A very quiet, closed-up Sunday afternoon, in a very quiet, closed-up town near Cardiff. My intentions were to hire a mountain bike and enjoy the sunshine, but I apparently for the less actively inclined it would seem like a good time for a piss up.

After getting to Brecon, theoretically an hour from Cardiff, in reality more like two on the Sunday morning bus that carted bikers and bikes up to the little town, after getting there I found the sole bike hire outfit to be shut on Sundays. My priorities quickly shifted to finding my way out of the town, and back to the more diverting type of clear air found in Cardiff. I’d been told by the guy at the hostel that buses ran hourly between Brecon and Cardiff. It turns out that on Sundays there are two return buses.

Determined to get something out of the long and uncomfortable bus trip up, I went for a wander along the canal and the River Taff. The path along the Taff runs all the way down to Cardiff – I even considered buying a bike and riding it back, that’s how desperate I was to get out of the place, but of course there was nowhere that could sell me such a thing on a Sunday. So I strode out, breathed in the clean air and enjoyed the sunshine. It was a lovely couple of hours walk, the countryside vaguely reminding me of excursions to rivers in Canterbury as a kid, minus the looming Southern Alps unfortunately.

Too busy looking out for Hazel or Bigwig in this Watership Downs landscape, I managed to just miss the first bus back to Cardiff. I felt a bit bad going into the visitors centre and virtually begging to be let out of this town as soon as possible, but the lady behind the counter was happy to help me out all the same. A couple of hours later I was on a bus to Merthyr Tydfil, a town part-way back to Cardiff, and from there I could get a train to Cardiff.

A small local bus between hick rural towns. A rowdy group of well dressed Welsh guys streams on, smelling of beer and cigarettes. The bus rounds the block on its way out of town, and another young Welshman flags down the bus from the side of the road, to a loud assortment of calls and yells from the guys down the back of the bus. As he tries to board, the driver tells him he can’t carry on that half-full pint glass sloshing about in his hand.

“Aip, just a minute, just want a word with these boys, mun,” he sloshes and turns to face down the bus. “Come back and finish your pints! You bloody pikers aven’t finished yer pints!” he yells to the boys at the back. And then follows a predictable, goodnatured drunken ruckus, the guy up the front giving stick for the rest not having finished their drinks, those down the back returning jeers and taunts. “No, you’ve got to finish your drinks, mun,” finishes the Welshman up the front, before turning and stepping out of the bus.

He doesn’t wander back into the pub, but stands with his nose to the front window of the bus, arms outstretched, blocking its path. I can’t see the driver’s reaction, he’s in his little capsule up the front, but every other person on board is laughing in wonderment and confusion. The little stand off lasts several minutes. Finally the bloke moves, sticking his head back in the bus to yell that he’s lost respect fer the lot of ‘em, before wandering back into the pub. The bus continues.

We wend our way over rolling green hills - while not breathtaking landscape, very pretty all the same. Delightful, pleasant, and other such faffy English words suit this landscape nicely. A raucous gang of half cut lads don’t seem to suit it so much. It seemed a very surreal experience sitting on a public bus, which smells like a bar, and hearing very loud renditions of drinking classics – Bye Bye Miss American Pie and the like. Even more surreal was stopping at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere and six of the guys running off, pissing into a hedge on the side of the road while the bus kindly waited and passing traffic tooted.

Other posts by Katie Llanos-Small