My experience with Brecon and started, probably 55 years ago when I was a child, I was brought up in Ebbw Vale one of the valleys towns. And as a treat we used to be used to, parents used to drive us over Llangynidr Moors, we'd spend maybe a Sunday afternoon in Brecon or perhaps a Saturday, we go to the promenade. In those days, there was a swimming pool, an open air, well, a paddling pool on the prom. So we used to have great fun splashing around in that and got very fond memories of visiting the museum. And then if we were really lucky, we'd get taken to Bishop's Meadow which was then a motel or a cafe and have afternoon tea.
So yeah, I've been in love with Brecon for a long time, and actually moved to Brecon about 20 years ago, my husband was a reporter at the local paper, the Brecon and Radnor Express and then became the editor and he was fed up a community from our Ebbw Vale so we moved back and And we've been here ever since. I love Brecon. I think for a small town it punches well above its weight. We've got so many things to do here to see, apart from the obvious the nature thing we've got I mean not many small towns who've got a cathedral. We got a superb cinema, Military Museum, theatre well i've said theatre I think we've got a cinema still. Another selling point is we still got four banks. There's lots of towns that haven't got a bank or a cash point these days. So yeah, I think Brecon is a lovely place to live.
Last two years almost, I've been working at Visit Brecon, which is the Tourist Information Center. And really enjoy it. So theres two paid staff. I'm full time. A lady called Amanda's part time, and we've got about 25 really loyal, enthusiastic volunteers at all all sort of from Brecon. So we've been open for ... we opened in May last year. And we've probably had about close on 40,000 visitors i would imagine, which is pretty good for a little town. And just looking at our visitor book, we've had people from all over the world. We got lots of people or lots from Europe and the Netherlands seem to be the greatest number. Obviously, our terrain isn't much different to theirs, so they like the hills, and we get lots of German visitors. I speak German reasonably fluently so I practice my German quite often. Don't speak... I was learning Welsh, but finding it difficult. The older you are, the more difficult it is to learn a new language. But I do speak the odd word of Welsh and French if I have to, if it's absolutely desperate, and I have but my colleague Amanda was a lecturer she spoke she speaks both French and Italian fluently. So yeah, between us. And we've got a few natural Welsh Speakers as volunteers so you know, we can cover most bases. Thing we always do is when people come in, welcome them, and then ask them to the need any help, some people will say we're just browsing other people will have specific wants. Like if they decided they walk they'll as for walking routes, but we always ask a few questions because find out you know why they're in Brecon. Some will be there for a few hours, they perhaps have come over from one of the valleys towns or maybe they're on a bus trip. Other people will be staying for a weekend a couple of days or longer. And ask them a few simple questions, find out what interests them, and then sort of guide them towards what we have, you know, so somebody says, I'm interested in military history, obviously you've got them the museum Royal Welsh, somebody likes heritage, you've got the cathedral. There's sort of castles dotted around all over the National Park and, you know, just be guided by them. We've got lovely walks in or closer to town you can walk along the promenade for as many miles as well, five or six miles and we've got the canal you can walk all the way to Cwmbran if you really want to.
And there's the Pen-y-Crug which is the hill above Brecon on a day like today when you've got a clear sky, the, the views are superb you can see, like the way you know this expanse the Brecon Beacons, some people come in and they don't know what they are, they've never been here before. So we've got a really good town map. So that was a nice illustrated depiction of the town centre. And I love the map because it's got all the all the buildings of the right colour. So we go hope that nobody paints the front of their building or their guest house but so yes, people, people like having that. One of my volunteers or several of my volunteers, historians, they belong to the local history society. One of the ladies does guided walks around the town, history walks. So telling people all about the history of Brecon.
And I mean if you've only got to look around this a lot of the architecture is Georgian and so you know you can you can find the history from there. There's some Victorian houses. Around the corner from here there's some really old houses - Boleyn Place. The cathedral was built in the 11th century I think that was built. And if you look up and particularly around the back of the co-op store, if you look sort of from the car park in towards town, the roofs there and the skyline is lovely, it's all sorts of odd angles and you know, you can see Georgian architecture. So it's you know, it is for anyone who's vaguely interested in architectural history, there's a wealth of places to go, you know, that you can't see or re...even though it's a small town you can't see everything in one day. In our sort of Visit Brecon logo we've got the heart and the sort of strapline is Brecon in the heart of the park. So if you look at a map of the National Park, Brecon sits right in the middle slightly to the north of the National Park area. So we were a small town so you've got all the amenities you expect of a town but we're only as a short distance away from the Brecon Beacons National Park so you know, within, if you're going by public transport, you can be up Pen Y Fan, and the other peaks within half an hour or by cars even if it's an even shorter times. So if people want sort of comfort like by staying in a guest house or something, they're still close enough to the park they can walk into the park quite easily from Brecon.