Day around Strata

From LLandovery into the Crychan Forset, onto Glancamddwr ford which was too fast flowing to do so skirted round onto Llwynbrain byway, and then up to the S. end of Strata, up to the Abbey and onto the link road (with permission) to do Claerwen from the North, down to the dam, and then lower Claerwen in the dark. Having snapped a half shaft/CV on Strata the 80 coped well doing the rest of the day in 2 wheel drive, especially lower Claerwen!

Fab day all round, long day tho, woke by campsite muppets at about 5am, got home at 2am on a recovery wagon!

More work for you there Trevor

couple more pics, obligatory bomb hole pic, and lower Clearwen in the dark

Looks like a good trip mate. See you next week

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Great photo's!

Looks like a great day out - super pics too.

Excellent! Looks a bit on the damp side, was there much in the 80 after all that wading?

I did Strata a couple of months ago, there wasn't anywhere near that amount of water just a few patches of tyre deep stuff.

clivehorridge said:

Excellent! Looks a bit on the damp side, was there much in the 80 after all that wading?

Click to expand...

Dry as a boneGood job I'd just had the axle breathers extended at Freedom4x4 (Cheers boys, great job) I'm not a fan of Toyotas one way valves, can't understand why they think negative pressure inside the axle during wading is a good thing, if I ever have to drop the gearbox I'll extend them too.

Chas said:

I did Strata a couple of months ago, there wasn't anywhere near that amount of water just a few patches of tyre deep stuff.

Click to expand...

We had increased levels of intepidation leading up to the trip as the weather report was for 7 hours of continuous heavy snow then we had to aviod Glancamddwr, reckon I could have done if I'd had to, but it was running way fast over a meter deep, discresion definately the better part of valour there so we were expecting Strata to be touch n go, when we got to the first ford we were like "huh? don't know what all the fuss was about" as you do

Couple of Drivers Eye Vids







[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhCPfTvwxUo&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO-8Nciyq8c&feature=youtu.be
[/URL]

Nice vids pumpy, some scratchy and damp lanes there.

I particularly liked the "dematerialising" lawn rollers, an opportune bit of editing, I must say

Cheers Clive, my first bit of video editing, was quite chuffed with it! Decided continuity wasn't as important as not boring the viewer with loads of stops

when I get a bit more O'fay with the editing s/w I thought about blowing up few fenders with secial effects

Looks like a great day out.

Strata and the lane South of the dam are 2 of my favorite Welsh lanes.

Looks brilliant. Easy to forget these exist when you're living in the cities! Is there somewhere with these marked out on maps? Difficult to tell which OS byways are good and which aren't!

Trailwise is best for checking legality, it's not perfect as it's a user updated thing, so can often be out of date, in which case you can ask the local GLASS rep, or do it longhand via the local council websites looking at their definitive map and perm/temp TRO pages.

basic TW access is free, you get full access if you join GLASS.

I start from a OS map, I have all UK on memory map digital maps, check lanes on TW and/or council websites, mark a load of legal routes on the map, then join them up into a day route. These files can be exported and shared, but obviously need checking again before re-use if it's more than a few months since it was researched. I export the gpx route file to my GPS enabled tablet and drive from that in the car so I know I'm definately on a legal route.
http://www.glass-uk.org/
http://www.trailwise.org.uk/index.php

Now that looked a good day out.