An exhausting day.

 Wow, we packed a lot into today. Unintentionally, but heading toward the Magic of Butterflies near Aberystwyth, found things to do that was not on our list.

The butterfly house was not quite what I expected. There were exotic plants on entry, some I have never seen before, and for sale if you could afford them!

 This greeted us as we entered the building. I thought it to be dead and pinned to a wooden board. It was very much alive, a huge Atlas moth that comes from South East Asia. Most impressive.

The Butterfly house was extremely small, very hot and humid  (for the butterflies benefit) and not as many varieties as I had imagined. The one at Stratford, in my opinion, was much better. We were greeted by very welcoming staff though, very friendly and showed us how to get this Owl butterfly onto my finger. 

Mating pair of Postman Aglaope butterfly

Having been in and seen all that was on offer, a train whistle was heard. Looking across the reservoir and a steam loco was seen heading across the hill.

 

So we looked at each other and unanimously agreed to take the vale of Rheidol train to Aberystwyth.

The station was at Devil's bridge, and what a bonus...there were also waterfalls here! First stop, the station to find out the cost of a trip, and it was here we got quite a shock. £60 for the two of us seemed very excessive, we decided against that particular excursion! We did wait to see the loco leave, though.

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 We walked from the station car park and came across this bridge. Two choices, either the three bridge walk or the waterfalls. Hmm, I wonder which one we chose?

I looked up the history of why this place was called Devil's bridge. I took this excerpt from Devils bridge- History There is a good photo in the article of the bridge as well.

According to legend, an old woman was dismayed to find that her cow had crossed to the other side of the river here. The devil appeared and offered to build a bridge, on condition that he took possession of the first living thing to cross the new bridge. The structure was completed in a jiffy. As the old lady walked towards it, the devil salivated over the prospect of winning her soul. The woman stopped short of the bridge and hurled a chunk of bread across. Her dog chased after the bread, becoming the first creature to use the bridge.

Don't you just love these old tales!

And so to the waterfalls. 

Crikey, what a descent, we had been warned by a very nice lady in a kiosk, who took our £7, that it was a very arduous descent with a steep 94-step climb back to the top. If only we had known that this would completely screw up my knees as well as setting off Ian's pulled hamstring again, we may not have ventured down. It's a one way system you know, so no going back once started! My goodness, she wasn't wrong about those steps down...all uneven and so high I really felt I needed a stepladder to get down to the next one. Groan...my knees.... Then we came to the Jacobs ladder. OMG, could nothing get worse than that? We both made it down, slowly...very slowly, amidst yells of pain and "It's okay love, not far to go now!"

Jacobs ladder

 

Ian crawled over the small arched bridge. I thought it a bit OTT myself and I think he did it for the camera, but I can't be a 100 per cent sure!

Anyway we got to the bottom, the falls were worth the descent but the going back up. It wasn't the knees that hurt, going up was always okay, although Ian did suffer badly with that hamstring of his. No it was the unevenness of the steps, some just cut into the rock making for several 'stepladder' moments, and some covered in mud with water cascaded over the slate! Talk about completely knackered by the time we got back....

Time now was nearly 2.30 pm. Just down the road was the Bwlch Nant yr Arian. There is a free entry to the huge park, it has walking, running, cycling and horse riding trails and every afternoon at 3 pm (summer) the Red Kites are fed. This was our next port of call.

 

 

 

Took less than 10 minutes to satisfy most of the birds. No doubt a pecking order amongst them means some go without. I read somewhere that about 150 birds turn up daily, most local, but some as far as 10 miles away. It was well worth the 10-minute walk down to the lake. Ah...we now had to walk back up! By now we had almost exhausted ourselves, so a Brit stop by a pub was found at Capel Banger. Unfortunately the pub was closed, didn't reopen until Thursday, but the proprietor allowed us to stop anyway.

And more of the butterflies and Kites