Llanwrtyd Wells is, as Tony Bain is keen to tell me, "an amazing little town on the edge of the world". Nestled on the edge of the Cambrian mountains, it's a place that has decided to put itself on the map.
It's no stranger to notoriety, though, being the home of the Ffynnon Drewllyd – the Stinking Well. It contains sulphur water and if you're brave enough to drink it, it can, by all accounts, heal just about anything.
My host, Emma Stevens, who runs the Lasswade Country House hotel with her husband, Roger, swears by it. "I had psoriasis all over my arms for years," she tells me. "I dipped my arms in the water and it was all gone 14 days later."
But I'm not here to take an ancient cure. I'm here for a far more modern experience. I'm standing at the edge of a lake, and I'm about to race across it in a bathtub.
Tony Bain is well known in these parts. He's the champion at another devil-may-do pursuit this small town is famous for – bog snorkelling. He moved to Britain from New Zealand, found Llanwrtyd Wells four years ago and never wanted to leave. He has set up Green Dragon Activities, which specialises in quirky outdoor experiences designed to keep everyone amused, and when I meet him, he's dressed in a specially designed Napoleon Bonaparte drysuit. There doesn't seem to be anything remotely odd about this.
"I'm Admiral Bath Plug," he tells me, with a grin.
Bathtubbing was Tony's invention. Bog Snorkelling, the town's other infamous pursuit, was hatched one night back in 1976 at local pub the Neuadd Arms and similarly, after a pint of local ale, Tony had his own lightbulb moment. By day, he's a builder and one day, having removed an avocado bathroom suite from a client's house, instead of scrapping the tub, took it to the Abernant boating lake and launched it. Bathtubbing was born.
There's a large rubber duck attached to my bathtub. I stare at it. "What's that for?"
"That's so we can find the bathtubs when they go down."
"When they go down?" I retort, quickly. "Don't you mean if?"
Tony giggles and adjusts his tricorn hat.
"Go on then," he says, handing me a paddle. "In you get."
I'll be blunt. Getting into a bathtub on water is not easy. And once you're in, maintaining your balance is fiendishly difficult.
"Place your bum," shouts Tony, "in the middle of the bath. Face away from the tap end. Squeeze your thighs against the edge. Stick your feet up flat against the end corners. It's all in the thighs!"
He's not kidding. This is tough. Not only is it physically taxing, but I'm wobbling all over the place. The trick seems to be keeping yourself moving forward, but my upper body strength is so woeful that I find myself paddling back to shore.
"Can you hold on to the end of my bathtub for a minute?" I yell to Admiral Bath Plug. He obliges and I lie down in the bath and have a quick snooze.
Refreshing power-kip over, I give the whole thing another go, and it's at this point that I make a fatal error. I've paddled out into the middle of the lake and have stopped to give my arms a rest. I take a nice long look at my surroundings. There's a heron on the bank. Lovely. Mountain in the distance. Gorgeous. What's behind me? I turn and glance over my shoulder.
"That's funny," I mumble to myself, spotting the plug at the back of the bathtub.
And then, for reasons I shall never know, I reach back and pull the plug out. Quite why I thought it was there for cosmetic reasons is anyone's guess, but as I watch in horror while my bathtub fills with water, I catch sight of that rubber duck, bobbing accusingly beyond the taps. I'm going to go out on a limb, but I've never seen a more sarcastic expression on a duck.
Reader, I went down. *salutes*
• The World Bathtubbing Championships takes place in August. To book this or other unusual outdoor experiences, contact Green Dragon Activities (01591 610508, greendragonactivities.co.uk). Emma stayed at the Lasswade Country House hotel (01591 610515, lasswadehotel.co.uk) doubles from £70 B&B
Follow Emma on Twitter @EmmaK67
