Mumbling Free – Day 5 – Brody's Leap

A better start to the day than yesterday, as news arrived by SMS before I was up that the dongle had been re-charged, and it was once again possible to get on-line. That meant that I could find details of the tyre business and get their post code without calling them. After breakfast, we set off for the other side of Swansea. The traffic was bad through Swansea, but when we arrived there was nothing going on, so we were seen immediately. At A&S Tyre Services the screw was quickly located and removed, and the tyre plugged and replaced.

Next stop supplies – bread and milk and other essentials. Just down the road and on the way back, there is a Tesco Extra. Jo shopped, while I walked Brody around the industrial estate. The shopping took a while and getting back through /Swansea was still slow, but not as bad as it had been. Back 'home', with the shopping unloaded, we made plans for our visit to the waterfall.

Aberdulais also has the remains of a tin mine, a working water wheel generating electricity (not running today, reason unknown) and a hydroelectric turbine (not running today, closed for refurbishment, removal of old boots and a general upgrade).  Still, it is a fascinating place, and we took a while walking around it before departing for our walk along the canal.  The first thing to do when walking next to water with a Labrador is to check the water quality.  In the basin there was a class of young children learning how to canoe, many of them were in the water, so I assumed that the first test was passed.  We expected him to swim, he loves it, and we were not disappointed.  He walked straight down the ramp and into the water.  Much further along, he had swum a few times and wanted to play ball.  After a while, he nosed the ball down the bank into the river on our left.  The canal was on the right.  The bank is about five feet high and almost vertical, but he got down OK.  Getting up was entirely a different issue.  He tried many times, and ended up crying and swimming round in circles.  We encouraged him, bribed him, but to no good.  I tried to get him to swim downstream to a place where the bank was not so steep and there were tree roots to climb up.  He was having none of it.  I went for a paddle in the river to try to get him to come to me, but by now he was clinging to the bank, and getting more distressed.  Jo managed to get him to drop the ball and that made the difference, now he climbed up the bank and was back with us.  I have (re)named that stretch of river "Brody's Leap".  We had been headed to the other waterfall (Melincourt), but got to a point where the instructions ceased to make sense, so not having the Landranger map we turned back. The walk was just over 4.1 miles and took around two hours (including dog rescue).  It would have been a very nice walk, but was spoiled by the constant roar of traffic from the main road.  Tired, we returned home on a route around the north of Swansea, but still got caught in traffic - well, it was rush hour by then.