An October anabasis

There is a campaign to record all the SY23 postboxes since the LBSG records can sometimes be unreliable. An October opportunity gave a bike-borne chance to pinpoint some of the remoter instances up toward Cwmsymlog, but the highlight was without doubt the Victorian lamp box at Banc Y Darren.

But, as ever, it's what you find on the way.

1. At the outset, the mesospheric radar station at Capel Dewi. Photos abound.
2. Our country was once thronged with public phone boxes, but these have all now been moved 20 yards sideways into somebody's garden.
3. It can be difficult to know quite what to think about abandoned cottages. I think there is an old sundial high on the south wall of this one - it doesn't work any more, even when the sun shines.
4. Strangely, a man was hanging in effigy nearby.
5. The whole area was a mining hellhole, of course. Many miners' cottages survive as twee country residences.
6. So do the chapels. I liked this egregious extension on this one, where the gateway survives.
7. To Penbontrhydybeddau, where there was a super Welsh signpost ...
8. ... and a splendid shelter in the playground [sic].
9. And thence to Cwmsymlog, intended destination and one of the country's premier silver sources in its day. It proved impossible to find the purported postbox, but there was ample compensation in the industrial remains and the disused chapel. Other highlights were a remote beehive and a tanker whose driver was lost. I mean really lost.
10. Homeward through Penrhyn: how pretty is their Neuadd?
11. Via Gogerddan, where the university are protecting their newts, and making sure that nobody occupies four eminently usable houses.

In all, 7 boxes sighted.