Resuming our walking after Alec’s trip to NZ, we picked-up the Capital walk where we left off … or rather we didn’t. We decided to reverse the first stage of the walk and aim to end up where we’d finished last time – at Fagin’s Ale and Chop House at Taff Well. 
I can’t think why we did this way round, other than it ensured we finished at one of Alec’s favourite pubs!
It certainly made the navigation from the printed instructions on the Cardiff Ramblers website a little bit more difficult to follow and it’s fair to say we did this leg of the walk rather more to the spirit, rather than to the letter, of the walk – taking in two diversions along the way. OK – we got lost once!
So we persuaded Jenny to take us up The Graig, past the Ty Mawr, and drop us off at the top – neat move eh!
The walk then took us west along the Ridgeway for a couple of miles and through lovely woodland before we dropped down towards Caerphilly and The Warren.
It was here we missed the path, but we navigated ourselves up through the nature reserve to the A469 where we crossed over onto Ridgeway Golf Course and then back along The Ridgeway over towards Rhiwbina Hill.
It being about lunchtime, it would have been criminal not to have looked in on The Black Cock – just to see what they were serving and to check whether their beer was up to scratch, so to speak. So we did!
We then decided to not follow the printed route but to continue north-west and on to Craig-yr-Allt. Neither of us had been on this hill and so it seemed an excellent choice as an alternative to walking through Fforest-fawr which we both knew reasonably well. It also afforded the opportunity of some views over towards The Garth, Tongwynlais and Taffs Well.
By this time the morning sun had given way to hazy light and so we didn’t spend too much time enjoying the view – we just plodded on to reach Fagins. A c.11km walk – a good stretching of the legs after a few months of inactivity. I manged to delete the GPS track, so have re-created it here – it might not be a totally accurate record of our walk.
Needless to say the refreshments at the end (although we were too early for food) were worth the walk and after checking on the bus timetables [we’d missed the bus the last time we were in Taffs Well which had meant we’d HAD to go back for another pint, or was it two] and catching the bus, we returned to Cardiff with me picking up some f&c from Birchgrove on the way home.
It was during this stretch that Alec’s foot (and ankle) was beginning to seriously trouble him, and all thoughts of trying to get to St Fagans, or further, were put on hold. The target destination was Wenvoe, the distance walked – about 8 miles.
This we achieved and so we sat down in the Wenvoe Arms for a few beers to recover and while the time away – after all we didn’t need to be back for a little while :-). A very happy and pleasant afternoon was had putting the world to rights and chatting with the new landlord who’d only taken up the tenancy at the beginning of the week. It would be interesting to go back in 6 months and see what changes might have happened. There’s a very regular bus service back to Cardiff from Wenvoe, so we didn’t have long to wait for a bus home.