and jumping off of cliffs into water. Which it was. But it was also really physically demanding and a challenge of wit. The day was a mix of rock climbing (with some literal vertical drops to try and work out how to get up), caving (at one point we had to take our life jackets off to be able to squeeze through a tiny gap on our stomachs), hiking (plenty of hills to climb and rocky streams to wade through) and the cliff diving that I was expecting. It was so much more than I bargained for and well worth the money - it was £43 each and the day lasted just over 3 hours. We literally had the best time! I found the rock climbing bits harder (due in part to my leg muscles aching from a gym class the day before which was, in hind sight, a terrible idea) whereas Laura found the jumping bits harder (she wasn't scared of heights but more the risk of hitting a rock or something at the bottom). But we both managed all of it and even successfully did the highest cliff dive at the end, which was 22ft tall (about the height of a house) - it was best not looking down! Then once we were thoroughly worn out, we loaded back into the car (sat on plastic sheets so as not to get Laura's lovely new car covered in dirty creek water) and headed to Cardiff!

We'd booked an Airbnb and I think we paid something like £40 each for it, which I didn't think was too bad for a capital city! The apartment was lovely too and located right in the bay area of Cardiff which is super pretty. When looking at the address, we kept looking for the area 'Caerdydd' to see how central it was and couldn't really find it. It was only on the drive into the city that we realised that that's the Welsh word for Cardiff!

Hair washed and looking slightly more presentable than a couple of hours earlier, it was time to get the party started! I wore this black and mustard floral print dress (Shein) with black lace up shoes (primark) and long dangly gold earrings (also Shein). Then after a few red wines at the apartment (Laura takes way less time than me to get ready so she had plenty of time for a leisurely stroll to the shop to get some), we headed out for dinner at Bar 44, which had been recommended to us by the guys on the gorge walking activity. Well, we only wished we could thank them for the recommendation because it was amazing. It was honestly the easiest ordering experience I've ever had too - every dish one of us mentioned, the other wanted too and we both wanted to continue on the red wine. So we got patatas bravas, spanish tortilla, sea bream, spicy tuna, garlic chicken and a mixed charcuterie plate. 10/10.

After severely outstaying our welcome at the restaurant (we didn't end up leaving until 12), we headed to the next recommendation on the list. Dead canary was a super cool cocktail bar with a speakeasy theme and by that, I mean it was impossible to find. Even with the help of Google Maps, we walked past it twice because from the outside it literally looked like a warehouse. But inside, it was really cool and I loved their cocktail menu, done in the style of business cards of famous Welsh people. I got a Fireman Sam followed by a Dame Shirley Bassey and both were amazing!

The next day made us feel like we had been very lucky with the weather, as it was drizzly and horrible, whereas the day before (which we spent in the great outdoors) had been glorious sunshine. But rain or shine, we wanted to make the most of our morning so we got ready (I wore jeans, striped wrap top and lace up sandals), checked out of our apartment and headed into town. We love a good brunch and thought there'd be loads of places to choose from (capital city and all that) and yet there were surprisingly few. Even Revs de Cuba (we have one here and they definitely do brunch), claimed not to be serving brunch. It's obviously just not a trend that's hit Wales. We did manage to find a place though, Grey, which was lovely! We were feeling greedy so we got a savoury dish each (Welsh rarebit for me, omelette and mushrooms for Laura) and then got some pancakes to share as well!

Before setting off on our road trip home, we thought it'd be rude not to have a quick look around the city, which included a nosy at the castle. However, we also thought it was rude they wanted £13 to go in! So we did the budget tour and just had a little look at the grounds which were very pretty - even in the rain. Then we jumped back in the car and headed back to Nottingham, with Laura driving and me as the navigator (which I did a much lazier job of than I had on the way there because I kept nodding off to sleep). Needless to say that after all our walking, climbing and jumping, my leg muscles have been seriously aching today! While you could in no way call this weekend a relaxing holiday, it was a hell of a lot of fun.