Weekend in Wales

[Hobbes]

To misquote  Mr Darcy "I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a view of the Milky Way in a really dark sky can bestow"

I recently spent a weekend in a treehouse at a little farm between Welshpool and Machynlleth in Wales.

It was a spectacularly good family weekend with no electricity/phone/gadgets etc. We played board games, cards, drew pictures, went on wet and dry walks and generally got away from the 21st century.

As we were packing light I left the scopes at home and only packed my 10x50 Bino's which I justified as being suitable for bird spotting as well as astronomy.

Having arrived on Friday evening in the dry but with total cloud cover it POURED with rain all day Saturday. As I headed for bed my good lady wife who had just visited the loo in the next door tree (yes you read that right - there was a suspension bridge between the two trees) asked if I had noticed the stars shining through the trees.

I threw my clothes back on and grabbing my Bino's headed out of the woods to a nearby field.

Over the next 30 minutes the skies cleared to give me one of the most magnificent views of the Milky Way I can remember. There was zero light pollution and the rain had swept the air clean.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark the river of stars overhead just got better and better. As the sky cleared it became challenging to pick out the constellations due to the sheer number of stars visible. The bino's got some use picking out the Eagle and Omega Nebulae, The Wild Duck cluster, The Dumbell Nebula, M81 & 82, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Double Cluster but the majority of the 45 minutes of clear sky time was spent eyeballing the Milky Way.

After that the clouds reappeared and quickly covered the sky again leaving me with happy memories and a slightly stiff neck as I navigated my way back through the woods to the treehouse.

A couple of pictures of the treehouse below. It was the most amazing structure and really cozy with a wood burniing stove for heat and a bucketful of candles for light - the loo is the structure on the far left in the second picture.

Altogether an amazing weekend - we've already booked a return trip for next September.

[rockystar]

Nice one, sounds amazing - both the accommodation and the skies.

[faulksy]

sounds great, its nice to get away from it all

[Sirius Starwatcher]

One of the best kept secrets of Wales. Glad you enjoyed it.

[alan potts]

Sounds like you had a great time, not sure I could do without power though, it goes off here more so than ever in the UK and it really annoys me especially if the heating is needed. Wales is a place that I have visited to few times, I have actually been to Australia more often, I feel the issue was the Lakes were always closer.

Alan 

[Roy Challen]

Super location, my Mrs would love that (I would love that!), I'll be looking into this for a short break. Thanks!