A Trip to Aberglasney Gardens

A trip to Aberglasney makes for a great day out from Gliffaes, the journey along the A40 westwards is very straight forward and takes an hour. We often call in here on the way back from Pembrokshire to have a look around and to have lunch in the very good cafe over looking the big pond, over which the swallows and house martens skim over through out the day.

The house and gardens were abandoned for 50 years and the restoration over the last 15 years is one of Wales' most remarkable garden projects. There are formal gardens, parapets and cloisters to explore. I think the two walled gardens however are the most beautiful part of the garden. One full of herbs and vegetables as well as the most amazing espaliered fruit trees on the big south facing wall. The other walled garden is full of shrubs and flowers. It is not difficult to to spend a very pleasant couple of hours here and if you fancy something else to the National Trust property of Dinefwr Parc and Castle is very close by as are the National Botanic Gardens of Wales.


Opening times: 
April - September 10am - 6pm (last entry 5pm)
October - March 10.30am - 4pm (last entry 3pm)

Discover more of Wales.

We have been going to the north Pembrokshire coast for about ten years now. Every time I make our annual trip I am blown away by the rugged beauty and by how few tourists there are on this wonderful stretch of coast underneath the Presseli Hills. We base ourselves in the small town of Newport at the mouth of the Nevern estuary in the middle of the Pembrokshire Coast National Park.

The beach here is enormous and most people congregate in one area close to the car park, move away from there and you can have as much space as you need to fly kites, play games, surf and make sand castles. The estuary is rich in bird life and has an easily accessible path along side it for a a couple of miles.Newport, is on the Coastal Path and a very efficent bus service can run you up or down the coast so you can enjoy the walk back home. I particular enjoy cycling around here; head for the Gwan Valley and another good trip is out to Strumble Head. 

The pictures show us on a beach (my girls call it the 'secret beach', if you want to know where it is get in touch) that we had to ourselves for most of the day where we built a fire, cooked our lunch and spent most of the day surfing (well those with wet suits did!).

If you had a week's holiday spare then a couple of days in the Brecon Beacons National Park based here at Gliffaes followed by a couple of days in Newport staying at the very comfortable Llys Meddyg Hotel,would make for a really wonderful week in Wales. The drive from the Beacons to the Pembrokshire Coast takes a little over two hours with a stop at Aberglasney Gardens along the way highly recommended.

A Generous Host + Good Friends + Good Venue = A Great Party

Every once in a while some generous individual decides to throw aparty for his or her friends, nothing too unusual about this you might think. But when your host decides to take over the whole hotel for a weekend and treat his friends to what is, in effect, a giant house party - that is pretty unusual. No small undertaking and I was very pleased to be entrusted to arrange a special birthday weekend for a very trusting Gliffaes guest. Planning started over a year ago to ensure that he could have every available room for his chosen date.

With every room booked by the host it means he is free to do as he wishes; play music, dance to a band, play games, watch a film - its up to him. The brief for this weekend was to make it relaxed and informal and for people to take their time over a couple of long slow dinners. To talk, to eat to listen to their music and to drink.

Friday night is always difficult with people having to leave work and rush to get ready for the weekend away. So we did not want to fix a time for dinner but  set up a buffet to run for a couple of hours. Chicken and vegetable curry was the order and the plates were licked clean, this was all washed down with a cask of real ale from the Breconshire Brewery. As the evening was fine almost everyone ate outside.





On Saturday evening the plan was to keep the same level of informality but up the food stakes a little. We kicked off with champagne and canapes and then tucked into a buffet consisting of ;









•    Roast leg of Welsh Lamb – carved in front of the guest by the chef. (served warm)
•    Thickly cut rare Rib of Roast Welsh Beef, Homemade Piccalilli.  (served cold)
•    Roast Sea Trout with Fennel & Lemon. (served warm)
•    Grilled Vegetable Brochette.  (served warm)
•    Herb Couscous. (served warm)
•    Warm New Potatoes.
•    Peppers stuffed with Pine Nuts, Spinach & Welsh Cheese.
•    Organic Green Salad
•    Carrot, Orange and Sesame Salad.
•    Summer Bean & Mint Salad
•    Homemade Bread

Puddings:

•    Strawberries with Elderflower Sabayon
•    Chocolate Roulade
•    Lemon Posset with a Tuille Biscuit 

Once again this was done outside but this time with a few rounds of , "Happy Birthday" thrown in for good measure. All in all a very happy weekend and one we enjoyed hosting as much as the guests seemed to enjoy their party. If you have a big occasion in mind and want some ideas on how to celebrate it - please do get in touch.

Queen comes to Gliffaes

I bet that headline got you going, well its true, we have two queens living at Gliffaes now. In the beehives at the bottom of the walled garden. Susie and I started keeping bees some years ago when the man who used to keep several hives here passed on. We had some very successful years at first and then we hit a rocky period along with most of the country's bee keepers and had a struggle to keep our three hives going. The verora mite and the disease known as, 'Colony Collapse' put paid to our bees. Due to the scarcity of bees I have been unable to buy any colonies for the hotel for two years until this year.

This summer has been a good summer for bees and the bee keeper who sells us Usk Valley Honey for the breakfast tables sold me two hives last week. The hives were brought to Gliffaes at dusk, once all the bees had returned to the hive at the end of a busy day. It does not take bees long to acquaint themselves to their new surroundings as long as you move them more than three miles from where they were before.

Bee hives are inspected about once week during the summer and as we do have an extra bee suit you might like to come and have a look inside a bee hive when we go and take the lid off. Friday afternoon is when we normally go and inspect the hives.
 

Skip dinner and go Fishing!

At the height of summer with bright, hot days and low flows in the river it is almost pointless going to the Usk to fish for trout. The trout are sleeping at the bottom and you will just get hot and bothered wrapped up in rubber waders.

However, if you take the brave decision to skip dinner (or eat something early)and head down to the river from about 8.00pm onwards you could be rewarded with some superb fly fishing. The hatches at dusk earlier this week have been enormous. These two pictures of Amelia and Matthew Wright were taken at the hotel's Llandetty Beat  where the spent the evening of June 12th under the guiding hand of, Jimmy Devoy, the Ghillie. Amelia's fish must be around the 3.5 lbs mark.

Somebody else who putting fishing before his supper was, Peter Gavan. He told me he was normally apprehensive wading out alone into the Salmon Pool Beat below the hotel as it normally hides some deep holes within it, but the water levels down he felt far more confident or mid-summers' eve. Fishing between 8-10pm with a Coch y Bondu and a Tups Indispensable he had six trout, with 3 over a 1.5 lbs.

Home Grown & Local

The mixture of sun, a couple of hours of rain and our very own compost ( made from a combination of food waste and wood chip) has meant a burst of activity from our vegetable patches at Gliffaes. Everything Peta has planted seems to be coming up now. While we can't pretend to grow anything like the quantity of veg we need we can grow salads and herbs very easily. During the summer and autumn we also get a great selection of organic vegetables from Pen Pont Estate near Brecon and Primrose Farm near Hay-on-Wye. Friday morning saw the following coming into the kitchen from our garden for Karl and his team to use over the weekend in  salads, garnishes and marinades.

Lettuces: Little Gem, Webbs Wonderful, Cos-Pandero & Catalogna.
Herbs: Parsley Flat and Curled & Coriander

Carrots, beetroot, beans,  Jerusalem artichokes and courgettes all to come as the season moves on.

Some of the good things appearing on the menu over the weekend were; (remembering that we change the dinner menu every night)

Rack of New Season Lamb, Nicoise Salad, Raspberry Vinaigrette
Fillet of Wild Sewin (sea trout), New Potatoes, Saffron Leeks, Spiced Oyster Tempura
Cornish Lobster, Spiced Potted Crab, Potato Salad, Samphire Grass
Y-Fenni Goats Cheese & Roquette Soufflé, Buttered Spinach, Horseradish & Thyme Cream

Remember the restaurant uis open to non-residents for all meals, and you only need to book for dinner. (01874 730 371)

Evening Trout Fishing

That wonderful moment when evening trout fishing is here has arrived. I fished last Saturday and started at about 8pm on a beautiful evening. I set off to the top part of Llandetty where I know good fish live and found lots happening and good sized fish. Using a klinkhammer with a grey body and a grey wolf hackle size 14 I soon found takers but all going short until a fish was hooked. It took off with no respect for the amount of line on my reel and when I finally netted this huge beast it was hooked in one of the front fins and was all of 9 oz!! That part of Llandetty, which has been cleared to make much easier access is well worth a visit.

I returned with my one fish to see Peta into a big fish which she promptly lost it so we needed another fish to make our Bar-B-Q worth while. A few moments later I hooked another just after ten about a lb. Sadly Ali (grand daughter) didn’t score but we all enjoyed the delicious Usk wild brown trout.

I was out last night on Gliffaes middle beat at 8.30pm fishing the same fly in the rough water using my standard tactics of a very short line. Lots of takes to begin with by mainly 5/6 oz fish which I  am delighted to see then, as dusk set in, fish were sipping everywhere. I returned three good sized specimens between ¾ and 1 ¼ lbs. I could have continued for another hour but my dog, who insists on staying by my side, even in deep water, was getting cold and I could not stand the noise of her teeth chattering!

Nick Brabner