‘one aim, one business, one desire’, a repaired exhaust, and cycling for work

10th July 2013

miles completed: 928
miles to go: 130

This day I am to be joined by Parisa from Swansea.  Swansea definitely feels close to Cardiff, so another indication that I am on the final stages.

The day before, early in the day, I had thought to myself, "This is the last of the large estuary inland excursions. Now, I have sometimes hated these, especially the day-long march from Penrhyndeudraeth to Harlech, and I have wished them to be over. However, thinking this was to be the ‘last’, had given me a sad feeling, not a depressed feeling, but something akin to nostalgia, but in prospect, knowing that the way of life I have had for the last three months is soon to end and I will return to ‘normal’ life.

Now I think that many people would say that few things about my life are ‘normal’, and indeed someone recently asked me about my ‘non-standard’ academic career. However, the truth is that I have been struggling for a number of years to change some of the ways I work; the move to Tiree has been part of this, as has been my gradual reduction in academic hours.

People have often asked if the walk is a journey of self-discovery, and I think not, I know plenty about myself already; the problem is always action not knowledge. And, in a way the walk is a microcosm of my normal life, taking on a bit too much, struggling to do it, not quite feeling I am doing things well enough. However, there are three big differences.

First the patterns of day-to-day life are far more clear cut, measured in miles and sheets of maps. There are aspects that are less measurable, the contacts along the way, the learning from these, but all set within a matrix of mileage.

Second is that the walk has been an expedition of my own choosing. I have laid it open to others, but within a broad agenda that I have set. Most of my time, because of my own broad interests and abilities, I work to other people’s agendas, fitting myself and my time around incoming requests for this or that.

Third, although there are many things to worry about en route, not least the logistics of getting from place to place, still I am mostly focused on one thing; none of the salami-sliced focus I am used to. There have been external things I have either gone off path to do, or that have found me via email, but these have been far less than normal life, I have had a sort of ‘get out of jail free’ card allowing me to say to people, "sorry I’m walking round Wales". So my life has been more one of single purpose, like Matthew Arnold‘s Scholar Gypsy, who lived beyond the age of ordinary men because he had ‘one aim, one business, one desire.’

I’m due to meet Parisa at half past nine in Llanelli, but I remember that I needed to call in to one of the car exhaust places on the edge of Carmarthen, as a rubber piece that holds the exhaust on has come loose, meaning the exhaust is dangling below where it should. I almost decide I could leave it until Swansea, but then decide this would be foolish, so text Parisa to tell her not to leave until I ring.

This was definitely the right decision. When I got to ATS on the edge of Carmarthen, they took one look and told me that in fact two of the four rubber pieces had broken, probably I never noticed at all when the first one had gone, and another was on its way out, after which the exhaust would undoubtedly have come off with a big, and expensive bump.

As well as the staff being very helpful and friendly, I discovered that ATS have free WiFi while you wait, so I managed to upload another blog.

Eventually, with a secure exhaust, Parisa and I meet at the Coastal Park Discovery Centre, where several of the official short walks based on the Wales Coast Path begin or end, only to discover there is no long-term parking. This is not in the heart of Llanelli, so how they expect people to do the advertised walks I don’t know.

Happily, Parisa knows of a restaurant, the Sandpiper, on the lakeside just a short distance away, which has parking with no restrictions, so I am able to park the van there and we ‘pay’ for the day’s parking by having a meal there at the end of the day.

We then drive in Parisa‘s car to Kidwelly to eventually start the day, not much short of noon. We park on the street side, although there a number of car parks too that are both long stay and do not have height barriers, so a campervan-friendly town, so much so that in one of the car parks there is a gypsy encampment.

The day starts with a short road walk on pavements, but after that is all on well-made-up paths initially through woodland and then along the coastal path. The latter is wheelchair friendly, and a major investment at Llanelli.

However, that is getting ahead of ourselves. We take a slightly wrong path through Kidwelly itself. Starting in the middle of the town, I read one Coast Path arrow as pointing along the path we had come, when in fact it was supposed to be the way we should take. 
I sometimes wish there was a slightly different colour, or symbol, for the direction you are following, clockwise or anti-clockwise!

After the town there is about half a mile along the road and then you turn towards Pembrey Forest. Only at the turn there is a sign saying that the Pembrey Forest route is closed due to flooding and signposting an alternative route far inland. It has been a long time since there has been any rain, so we wonder if this is still current, and have almost decided to risk the forest route anyway, even if it means backtracking, when a cyclist passes, about to go along it. We ask him.

"Oh, that was during the winter," he tells us.

So, we set out, first across open ground, beside drainage channels, with the odd ruined military building visible in the distance. We are skirting the edge of another ‘Danger Area’ on the map, and I think a larger area may once have been used for military purposes, but none of it has been actively used for many years. However, in the distance we do hear the occasional thump of firing from Pendine.

After a while we entered the forest. It was another long hot day, and I’d thought we would get a little shade under the trees, but the wide well-made paths were clear cut to either side, so it is nearly the end of the forest section, a couple of miles, before we find shade to eat our lunch. Before that we passed both some managed fir plantations, but also lots of land that appears to be mature scrubland, birch and, I think, alder, but at thirty feet height, not the normal head height of recent scrub. This is probably what a lot of the countryside would be like if sheep and cattle stopped grazing, and looking under the canopy, where one would have had to make one’s way if travelling before the days of roads, no wonder most movement happened around the shore.

Just before the end of the forest is a small campsite in the woods, and then soon after a car park and mown grass area in the shade of a tree, near an old brick building that declares, in age weathered letters cut in stone, that it is ‘Llanelly Corporation Waterworks, Pembrey Pumping Station‘. We sit under the welcome shade and eat our lunch.

From the map, I can see that beyond this, towards the sea, is Pembrey Country Park including more walks through dune and woodland, and also a dry ski slope, golf course and miniature railway. This is also the start (the ‘Pembrey Gateway‘) of the Millennium Coastal Park, which runs past Burry Port and Llanelli, nearly all the way to the edge of the Gower peninsula.

Along the way we meet a man and woman cycling along the path. It turns out they are environmental officers patrolling the paths, looking for problems, and out to give you a ticking off if they spot you dropping litter. On other days, they may be out checking that industrial chemicals are disposed of properly, which may seem more ‘important’, but if the Coast Path is to succeed in getting local people out on their two feet or two wheels, and tourists to come, then this simple patrolling and spotting of problems is just as crucial both for health and wellbeing and for the economy.

"It’s not a bad job, the man says, "when the weather is bad, we work in the office or are in the car but on a sunny day, we can get out like this."

Burry Port lighthouse appears ahead and soon after we get to Burry Port itself, now a marina with a few fishing boats, but in its time, with Pembrey Dock, now silted up, a busy coal dock. The approaches to both were hazardous due to the extensive sandbanks, and were evidently also once the haunt of wreckers.

The first building on the quay is the ‘Lighthouse Café‘, and time for a brief cuppa and a few moments of shade.

The quayside has scattered dockside ironmongery with iron and stone bollards along the edges.  We cross Pont Marti, a footbridge crossing the harbour mouth opened in 2006; before that there would have been a long walk around the whole dock.

Beyond that is a long easy walk sometimes along the top of sea defences, sometimes through grassy parkland, passing one of the 2001-like metallic Coast Path monoliths.  We drop down onto the sand for a while at Tywyn Beach, virtually deserted despite the hot sunshine. However, we then miss the point we should have taken the path inland over the railway and have to push our way through thick undergrowth to get back on track.

We find ourselves in what an information board tells us is ‘semi-natural grassland’. In the UK, where grassland is almost always the sign of grazing sheep or cattle and land left to its own devices quickly reverts to scrubby woodland, I wonder what would constitute fully natural grassland.

Finally we come to the place where the railway cuts through a tunnel under a small, I think artificial, grassy knoll. This is Parisa‘s landmark for us to turn inland past a small lake to the Sandpiper for dinner.

mostly roads, a little beach, a rebel and a local hero

9th July 2013

miles completed: 915
miles to go: 143

The Coast Path leaves Carmarthen across the new footbridge, I’m guessing a millennium project, then past the station to follow roads through an industrial estate and then alongside the main road for a mile, before turning down small country lanes through the village of Croesyceilog, and then more lanes and farm tracks most of the way to Ferryside.

At the last major roundabout before the small roads is an open garage with garden planters lined up, and behind them a man at work. He had started out making planters for his own garden, and now it is a profitable hobby.

There is one stretch of fields and woods, the former are hard work wading rough thick uncut grass, but midway, like a silver sixpence in a Christmas pudding, is a small wooded stream valley that is magical, with rich fern-laden red earth sides, and dappled sunlight playing onto water. The map says ‘hydraulic ram’ near here, but I didn’t see it.

As I come out of the woods I meet another walker, who is going around the whole Coast Path from Chepstow to Chester.  He is obviously experienced as he mentions having done half of Offa’s Dyke previously as part of a Land’s End to John O’Groats walk.

In Ferryside I stop at the ‘Ferry Cabin‘  and have one of their homemade Ferry Burgers.  It is wonderful, a strong gamey taste, almost like a venison burger. I ask the boy who is serving and he says the beef all comes fresh from a local farm.

When I first come in three elderly regulars are talking, I think in Welsh, but it may have simply been toothless English. Later a couple walk into the café, the man’s black T-shirt has an image of two crossed guns and ‘Hippy Killer’ below. I consider my long hair, beard and sandals. However, he does not look as if he would hurt a fly let alone a hippy. Then, from behind, I hear a snatch of conversation, "there’s only two net fishermen left." I will never know where or why it was said.

So I set out, at first along the beach. I ask advice on where to get off the beach from a lady walking her dogs, her feet grey after her dogs led her into slightly too soggy mud. I stick close to the shore until there is a sandy path off leading to a place to cross the railway line and a narrow snicket back to the road. You can do this stretch on the beach whether you follow the official path over the top or the coast road. However, a short while later the Coast Path is signposted straight up the hill on newly constructed steps. I felt a little guilty as there has clearly been considerable investment in this route, but I am tired, my right foot hurts and hurts especially badly on uneven ground, and I want to stay close to the sea. So I ignore the steps and continue.

Across the estuary the birds’ calling is like a sort of trilling music, or like a waterfall, with so many overlapping voices. This peaceful sound is punctuated by the occasional dull thud from the firing range far away across the water.

There are good views over the bay from the firing ranges beyond Laugharne, to the Pembrey range on the opposite side, but the only real thing of note along the way is St Isfael’s Church, which sees itself as being a church for the community, and where there is a small exhibition about the Rebecca Riots.

The latter is there because Hugh Williams, the lawyer who defended the rioters in court, lived at the end of his life in Ferryside. Some believed he was not just the lawyer, but the brains behind the whole movement, and 19th century intelligence services had swung into action intercepting his mail.  He also had a colourful life, with several illegitimate children, marrying the mother of one of them when he was 65.

The final approach into Kidwelly is along a tarmaced path through the Glan yr Afon riverside nature reserve, where the church tower and the castle gradually emerge over trees.  This ends at the river bridge where the car park has become a temporary gypsy encampment.

I start to make my way down the main street for the rail station when a bus stops nearly where I am standing with ‘Carmarthen‘ written on it.

In front of me on the bus is a lady with a reflective jacket on and a folding bike. It is only as we get off at Carmarthen that I notice it says ‘Sustrans Volunteer Ranger’. I ask her about it as she unfolds her bike. Her name is Bethan and she explains that she rides the cycle routes, checking signage, condition of track, maybe pushing back the odd bramble.  Thinking about the condition of some of the footpaths, I really appreciate the value of her work.

a walk on the sands and a curious community, learning from locals, and the dog who was afraid of hats

8th July 2013

miles completed: 901
miles to go: 157

In the morning I left the Stables at Laugharne and drove to Carmarthen to check in at the Drovers Arms where I’m staying for the next few days, and to meet Alan Chamberlain. Alan was doing a sort of debrief about aspects of the walk, and as we chatted we had coffee, tea, bara brith, and lunch at the healthfood shop and café across the road from the Drovers.

Alan needed to get back to Aberystwyth and I was walking the nine miles from Llansteffan to Carmarthen, so at two o’clock (or so) we set off. Alan would drive me to Llansteffan before going home. The route back to Alan‘s car included a quick diversion into the Drovers to swap my laptop for water bottles, and a visit to the 99p shop to try to get a certain special brand of razor blade (not for me!), but before long we were out of Carmarthen and down to Llansteffan.

Then we wandered along the quay to chat for another five minutes …

… at four o’clock, we suddenly noticed the time.

So, belatedly, Alan drove me back a few hundred yards to where I had got to the day before and was on his way. From Llansteffan the Coast Path heads inland over hills, and I was trying to work out whether to follow a road or something that looked like a private drive, as neither were marked and the arrow across the road could mean either of them.

"Are you looking for the Coast Path," an elderly lady asked.

The lady was standing outside her cottage at the crossroads.

Her name is Bron (short for Bronwen), her father was Welsh and her mother Irish, and the name was suggested by her grandmother, who, whilst Irish herself, had a love for myth and legend of both Wales and Ireland. In some ways as a Welsh princess who became an Irish queen, Bronwen is a good name for a child of both Welsh and Irish descent, but there again the story of Bronwen ended in war and bloodshed.  Happily, Bron seemed to have escaped the calamities of her namesake.

"It is that way," she said, indicating the lane that looked like a drive.

"I see a lot of walkers confused," she said. "There used to be a sign, but someone has pulled it up, probably one of the farmers; some don’t like walkers."

She had seen both sides as the daughter of a farmer and as a rambler in later life.

There used to be a footpath and a Roman road at the bottom of the farm, and her father would sometimes block it with barbed wire, much to the embarrassment of her mother. However, when out with fellow ramblers, she had sometimes seen groups of young men with large dogs, leaving them off leash and not caring if they distressed animals.

She was not very complimentary about some of the routes for the Coast Path. "They cut corners," she said, and not meaning to shorten the route! "They simply found any existing path and used that."

Pointing to the path I should take, she said, "it’s not exactly coast."  This was undeniable.

"It is very muddy and tortuous," she declared, and then expanded in more detail.

As she described the path’s meanderings she used the word ‘tortuous’ at least three more times.  This did not sound promising. She said the main road to Carmarthen was busy at weekends, but at this time on a weekday would be quiet enough to walk. I am sorely tempted as (1) it is late, (2) it would be good to get back a little earlier after a fast road walk, and (3) the road is closer to the coast than the official path. However, I feel I may be using (3) as an excuse for (1) and (2), so am about to bite the bullet and take the tortuous route to Llangain, when Bron makes a third suggestion.

"You can go along the beach as far as the boathouse," she says, "and then join the road, but the path joins the road later anyway."

Doing more beach walking is one of my acceptable reasons for going ‘off path’; I am decided.

So, back down the hill Alan had driven me up, and down onto the beach.

As you go upstream from Llansteffan, there are a couple of rocky groynes to cross or go round, and the sand becomes silty and covered in hard packed ripples, fossilised until the next tide. Patches of what at first appear to be grey pavement-like rock appear, only if you kick slightly at their edges they break. They are not rock at all, but patches of silt and mud at the very highest point of the tide, stabilised by a thin layer of algae, and gradually compacting and thickening. It is not rock, but these are precisely the processes by which, over many, many years, rocks form.

I had slightly misunderstood Bron, and thought the boathouse was a small huddle of buildings on the map named ‘Ferrypoint‘; I assume this is the point from which the ferry would once have plied back and forth to Ferryside across the water. The shore side had had the occasional cottage or house, but there was a point with no immediate house, where a cinder track came close to the beach, where there was a footpath sign pointing the way, and along it could be glimpsed some sort of hut-like structure that I assumed was the ‘boathouse’.

Indeed, this was the path to Ferryside, but not to the boathouse. The building I saw was in fact a single storey, corrugated iron residence, number ’12’ of a loose cluster that ranged from tumbled down shacks, to neatly painted, and quite substantial beach houses, with modern large-section corrugated walls and roofs.

I felt I had been transported to the Appalachians, and expected that at any moment the sin-eater would rush past.

I wonder at this tiny hamlet and its history. Are they all holiday houses, or do some have permanent residents? It must have formed before modern planning regulations, and persisted, with updates and improvements to various properties. I look at the distance between this and the riverside. Do storm-pressed spring tides ever push up this high? Maybe it is just high enough to keep them clear, it is hard to imagine some of these properties surviving a flood.

Beyond Ferryside the path continues but as a grassy sandy track. From the map, it once led back to the road, but now that part is overgrown and instead leads onto the beach and along the foreshore. In the distance I see yachts and realise the ‘boathouse’ is in fact where my map says ‘jetty’, and is Towy Boat Club, not just a small private shed for a single boat.

After a while a bed of lush green reeds blocks the way and the path skirts this towards the water. When it finishes I keep going along the sand, until it changes to a sticky mud and I realise I am the wrong side of a marshy area. Maybe it is possible to go on and it stays simply sticky, but also it might turn to knee high river mud, so I backtrack and see that there is a well-trodden path heading shoreward round the edge of the reed bed. The shore is tree lined, and so, beneath trees and at the point where shore-side shingle and salt marsh meet I walk the rest of the way to the actual ‘boathouse’.

There is a substantial jetty with a few boats next to it and more beached on the river mud. The boathouse itself is indeed a yacht club, which may well be open to non-residents as ‘croeso’, ‘welcome’ is written in various places. I am only a mile or so into my day’s walk, but it looks like a relaxing stopping point along the way.

Stepping out of the boatyard, there is about three-quarters of a mile walking along the road, before the official route also joins it, just beyond the hamlet of Pant yr Athro.

It is not a wide road and Bron had said that this could be nose to tail at busy times, so I can see why the official path keeps you off it as much as possible, but it has only the occasional car now.

When walking roads with no footpath, I have formed the habit of walking about a yard away from the road edge, rather than as close as possible, even if there is a grassy verge. Then as a car approaches I step closer in to the side. I hope this means cars end up giving me a wider berth, although there are some cars (and yes it tends to be young male drivers) that seem to delight in driving as close as they can to pedestrians.

Now the road is the official way they signpost you into one of those fenced-off sections of field beside the road. Sometimes these are wide, well-mown strips, but the first was anything but. The gap between hedgerow and barbed wire fence was shrunk by the overhanging hedge, and the ground below thick with bramble and stinging nettles. I was glad when, with smarting legs, I was once more able to rejoin the road and, not long after, branch up a quiet side lane.

Did I say quiet?

As I turned up the lane a black and white collie appeared a short way ahead barking loudly.  As I drew closer, he was joined by a Tibby (Tibetan Spaniel) and another small white dog. When I got too close, he would retreat a few steps, but barking all the time and as I passed the drive of his house, he came behind, and then was barking inches from my calves. He was neither growling, nor snapping, so I did not feel alarmed, but, still, it is not totally comfortable having dog teeth so close to your flesh.

A lady emerged, calling to the dog and apologising in almost the same breath.

"It’s the hat," she said, "he’s afraid of hats."

I took off my hat and the transformation was instantaneous: he stopped barking, came up, sniffed at me, and then wanted to jump up, play and have his ears fondled.

At an earlier point of the Coast Path I had had a similar incident on a narrow cliff path, where a dog was with its owner and started to bark. Again it was the hat. On that occasions the owner said she thought that the fear was because hats hide your eyes and so the dog cannot see if you are friendly or a threat.

I talked with this lady about her Tibby, which was about twice as big in all dimensions as Tansy used to be. I said that they were like greased lightning running. "Not this one," she said, "he is lazy and stubborn".  She found the collie, hat-phobia notwithstanding, far easier to handle than the little Tibby.

I continue along a few lanes past a small, disused church, which is half a mile from the village of Llangain, but was clearly once the local church.

A little further I see the water of the river Towy once more and enter a field. A notice says there are cows, calves and a bull in the field. At the top of the field a small 4×4 is stopped with a couple in the front and their two grandsons in the back leant half over the front seats to see ahead. As I pass the lady calls me and her husband then says it is best to wait as his daughter is rounding up the cows that have broken through the electric fence. As if to order, the sound of a revving quad bike rises from the bottom of the field, and she appears, periodically weaving back and forth behind the cows, sometimes having to swing back to corral a cow that has broken free. The boys keep up a running commentary on their mother’s progress as I wait and we chat.

The farm stretches all the way back to the church and down to the river, and thinking now, I assume ‘Church Farm‘, which is the only building by the lonely church.

The farmer explains that the lane I had come down, the path across this field, which is only visible because of the line of the electric fence, and the path through the woods that I would follow when I got to the end of this field, were all part of what once was the main road from Llansteffan to Carmarthen. This is why the church is so far out of the village; it was where the village road met the main road.

When his father took on this farm in the 1940s the field we are in was also woodland, but in those days, with food rationing still in place, farmers were encouraged to bring land into agricultural production, so the trees were grubbed up and the land turned to grassland.

He also tells me about the boats that used to come up the river, to unload at a wide basin in the river and transfer coal, flour and other goods to horse and cart to take them on into Carmarthen itself. Still a working port into the early years of the 20th century, in the 18th century it had a bigger tonnage than Cardiff.

Eventually the cows, calves and bull are rounded up to the far side of the electric fence, even though the calves instantly duck under again, and the lady-farmer roars up astride her quad bike.

She and her husband both have other jobs, as the farm, at 130 acres, is not enough to support them.  She says that in her grandfather’s day it employed 15 men and their families as well as the farmer’s family, but now is not sufficient for one. I wonder at the change in things, food is still a major part of expenditure, so how is it that food production yields such a poor income. I recall the farms I visited when on the graduate induction programme at the NIAE many years ago; some were 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares), owned by insurance companies and employing maybe two or three permanent staff.

The road (not path!) through the woods is wide and although occasionally muddy in places, this seems so much different when you know it is a path with a purpose, a piece of history I am treading.

Eventually the old road joins the new road, but the path almost instantly branches off to the left through a very well-made woodland walk, then back on the road for a while, and those edge of field paths tracking the walk until it turns away towards a wonderful-looking place called ‘Trysorddy‘, ‘Treasure House‘. It is some sort of community centre, and Smartie-coloured bilingual signs point ‘Craft Workshop / Gweithdy Crefft‘, ‘Storfa Sgrap / Scrapstore‘.

The path here is signed, but utterly obscurely, you have to turn round and then look almost the way you have been going. It then follows round the back of a sports field and some sort of sports centre or maybe store, before crossing a brook and joining a well-made path across the river meadows towards the heart of Carmarthen. On the far side of the river cows graze the salt marsh, but on this side a handful of horses have the expanse to themselves.

A gentleman in a grey jacket, looking as if he has come from a different age, is smoking looking out over the river, and I stop near him to photograph one of the horses.

"Did you take that horse," the voice made me start. Did I do something wrong, is it his horse and he objects?

"It is thirty seven years old," he says, "they say a horse year is five or four human years, thats …"

"Very old," I interject.

He points out another: "that one is over thirty two."

He seems to know each horse individually, who owns them and who keeps an eye on them, as one of the owners now lives some way away.

Given the longevity I ask whether the ground here is especially good.

"Not in winter," he tells me, "you should see it after that."

I imagine the damp mists and sodden earth.

However, there is clearly something good here.

"The sheep and lambs from the salt marshes are all sold overseas," he says, "they think they are the best."

We get on to talking about foods that other nations enjoy, but the British do not appreciate, I mention the crabs from Tiree that all go to Spain.

He says, "Eels, the Chinese like them. There used to be eels in this river. There was an abattoir and a milk factory; the eels fed off them; when they closed the eels went too."

It’s strange, you usually think that cleaning up a river would increase biodiversity, and indeed may have done so; however, things may also be lost.

Coming along the riverside you notice the bridges, first a railway bridge, which can clearly rise like a drawbridge to let through tall river craft, although I would guess does not get raised often nowadays. Then the footbridge, a sinuous suspension, its curving walkway supported by two Christmas-tree-like pyramids, steel trunks and wires.

However, before the second bridge there is a small lattice-fronted shed, which I almost miss, thinking it is full of canoes, or small river boats, but then I realise it is in fact full of coracles.

Coracles are the traditional boat of rivers, a sort of hide (or now tarred canvas) covered round basket. They are in direct line from the hide-covered boats that would have been used at sea, including the one recreated for the Brendan Voyage crossing to America, and are also related to the sea-going curraghs of Ireland.

There were once hundreds of coracles fishing in these waters, but now only eight coracle fishing licences are issued. I wonder if these coracles belong to those licencees, or maybe it’s a sort of ‘coracle experience’ tourism.

Carmarthen was a Roman garrison and town, and then was occupied by the British when they left. Its Welsh name ‘Caerfyrddin‘ is ‘caer-myrddin‘ the fort of Merlin, and this Arthurian connection is celebrated in the Merlin’s Walk shopping centre, complete with statue of Merlin, resplendent with pointed hat (no pretence of druidic Merlin here, straight for Disney ‘Sword in the Stone‘), whom Alan Chamberlain thinks looks like me, and I think looks like him. Incidentally, the Welsh name for the shopping centre is ‘Maes Myrddin‘, which, I think, means more like Merlin’s Meadow.

I am staying at the Drovers Arms. It and several other hotels and hubs are at the west end of town, where the road widens into what must once have been the market area. ‘Retail development’ in the town has largely happened to the sides of the main streets, so that there is an eclectic mix of high street shops you would expect to find in the largest cities, with the more individual shops that have all but disappeared from most high streets. I spot an old barber’s pole and then realise that there is still a barber trading there, and on the Main Street a Victorian chemist’s frontage over a current day chemist.

The Drovers itself feels like the sort of place that the drovers and farmers visiting the market two hundred years ago would have visited. By this I do not mean olde worlde oak beams and four-poster beds, this is no romantic break hotel, but it is a basic ‘inn’. I notice that many of the people in the bar in the evenings also work there; the fact that the staff choose to spend more time here says everything about its atmosphere.

the deserted path of the first Carmarthenshire estuary, a glimpse of Dylan Thomas’ boathouse, no rest at the Pilgrim’s Rest, but water from a mythical queen

7th July 2013

miles completed: 892
miles to go: 166

The Stables is a scene of feverish activity in preparation for a local riding competition today. Jackie takes time out, leaving her ‘girls’ (the stable hands) to do the feverishness, while she shares a cup of tea over breakfast with me. Yesterday had been a day of crisis and excitement, as her daughter had gone to pick up a new horse and realised the clutch was going on the van, happily before she picked up the horse. As well as meaning a trip to pick her up and collect the horse with a trailer, Jackie needed to work out how to take five horses to the event today.

They all seem successfully on their way by soon after nine, and I make my final preparations for the day, before striding off down the mile to the centre of Laugharne where I finished the previous day.

The way passes a small bridge where the houses nearby have sandbags piled outside. I chat to one of the house owners. He tells me that the bridge has recently been rebuilt, but he didn’t think it would help with the flooding, maybe make it worse as places upstream have clearer paths for their water, meaning more will get here even more quickly.

Down the main street leading into Laugharne there is a fascinating range of housing, from the imposing church high on the hilltop, to the ‘Tin Shed‘ car repair garage, that I think may have once been a museum, and some old cottages, some Georgian, and one amazing house for sale, complete with gated porch. I also see the interactive town gaol where the dummy imprisoned inside says things when you approach.

I buy food for the day as I know there will be nowhere to get food or drink except maybe St Clears, until I get to Llansteffan in around seven hours’ time. I also get an additional bottle of ’emergency supply’ water to pop in my rucksack in addition to the two 75cl bottles I always carry strapped to my rucksack. It is not yet ten o’clock and it is clearly going to be a very hot day.

The path leads around the Norman castle, guarding the approach to the Taf, past Dylan Thomas’ boathouse, both the garage for the boathouse where he composed a lot of his later poetry and also the boathouse itself, where he lived for some years with his family. The old garage has a semi-glazed door, so you can look in at the desk laid out almost as if he had just got up and left for his birthday walk. The boathouse is now a small museum of Dylan Thomas memorabilia.

The path rises on through a wooded area, with glimpses of the river below, before passing through fields. Eventually it reaches a lovely kitchen garden, a lady at work amongst the neat rows of vegetables, and then through the yard of what I assume is her house, and on to the road, and then the turn in the road that signals I have completed almost a full circle in the first hour and half of the day and am less than a mile from where I started.

The path cuts through green lanes, fields and woodland paths, with occasional glimpses of water, but drawing inland around the marshes and numerous tiny rivulets that feed the Taf.  Eventually it joins the main Laugharne – St Clears road, and I had thought I would have a period of fast road walking, but it is narrow and fast and so they take you along mown and strimmed field boundaries.

Eventually I pass behind a few caravans and a cottage, washing hanging in the baking sun, and come to a stile with an arrow pointing forwards into a huge hill-humped field of knee-high unmown grass, pylons striding in line across its rise.

I set off as near straight as I can, when a man from the back of the cottage shouts to me, "are you looking for the path?".

"Yes," I reply.

"Up to the right. Can you see the post?"

"No," I say and climb higher towards the pylons.

"A bit more to the right," he says, and then I see it and thank him, following almost the line of the pylons towards a lone tree in the field, and then a second post (visible once I found the first), pointing diagonally across the field to where I find another stile.

The route across the field has been an odd zig-zag, and I assume it follows an old field boundary, maybe the tree stood at the corner where several fields met. However, given there were path markers in the middle of the field, I wish they could have been made a little taller so they were easier to see over the curve of the field and the height of the crop, and I would guess this would also make them easier to avoid when the farmer mows the field.

The path swings once more, rejoining the road and actually following it for fifty yards where, by the big signs saying ‘NO Trespassing’ and ‘KEEP OUT’, I assume the footpath officer did not manage to negotiate access from the landowner. It then tracks the road on the other side until the approach to St Clears where the road has a pavement (hallelujah).

The path just skirts the lower end of St Clears, crossing the river bridge, but not going on to the heart of the town. I had wondered whether there might be a pub or café at this end of St Clears, but when, after crossing the bridge, I looked up the road, there was nothing to be seen. Here is where a sign to say ‘food, half a mile’ would be so useful. In fact, later, I discover that I would have had to go a long way up the road to find anything; there really is nothing to eat between Laugharne and Llansteffan. However, I don’t know that for certain at this point. There is a wonderful house with completely over-the-top garden decorations, but no sign of any people, just a driver from a passing car who shouted "great work", or something like that, having obviously seen the banner on the rucksack back.

So, without the hoped-for break, I followed the path alongside another small river with a launch point and the St Clears Boating Club (closed, but probably not open to non-members anyway). From an information board I learn that St Clears was once a substantial seaport, with ships up to 250 tons coming upriver, but now it is a sleepy town, especially the southern edge that I pass through.

The path then crosses this rivulet and goes along a concrete road through fields. The road swings first to the left and then, as it approaches a hedge, to the right, and I follow it along until I get to a chained gate and an electricity substation. Retracing my steps I realise I’ve missed a small stile near the last bend in the road, the stile just visible, but the Coast Path symbol completely hidden by the hedge.

My mind goes back over the morning’s walking, the heat and the dry grass that constantly shed seeds into my shoes (this day I wore trainers as I was expecting significant road walking); I write a short poem ‘Heat.‘.

Soon after, the path heads through a wooded section in the middle of which the signed stile is blocked by a wooden pallet tied tightly on with baler twine. This was only the second time a path appears to have been deliberately blocked after the obstruction in Trefor.

So many times before and since I have been told, "they are funny in Trefor". I take this to mean Cold Comfort Farm funny rather than Lenny Henry funny. (Sorry if you come from Trefor, it is what people say! Maybe you have an alternative story? Also, if they say folk from Trefor are ‘funny’, what will they say about a man walking round Wales?)  Anyway, I wonder whether folk from St Clears (sorry again) are also ‘funny’, or just this farmer, and wish that I had learnt my lesson and had been carrying a knife to cut the baler twine.

Happily, I manage to unhook one corner of the baler twine and open the pallet like a doorway, before climbing over the stile itself.

Beyond that the way runs through more woods, then out onto a farm track and over a few fields before nearly doubling back on itself onto a road at Poxhole. I recall that one of the fields was slightly confusing as there is a hedge running into the middle of the field that then stops. It was only after finding no way out that I realised the hedge was in fact double line with a lane running between them. I assume that the path and lane followed old field boundaries where some of the hedges have since been grubbed out.

After Poxhole the Coast Path follows roads for a couple of miles. Again this may be confusing as the OS map for the area (Explorer 177) and the original PDF download maps from the Wales Coast Path web site both had the Coast Path following public footpaths that skirt close to the meandering Afon Cywyn, only going on the road to cross the river at Pont-ddu. However, the newer PDF maps from the web site and the signage on the ground is on the road from Poxhole (I keep wanting to misspell it!) to (and I love the name) Pilgrim’s Rest. I assume there was some legal or physical problem with access to the original route, even though it was along existing public footpaths. I am not unhappy, though, as the road walking will eat up the miles quickly and I am still hoping that if I can make up a little time maybe I could get a little further than Llansteffan.

At Pilgrim’s Rest the map shows some buildings and the remains of St Teilo’s Church, which I later learn is a stop on the Cistercian Way long distance walk. I was getting hungry, but decided to wait until I got to Pilgrim’s Rest and, as it says, take a rest there, shaded by the ruined walls of St Teilo’s Church. How perfect.

Unfortunately, when I get to the end of the long farm road, the way ahead is closed and the path leads to the left, bypassing the farm and St Teilo’s Church 🙁

So, I have to eat my sandwich on the hoof with the sun beating down.

Munching, I walk along a path through woods, out onto the edge of the marsh, over a stile with a baseball bat beside it, through a farm with a field of dirty-white Jemima puddleducks and then back onto road for three-quarters of a mile. The road goes round the head of the marshes, over tiny streams that together seem to feed a wide wetland, then partway up the side of a small hill, which seems so much higher in the heat, and into a field skirting the contour of the hill.

As I follow the field boundary I must have missed a sign, as I realise at the far end that I am the wrong side of a hedge and fence. However, I am clearly not the first person to do so given the well-trodden path and the corner of the fence where past walkers have clearly climbed. I follow over, and then through a few yards of thick undergrowth, before the path opens out slightly again.

I meet my first and only walkers of the day since I left the Dylan Thomas boathouse and until I get within a mile of Llansteffan. They are Lionel and his daughter Rhiannon.

"That’s a very mythical name," I say to Rhiannon (Rhiannon is one of the major characters in the Mabinogion).

Lionel explains that he only later in life realised that his own name is an English form of Llewelyn, which had been his grandfather’s name. So he had named his own son Llewelyn and given his daughters Welsh names as well, Rhiannon and Meghan. It turns out that Lionel had studied human communication at Aston University, some years ago.

As my water is running a little short Rhiannon shares some of hers with me as Lionel has a large hydration bladder in his rucksack. We talk walking and feet, including the advantages of walking poles in encounters with nettles. They seem to be experienced walkers, more so than I before the walk. Problems with signage seem to be endemic, even in this area, where there seems to be an attempt at comprehensive signage. The footpath officers are often not walkers themselves, so do not realise the issues about being able to see a sign from a distance when walking across a field, nor that hedges and crops will grow, so that a sign that is readable when put up may not be so even a couple of months later.

When I told them about my use of audio and photo records, Lionel wondered whether I would remember different kinds of things from image or audio prompts.

I recall research some years ago, in the early days of multimedia, on pure audio vs audio-visual material. The same material was presented in both forms and the subjects tested. Those who had audio-visual did better than those with pure audio. Not so surprising, we know how important vision is. What had been less expected was that, when they did a re-test to the same subjects two weeks later, the results were reversed. The video was good for immediate recall, but didn’t ‘stick’. Of course, there may be different results again two years later.

What Lionel was suggesting was slightly different, more the prompting effect. Audio tends to make you work more in bringing things into your imagination, and yet can be more vivid, more all absorbing, because of this. I don’t know of any experiments on this, but it seems a very interesting topic.

We take some photographs and say good-bye, I warn them about the upcoming nettles, and they tell me that the path on to Llansteffan is good.

In fact, quite soon after I leave them the path joins the road for a while, until it skirts the final headland into Llansteffan. Ferryside looks so close across the estuary, but is a day’s walk away via Carmarthen. From a distance the small cottages that line the shore of Ferryside look like child’s playhouses compared to the larger, I assume Georgian or Victorian, houses behind. I wonder if this is just the effect of distance, or whether it will feel like this as I pass through.

The views from this headland between the Taf and Tyfi, are wonderful, with Laugharne on one side and overlapping headlands on the other all the way out to the Gower and Worm’s Head.

Eventually the wooded headland path leads down steps to a small bay, where a car is stuck at the sand just below the access road, its bonnet open. Happily there are no other cars on the beach stuck behind it.

There is then just a short rise and down to Llansteffan itself, the beach still full at five-thirty and the fish and chip kiosk that says opening times are 10–5:30 is clearly still much at work and is so until I leave … but no, I know what you are thinking, I did not have chips, as I didn’t want to spoil my appetite.

I had been unsure whether to call for a taxi from Llansteffan, or to go on to Llangain, the next obvious place along.  However, even making good time, it would be 8pm or 8:30 before I would get to Llangain, which would make it tight to get food back at Laugharne.

The decision was almost taken from my hands as neither of my phones had signal at Llansteffan (does Vodafone ever have signal?) and the phone box (they do still exist) would not accept any money. However, the pub (I think it must be The Sticks) does have a phone and a beer to have while I wait. The walls have old photographs, including coracles, which are still occasionally used in these waters.

It is the same taxi and driver as yesterday.  When I tell him I’m going to eat at Culture Café again, he tells me about the sister café and kebab house in Whitland and, like me, has nothing but praise for Amir.

So another night of lovely food, and Amir does not let me pay, "it is my small contribution to your walk," he tells me. He also says that if anyone goes to eat there and says it is because of the walk, he will put all the proceeds to the charities I am supporting.  More than this, it is his warmth, which I cannot express in words, and is so deeply encouraging.

And so, back a little earlier to the Stables, and down the lane before it is dark this night. Jackie and Melissa are still up watching the end of, as Jackie put it, "some trashy historical thing", I think charting the Wars of the Roses and rise of the Tudors, quite apt as the journey down the west of Wales has tracked the fortunes of Henry VII. Jackie tells me that the day went somewhat easier than the one before, with all horses delivered safely in both directions, and a couple of second places and other places in different categories, including a second place for one of their riders who had never competed before.

I negotiate a beach, sink in a ford, walk where a poet has trod, and meet a philosopher chef

6th July 2013

miles completed: 877
miles to go: 181

Fiona and I have breakfast at the Tenby campsite and, on the way through the campsite, Fiona remarks at how many of the number plates of the cars are from the Republic of Ireland. We assume they come over on the Cork–Fishguard ferry, but wonder at the sheer number given the wonderful coastline of Ireland itself.

As we fill the van with water on the way back we meet an Irish family packing up themselves ready to catch the afternoon ferry, who tell us more. While there are plenty of beaches in Ireland there are no holiday parks such as this with planned activities for children. In fact they have not visited any of the coast around; they have a single daughter and she has been taking part in archery, airgun shooting and similar activities at the site. "Show her a Barbie and she wouldn’t know what to do with it," said her father.

I am staying two nights at Laugharne for the first two days of Carmarthenshire, so drive the van there from my last ‘base’ at Tenby, and we write postcards while we wait for Fiona‘s bus to take her to Carmarthen and on her way home, and for the taxi to take me back to Amroth and the start of today’s walking. It will only be a half day, but just nine miles from the end of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path to Laugharne, and much of that (I thought) on road.

As Fiona gets on the bus a passing woman shouts the score of the British Lions match to the driver; it is the last day of the Australian tour and the decider match. I ask him if he gets a running score at every stop.

"Yes," he said, "I dropped a lot of the boys off earlier, and they said they would be on the one o’clock bus if things were going badly, or the three o’clock bus if they went well."

From Amroth, the path follows the road up the hill at ‘The Water’s Edge‘ and then along a grassy footpath above the cliffs, but then drops back down to nearly beach level, where a footpath leads down to the sands. So, when the tide is low enough, as it was today, it would be possible to simply walk the length of the sands. I always feel slightly cheated when I miss a beach walk.

Having dropped, the path then rises again over another headland and then drops down again to beach level at a tiny rocky cove at Telpyn Point. It looks as if, with a bit of wading, I can walk round the next rocky headland and walk about a mile along Marros Sands. This is not marked as a possible route on the map, but I check with a walker coming the other way that it is possible to get from the Coast Path to the beach at the far end, and she says it is although she hasn’t done so as she was worried the tide was too high.

From the east end it will be hard to tell if it is possible to get round the headland ahead, and a mile backtrack if not, but from my end I get the difficult bit first, so backtracking would not be a problem. In fact I barely get wet to my ankles, and if I had climbed across the rocks, probably not even that.

Of course knowing you can get off a beach and finding where are two different things. Happily a couple are walking down the beach from that direction, so I ask them and they point out trees part way down the beach, where I will find a footpath pointing off the beach.  When I get there I first find a tiny baby adder on the path; it does not move as I approach, so I think it may have died. I also realise that while this will connect with the footpath, in fact I can go a little further along the beach to where the Coast Path nearly meets the sea. Indeed, a few hundred yards on from the trees is another footpath post and this leads to two footpaths, each of which joins the Coast Path.

From here it is another slow climb across the cliff contours, and then another drop down to a small sandy cove, between Ragwen Point and Gilman Point. It is nameless on my map, but a sign says Morfa Bychan.

There is a narrow road leading down to it, and it seems to act as an informal campsite with bell tents, modern hoop tents, small and large campervans. A smell of wood smoke drifts up even when I am high on the cliffs.

On the west side of the beach, perched perhaps twenty yards up the cliff, is a concrete structure with a pipe running out of it. The map says ‘pumping station’, but I am not sure what it is pumping, maybe draining the marshland to the sea, but why?

There is also a large rectangular block of concrete about thirty yards behind the pebble storm bar. It is the size of a long thin building, perhaps two static caravans end to end, but appears to be solid reinforced concrete. I write ‘reinforced’ with confidence as the seaward side is battered down in a number of places, almost like window holes, but just dents exposing the rusting steel reinforcement rods. If it had been wider, extending fully to one side of the valley, I might have imagined an old breakwater that had been rendered useless by a new storm bar, but it is too narrow and is just perplexing.

After this there is another climb for the last headland before Pendine.

As the path does its final turn before descending into Pendine, there is a bench with views along the length of the sands. Another Alan is sitting there and advises standing on the bench to take a photo. He has just bought one of the static caravans in the site below and is looking forward to driving over for weekends here from Chepstow where he lives. He quizzes me about the walk as he has done both Offa’s Dyke and the South West Coast Path in stages. He also tells me there are 240 steps down to Pendine, he knows because he had recently come up them.

Two hundred and forty steps later I stop at the Point Café, which the taxi driver recommended, and see a notice for Walk on Wales in the window.

Alan had also suggested it was possible to follow the beach rather than the road as there were no red flags flying. There is a footpath marked on the map that takes you back to the road but nearly all the way into Laugharne.

It would be lovely to walk the beach as this is where so many land speed records were set and there is a ‘Museum of Speed‘ here to celebrate this. However, Alan has not walked this way himself yet and so doesn’t know whether it is easy to find the correct places to leave the beach. It would be a long way to come back if I don’t find the right place, and a lot of dune to get lost in if I take the wrong path, so I decide to opt for safety and speed and follow the road as it is the official path; a decision I will come to regret.

The Coast Path follows the pavement of the Laugharne road out of Pendine itself, and then through Llanmiloe, an estate of military housing on the outskirts of Pendine. In Llanmiloe I spot the church of St Barbara in what appears to be some sort of ex-military building, swords into ploughshares, rock on!

At the edge of Llanmiloe the pavement disappears and after a short while walking beside the road the path is signposted into the fields running alongside the road. I had been looking forward to the road stretch as I’d started late and thought it would give me a chance to catch up, but I followed the signs, partly because I try to follow the official path as closely as possible unless there’s a good reason not to, and partly as I don’t know the reasoning behind the route of the path; maybe this is an especially narrow and dangerous stretch.

After about a half-mile or mile of this, the path runs along the edge of a ploughed field, squashed between hedge and churned earth. Ahead is an open gate and, after making my way over the furrows, I come to it. However, between this and the gate into the next field, a mowed or trodden grassy path beyond, is a ford across a stream, with no apparent way to cross except wading. The approach on either side is heavily cattle trodden, and flies fill the air above the gently moving water.

There are no helpful stepping-stones, or plank to cross, but the water is only a few inches deep and runs clear and clean (even if the mud either side is not). So, I take the plunge, only the sandy bottomed ford turns out to be a slimy mud bottomed ford, and I sink up to my ankles.

It could be worse. I am wearing sandals, so it is unpleasant, but less so than if it had been running shoes filled with muddy water, or boots, as I think the mud was higher than the waterproof level.

Now on the other side I realise that the gate there is tied shut, and so have to cross back through the mud once again.

I curse the Wales Coast Path and all who conceived, planned, or contributed to it. I fear a return to the trackless routes I met in North Wales, and, not for the first time, the path reduces me to tears.

My relationship to the Coast Path has become like family. I have a great loyalty and I guess love for it, but also can rail at it. As a boy, I would often complain about my Mum to Martin, my best friend, but once, when he said something critical about her, something I might well have said myself, I was indignant.

Having vented my frustration to the empty fields and furrows, I went back along the field edge, and looked once more at the Coast Path arrow on the last stile, which so clearly pointed along the field edge and towards the miry ford.

Shaking my head at the perversity of the path, I follow instead the road, resolving to do so and ignore the parallel field paths.  However, my indignation was somewhat tempered when I passed the dreaded ford, and from the road could clearly see, no more than five yards further on, a small wooden bridge with a Coast Path sticker on it.  If I had simply taken a few steps along the field boundary, away from the road, I would have found it.

I still don’t know how I missed it despite looking back when I rechecked the arrow at the previous stile. I guess it was perhaps partly hidden by the hedge and I was walking very close to the field side because of the ploughing.  So while something went seriously wrong with the signage, they had not intentionally led me into the mud!

As I said, the Coast Path has become like family, and despite being let down by it, I gave it yet another chance to make amends and at the next chance left the roadside and once more followed the field paths.

Eventually, when the fields gave way to a wooded hill, the Coast Path arrows led back on to the, now wide, road, and then, not long after, turned right away from the road, to follow lanes and farm paths between hill and flood plain.

For the final approach into Laugharne, the path mounts the hillside, where, I guess, the mud of the estuary cuts too close to allow a path. Indeed, from one of the information boards I find that this path over the hill was made by the local corporation to allow the people of Laugharne to access the cockle beds on the far side when the tides made it impossible to go around. It is also now known as the Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk, as it was here he composed a poem about his thirtieth birthday, and on the benches as you go past are lines from the poem.

Finally, I get to the town quay and head for the Culture Café, which had been recommended by Jackie, the landlady at the Stables.

Culture Café is an Italian/Mediterranean-style café, although Amir, the proprietor and chef, is not Italian, but, I think, of Middle Eastern extraction. I had a carbonara. These are often disappointing in the UK as it often simply means pasta in a cream sauce, but I decided to give it a try. It was a good choice, not like an Italian carbonara, but neither like the typical British one; delicious, but in a very individual way.

The lady who serves me is wonderfully welcoming and interested in the walk, so I give her a few leaflets. It turns out she is from Syria and she is clearly feeling deeply the suffering there.

As I arrived late, I am one of the last to eat that night. Towards the end of the evening Amir comes out to talk to a neighbouring table. They are staying in Laugharne, and after coming here one evening for a meal had then come every following evening and for breakfasts as well!

After they leave, Amir tells me a bit about the restaurant and his philosophy as entrepreneur and chef. He already had a café in Whitland, a town nearby, but wanted to push his boundaries and start something a little different. Before starting, he spent time visiting Italian restaurants, going into the kitchens, talking to the chefs, keeping notes and learning.

He takes the quality of the food very seriously. That evening, he said, he had prepared two lasagnes, but they were not cooked to his satisfaction, so he threw them away and started again. It is better that they wait a little longer for the food, he told me.

It is not just the food he cares about, but also that he creates a business that is fair and welcoming.  "I talked to a chef who looked through my menu and he told me I should charge more for this, and less for that," Amir said, "but I didn’t do it. I work out how much it costs, what I need to pay for the restaurant and the staff, and a small profit and that is the price." It is clear that this business approach based in fairness, not making the most out of each customer, pays off, as his custom is growing fast.

However, maybe customer is the wrong word. "They are not customers," he says, "they are guests".

I am sad to leave, but it is getting late and it is dark outside.

As I leave Amir says, "if you come by and we are closed, just knock and we will open for you."

I walk slowly back through the streets of Laugharne, past the old lock-up where a voice speaks out of the darkness, the automated system Harold Thimbleby had installed a year or so ago. A small group of men, somewhat worse for wear, chat for a while and tell me I should visit one of the pubs where the barman is from Cardiff, but it is already late and instead I make my way back down the pitch dark lane to the Stables and sleep.

a lightning visit to the island of the saints, fear of loss and a gift of cake

5th July 2013

It is a long morning washing clothes at the campsite laundrette and trying to catch up with (some of) the backlog of email over a late breakfast. So, by the time we walk along the beach to Tenby, it is quarter to three and the man selling tickets to Caldey Island is worried that it is too late and we will not get our money’s worth and so he knocks a few pounds off the ticket price.

The boat leaves from the beach below St Catherine’s Island with the derelict Napoleonic Fort on top.  Since its military days, the fort has been a private home and a zoo and there are now plans to connect it permanently to the headland by a suspension bridge and reopen it as a tourist attraction.

The current access is via (barricaded) steps from the sand bank that connects the island at low tide. I recall from when we stayed in Tenby one summer for two weeks, how we often came down to this beach, but the lifeguards would warn when the tide was about to overtop the sand bank.  It did not cut off the beach, but the rush of water over the bank could easily sweep a child off their feet and out to sea.

We have the boat to ourselves, just the crew and two young girls, who I assume are relatives of the skipper, sunbathing on the bow. The water near Tenby has that over-silken-smooth look, like a photograph taken on slow exposure, blurring out the fine details, leaving it oily heavy; maybe literally oily heavy as this is the same sea you see in the wake of boats.

The journey is short, just three-quarters of a mile, with views of the far side of St Catherine’s Fort and ever approaching Caldey Island, its wide beach and small jetty. We double-check the time of the last boat as we get off, five o’clock. I wonder how often someone gets left behind and the monks have to entertain an unexpected guest.

From the boat it is barely ten minutes up to the Abbey and sort of ‘village’ green with shops and small café. The way leads past a small, but impressive, red sandstone cliff under which is parked an even more impressive vehicle. It is one of those amphibious ‘ducks’ that are sometimes used for river and road tours – I want one! A notice says that it is used when the tide is too low for the jetty and I mentally resolve to revisit some day at low tide.

It is likely (reading Bushell’s Guide) that ‘Caldey‘ is a Norse name meaning "isle of the fresh spring", as there is a good water supply on the island. This would have been important for the Norse raiders for whom taking on water on an offshore island would be a lot safer than making camp on land.

I recall I was on holiday in south-east Ireland and wondering where the ‘ford’ was at Waterford, when for the first time I realised that this was not a ‘ford’ but a ‘fjord’, as Vikings occupied and named places both there in and in Pembrokeshire: Milford Haven, Haverford West.

The spring will have also been the reason that Caldey has been occupied since Neolithic times, soon after the last Ice Age, with flint working dating back 8000–9000 years; and for the early Celtic monastery and later Norman priory on the island.

The Priory was occupied until the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, and was in private hands until it was sold to Benedictine monks in 1906, and later handed to the Cistercian community who are there today.

It is barely five minutes from the beach to the small village-green-like area of shop, tea-room and post office with the Abbey buildings rising behind.  Although we didn’t see the spring, there is a large duck pond.

The Abbey itself does not feel as if it belongs on British soil, instead a combination of white-rendered walls and slightly convex red-tile roofs that would look more in place on an Alpine slope – very much Sound of Music. I guess that the monastic orders in Norman times may have been a bit like Tesco today, building to a standard pattern across Europe, although maybe the colouring and roof shape are more recent.

We do not have much time to wander the whole island, but we visit the main Abbey chapel.  At one point I almost walk into another small wooden chapel, but just in time Fiona (who actually reads notices) saw that it said ‘private’. During the summer months the monks must long for 5pm when the last boat goes back and they can have the island back to themselves for prayer and work.

The Cistercians were founded at the end of the 11th century as a reaction to the growing riches of the Benedictine monasteries of their time, returning to a pattern of life focused around manual labour and prayer. The Cistercian monasteries of the post-Norman period, such as Strata Florida, were critical in transforming the landscape of Wales as they created huge upland farms.

Today the Cistercians of Caldey Island do not transform landscapes on quite the same scale, but the same ideals of manual work are apparent in the various products they make, in particular the perfume, which is one of the principal products of the island, and also the chocolate in the gift-shop, another signature item.

We decide gifts of chocolate would not last long in the heat, but we do buy a few soaps, and in the gift shop I succumb to a few books:

• Rev. William Done Bushell, ‘Caldey: An Island of the Saints‘, Lewis Printers, Carmarthen, 1991
• J.B. Midgley, ‘Dewi Sant, Saint David, Patron of Wales‘, Gracewing, 2012, ISBN13: 978-085244-758-1
• David Hodges, ‘The Music of the Ocean‘, The Abbey, Caldey Island, Tenby, 2013, ISBN13: 9780956688415

The last of these is the latest of a series of poetry books written by one of the monks, mostly about the island and his walk with God.  Much of the verse is of value mainly for the sentiment it expresses more than its form, but every so often one stands out.

Along the Ridge (p. 61)
Between us
no word is spoken
in the sunset’s afterglow.
…

Self Portrait (p.55)
Practiced hands
take up again
the once discarded canvas.
…
Youth’s agressive style
softened now with age;
…

Maybe most topical for the walk is ‘Fear of Losing You‘ (p.54), written not about a lover, friend, or favourite pet, but a new mobile phone. I’m writing this about 2 months after the event and a recent Times report on ‘Mobile phobia‘ gives this a name nomophobia and reckons that, according to a study, over half of British workers live in fear of losing their phone. David Hodges ends up looking back to God who:

… is always there for us
watching, waiting,
always ready
to receive us.

… and presumably his battery does not run out.

Having not gone for a walk around the further parts of the island due to the limited time, we suddenly realise we still have loads of time before the boat is due, so we go to the tea shop; we are both peckish by now, having not eaten since breakfast, albeit a late one.

It is too late for hot food, and the last of the fruit cake has gone, so, lacking a sweet tooth, I struggle to find something to eat, when a lady comes in and says "you can have my cake" and hands me a small plastic box with cake inside. She had bought it with her meal earlier and it had been too much.

It is a small act, and unexpected, but yet maybe not so amongst visitors to an ‘Island of the Saints‘.

When we return her box later she and another visitor are sat talking to one of the monks whom they are evidently visiting for the day. Maybe he is a relative or perhaps a spiritual adviser from a previous retreat on the island.

Still in fear of missing the last boat, we pass back through woodland, past the duck and red cliff to the shore, wandering slowly amongst those who simply came over to sit or play on the beach, and yet we are still twenty minutes early and catch the last-but-one ferry that is about to set off.

It is full, unlike the one we took on the way out, and we wonder what happens at the very last run of the day if there is not enough room. Do they do an extra trip, or leave some on the beaches?

Back in Tenby the town is shutting down, but horror of horrors, the bookshop is still open and, like bees into a honey trap, we wander inside.

I come away with maps for the Carmarthen and Llanelli areas and also a couple of relevant books by local authors:

• Imogena Rhia Herrad, ‘Beyond the Pampas: In Search of Patagonia‘, Seren, 2012, ISBN13: 978-1-85411-591-1
• Rosie Swale Pope, ‘Just a Little Run Around the World‘, HarperCollins, 2009, ISBN13: 978-0-00-730620-6

The first of these is about a woman who goes out to Patagonia, in search of the Welsh connections there. This was a voluntary exile in the 19th century by a group who believed that their culture and language were so under threat in Wales itself. This was of course a period when the language was still being actively suppressed, as it was well into the 20th century.

The second is by a woman whose husband died and as a way of dealing with grief she set out to run around the world as a memorial to him. My childhood imaginings of walking round the world were one of the inspirations for my own (relatively) short walk around Wales, but no, I am not getting any ideas.

We ate in one of Tenby‘s many fish and chip shops and then walked back to the van along the now cooling sands.

in which Fiona and I travel through dark tunnels and across wooded cliffs, to get to the end of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path

4th July 2013

miles completed: 867
miles to go: 191

Today I am not alone; Fiona is walking with me the short hop from Saundersfoot to Amroth.

On the way to Saundersfoot, we talk with the taxi driver about the industrial-scale lime kilns that give the campsite its name.  Mostly around the Pembroke coast there are small lime kilns at each tiny port, cove or inlet where ships could bring in lime; it would be burnt and then the quicklime taken by horse and cart to fertilise the acid land beyond.  Here the limestone is local and so the kilns are set back from the sea.

You can follow the road through Saundersfoot, but it is nicer to walk along the beach to start. The path initially follows the Dramways, a series of tunnels and low-level promenades, which I assume is the route of old trams for the coal mining that was once an important industry in the area. Unfortunately the excellent leaflet that tells you about it as a walk does not tell any of the history. However, I note that there are more leaflets about circular walks around Saundersfoot, one of which is an industrial history one.

If you take the beach route you miss the first of the tunnels, which is lighted, the other two are not. The first is only very short, but the second plunges you into darkness for several hundred yards, the floor and walls only vaguely visible in the dim light from the tunnel ends. If you are scared of the dark bring your own torch.

After the tunnel is a level concrete promenade-style walkway, which leads you all the way to Wiseman’s Bridge. The rocks between promenade and sea start as flat limestone pavements, criss-crossed with tiny fault lines. Later the strata start to slope and the different erosion rates leads to a mix of sand between bars of rock that are almost like natural groynes.

The bridge at Wiseman’s Bridge just crosses a small stream and I don’t feel any wiser having crossed it.

The man at the Saundersfoot Tourist Information recommended the Wiseman’s Bridge Inn for lunch, and it is a good choice.  So, whether or not wiser, we are certainly fuller as we set out again on the path to Amroth.

This initially sets off up the road behind the Wiseman’s Bridge Inn, then branches onto another smaller road until, just as it levels off, you turn onto a variety of wooded paths and grassy cliffside paths. After a couple of miles, you drop into Amroth. The same man at Saundersfoot Tourist Information told me that there were not many houses in Amroth, but that a substantial number were pubs or cafés. I can confirm this.

We walk past many cafés advertising ice creams, and beach shops selling buckets and spades.  The prom goes on for about a quarter of a mile, but for some reason, maybe erosion, is blocked off. We take a short road stretch of less than a hundred yards before continuing along the prom, past a man stepping carefully over the head-sized boulders on the waters edge, past Amroth Castle that seems mostly Victorian, and eventually to the plaques and plinth that mark the end of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path and only 190 miles left to Cardiff.

a badgers and a dolmen, being the outsider: HIV and holiday camps, seaside holidays and Famous Five adventures

3rd July 2013

miles completed: 863
miles to go: 195

Freshwater East is at one of those bus ‘watersheds’; there are buses west out of Freshwater East that end up in Pembroke, and buses east out of Manorbier that end up in Tenby, but the only way to get from Tenby to Freshwater East is via Pembroke and means not starting until late in the morning.

So, at 7:30am I have ordered a taxi. The driver’s daughter is about to go on a trip to Ghana doing HIV-related work there.

"I’m so proud of her, but also worried," he says.

I know the feeling. Some years ago, Esther went on a three-month trip round Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, with Act4Africa, doing HIV awareness drama. I felt that same mix of pride and concern. It certainly makes walking round Wales seem tame. I recall that we consoled ourselves that these were now very stable African countries, especially Kenya. Of course it was not many years later when Kenya erupted into bloodshed following the contested elections.

He drops me at Freshwater East, at the bottom of the hill!

For the first half mile the footpath takes you along a sandy track at the back of the dunes.  There is at least one point where a track from the beach joins it; again I wish that beach walking options were more clear both on maps and on the ground.

The path then climbs up the cliff and is easy underfoot and the walk to Manorbier unremarkable until a badger dashes across the path directly in front of me. It is only there for an instant; they are no slowcoaches. I trace its path through its run in the long grass by the shuffling of the grass heads and the occasional flash of its long white snout, and then it is gone.

I have seen so many dead badgers by the roadside, but never one alive. This was quite small in comparison with the road kill, so perhaps still a youngster.

Between Freshwater East and Manorbier is the beautifully named ‘Swanlake Bay‘. It is only accessible by foot and yet someone has left water and a bowl for dogs and an unofficial place for leaving rubbish. I did spot someone come down to the path a few moments before I spotted the beach-top cache, and wasn’t sure if he was taking a drink himself, or maybe he is the mysterious saint of the sands, and was checking the water levels.

Coming towards Manorbier Bay I see that that it, like Swanlake Bay has sand on its eastern side and is rockier on the west, I guess reflecting tidal flows. However, whilst Swanlake Bay is more broken rock, Manorbier Bay‘s western side is a flat, grey, striated pavement, as if it had been scratched by a giant rake, the way concrete paths sometimes are to give them better grip.

Coming towards Manorbier itself, two things stand out, the four-square castle, like an enormous block on the north side of the valley overlooking the bay, and opposite it, on the south side, a white-towered church. As you approach, you can see that the white of the tower is stained red-brown in places, I assume from rusting metalwork.

I also know Manorbier has a ‘beach café’ up in the village (not so far up as Freshwater East!), as I’d scouted it out while driving to Tenby the day before. There were signs from the car park near the beach, but nothing from the beach itself if you had arrived by foot. I was hoping to eat at Lydstep so it wasn’t a problem, but if I was hungry and walking I would have missed food 🙁

Coming out of Manorbier the path cuts diagonally up the cliff face and a short way up is a dolmen, right beside the path. Its capstone points out over the bay as if giving whoever was buried there a sea view. A little further again there are metal railings beside the path. They turn out to be to prevent you falling down a deep fissure in the cliff face. It is impressive, dropping right down to sea level, the waters foaming at the base, and cut, as if by a giant knife, right from the path to the sea, but barely three or four feet across.

A little beyond Manorbier there is another radical change in the geology from the rounded contours of Old Red Sandstone on the west side of the bay to a harder, more dramatic grey rock on the east, I think maybe Millstone Grit, although initially overlain by sandstone.  This means the path becomes a little more stone strewn underfoot, and also the large-scale structures are different.

The path skirts Manorbier Camp, an MOD facility connected with the firing ranges. They mean that you cannot go round the headland of ‘Old Castle Head‘, but just before you turn inland to skirt the fence, the high, sheer cliffs of ‘Conigar Pit‘, reflecting the change of rock, can be seen dropping away.

After skirting the small radars and entry posts of Manorbier Camp I thought I could already see Lydstep village ahead, but then realised what I could see was the unnamed family housing and maybe barracks for the camp. A little further and the path swings round the far side of the camp, heading once more towards the sea. On the ground there is a large, flat, almost paved area, presumably the site of some abandoned building. Each slab is several yards apart, presumably cast in place. However, what was unusual was the colour and texture of the surface; although the slabs were clearly concrete they appeared to be coated in a thin sheet of heavily rusted iron. Maybe this was the case, or maybe there was simply a metal structure above them and this was the effect of years of rust leaching down.

I had spotted Caldey Island in the distance earlier, but now it reappears as the dominant feature of the landscape. Its western beach faces land, flanked by cliffy promontories, and beyond the Gower Peninsula spreads mistily across the horizon, Worm’s Head jagged at the end.

I had seen signs for the YHA as I passed Manorbier Camp, but then it becomes visible, less than a quarter of a mile from the sea, a 21st century (I am sure eco) design with sweeping curved roofs. The beach below is chopped neatly in half by a wall of rock with the wider sands of Skrinkle Haven to the west, and a narrower and rockier, but slightly more easily accessible beach to the east.

As Lydstep point appears, its seaward side appears to have a vertical strand of pure white rock. It goes out of sight when you get closer, so I still do not know whether it is some trick of the light, a paint coat of guano, or a vein of pure marble.

Like many of the coastal villages, Lydstep itself is about half a mile inland and Lydstep Haven, a wide sandy beach, is wall-to-wall caravan park. On the bus timetable there is a ‘refreshments’ icon on Lydstep, and I was hoping this was somewhere I could get breakfast.  There are probably places to eat in Lydstep village, but on the coast there is just the bar and restaurant connected to the holiday park.

I went in and saw a notice reminding people to bring their passes when ordering at the bar – this did not look good, but maybe it was just for the alcohol licence and didn’t apply to food.

"Do you do food for non residents?" I asked.

"Not normally, but as it is quiet," she replied.

I wasn’t sure whether to feel favoured or merely tolerated.

While the one other family who were eating did not presage a flood of business, still I found myself not lingering over my big breakfast even with its ‘bottomless tea’.

From there it is a short walk on to Penally, which the locals confusingly appear to pronounce ‘Penaly’, with an English ‘l’ rather then the breathy Welsh ‘ll’. As Penally appears, it has a row of what appears to be Nissan huts, and as there is yet another MOD firing range here they may well be, but given their location they might also simply be glamping barns. Beyond Penally, Tenby appears, first the old fort on the tidal island and then the pastel-palette hotels on the headland.

There was no red flag, and afterwards I realised I could have walked round Giltar Point, but instead followed the Coast Path signs, which lead you along the firing-safe route towards Penally Station and then, across Tenby Golf Course, to the southern end of the long South Beach that runs all the way to Tenby. Confusingly at the north end of South Beach is another small cove on Tenby headland that is called ‘South Beach‘ also.

The tide is not full and the sandy bar connecting the beach to St Catherine’s Island, with the old fort, is still visible. I seem to recall you used to be able to visit the fort, but now it is fenced with ‘do not enter’ signs, so I assume has become dangerous with age. The sandy bar is also a danger, as the tide rips suddenly across it once the waters cover it. However, the low tide does mean I can walk nearly all the way round the headland and only climb the cliff at the steps opposite St Catherine’s Island leading to the bandstand and below the remains of the older Norman Castle.

This was our favourite beach when we stayed for a fortnight in Tenby when I was in my teens. This was many years after Dad had died, so just Mum, Jacqui, my sister, and me.  However, one week Martin, a friend of mine, joined us, and the other week one of Jacqui‘s friends. Martin and I lusted after the giant Gurkha knives in one shop window and Martin bought a small one. I recall too that the freezer compartment in the electric fridge was far better than the one in our gas fridge (it was never the same after they converted from coal gas to North Sea gas). I touched the bottom of the freezer and my hand stuck, just like touching the metal railings in an Arctic ice breaker. If I recall, the exact chain of events was:

1. me: touch bottom by accident and notice it feels ‘sticky’,
2. me: put hand down fully to see how sticky
3. me: try to pull palm off bottom and find I can’t
4. me: shout for help
5. Mum: comes with wet dishcloth, which freed me

Happily it did not leave any lasting damage except to my pride.

Things have changed since those days, the tea comes in plastic cups (you used to leave a deposit and take a proper pot of tea and cup and saucer) and … actually struggling to think what else has changed, and you can still hire deckchairs and windbreaks (£2 each plus 50p deposit).

I am going to spend a few days in Tenby, so I do not linger at this point past the new and old lifeboat stations. The new station reminds me of Marloes where they have the new station to be built with viewing galleries, but I think the Tenby station is bigger than the plans I saw. I see that the old lifeboat station has been converted to residential use, a house with its own private slipway!

Georgian town houses and boarding houses line the headland and the bay, with gardens tumbling down the cliffs and tall retaining walls clinging to the rocks. Passing the harbour, the retaining walls for house and road are often undergirded with railway-arch-style sheds, and in one place a perfectly circular Hobbit door. The story of the Tudors, which began at Ty Gwyn in Barmouth, continues as I pass a house with a plaque announcing that it was from here, in 1671, that Henry Tudor escaped in a tunnel (real Famous Five stuff) and fled to France, before returning some years later to take the throne.

As with previous beaches, it was unclear whether I could get up the far side of Tenby beach, so I took the roads through the town, but in fact there is a way up at the west end of the beach, although it does look like a *lot* of steps, so maybe my more gentle ascent past the Tudor house is better and is, I think, the marked route. I say ‘I think’, because markers for the Coast Path through the town are remarkable only in their absence, or maybe (having spotted a sticker high on a lamppost) subtlety.

Sensitised by my MHA visits in Colwyn Bay, I had noticed a building site announcing ‘Later Living Coming Soon’, and with the strapline, ‘Later Life, Greater Life’. Although Tenby is postcard lovely, I do wonder about all those steep streets and endless steps, but then recall hearing about a Greek island where it’s common to live to a hundred and where the octogenarians still have active sex lives. As well as diet, the landscape is full of steep hills, and it is common to walk several miles a day up and over these to buy food, or visit the bar to gossip. Maybe Tenby could become such a place; who needs zimmer frames when you can have Ann Summers?

At the point where the steps join the road there is a very small ‘admire the view’ park, and you are already very high above the sea … but not high enough. The rise out of Tenby, first by road (past the mobile-mast topped Park Hotel, could they make it more ugly?) and later by well-made forest walk, is unremitting. It is not incredibly steep, just never-ending, and while the highest point is just 88 metres (300 feet) according to the map, it feels a lot more.

I had originally intended to walk just to Tenby and then do Tenby–Saundersfoot as a short walk with Fiona when she arrived. However, I had been warned by the lady at the Tenby campsite reception the day before that the Tenby to Saundersfoot section was very hilly, but the stretch beyond that much flatter. So I decided to do the hard bit.

In fact the path underfoot is unusually well made as this is a popular route, including a substantial woodland section where the path is paved with some sort of pre-cast concrete blocks with gaps for the grass, rather like in some car parks. Both this and some of the gravelly paths are not perfect for the thin-soled sandals I am wearing, so I’d definitely suggest heavier soles, but otherwise easy on the feet. But not so easy on the legs. Having risen to three hundred feet, the path then plunges, rises again, plunges, rises again. Nothing hard and certainly nothing like some of the sections of Offa’s Dyke, but you should plan to take your time and have some ‘breather’ stops.

I pass a couple and the lady notices my backpack banner.

“Oh, are you walking for MHA?” she asks.

Bill and Pam are on holiday from Winchester/Southampton area, and are Methodists, hence instantly recognise the MHA. They tell me that Saundersfoot is less than an hour away, and while we talk another couple, whom I had steamed past not long out of Tenby as they were taking a more leisurely (read sensible) pace, pass by.

Approaching Saundersfoot, there are steps down to the beach past a tiny waterfall. It is not clear whether you can get round the small headland and indeed whether you would then be simply faced by rock and harbour wall, so I appeal to local knowledge from a man walking his dog and just coming off the beach.

He looks at the water, "Oh, yes," he says, "it will be OK, just scramble over the rock and you come to the harbour. See where that couple are with the dog."

I thank him and find the couple, Kevin and Sally, chatting to a old couple in deckchairs, and, I think, putting off tackling the small rock, which is accessible, but only at the low point of each wave. As I approach Kevin takes the plunge, or to be precise avoids taking a plunge, and as the water pulls back down the sand, and the next wave prepares itself, takes up Charlie the dog under his arm and makes a wild leap to the rock.

"You go first," says Sally, politely, and I suspect to see if Kevin‘s successful traverse was a fluke.

I wait for the moment and with the help of a useful iron bar protruding from the rock (I assume to tie boats to in the past) I too make my way up and then go over the top as Kevin waits to take Sally‘s hand as she makes her attempt. As she too avoids the waves (we are talking about serious ankle-wetting potential), I look to the far side and say, "that was the easy part".

On the far side the water is higher, but the rock does drop step-like so that you are close to the tide line. Another young couple sit, Canute-like, side-by-side on the sand, with a mini trench dug in front of them in defence against the rising tide. I fear that their patch of Wales will soon go the way of the Lost Cantrefs.

I have my sandals on and am happy to step into the sea, but Sally‘s perfect white deck shoes will not take a soaking as easily, so she removes them while I take the scouting role, and remarkably, waiting for the lowest point of the waves of the ever-rising tide, I manage to leap ashore completely dry footed. Kevin, Sally and Charlie follow shortly after and we congratulate one another on a mini-adventure almost as if it were the first traverse of the Andes.

And I am in Saundersfoot. The beach I am on leads to the harbour below a sign that says ‘Teas – Ices – Snacks’, on an old corrugated hut that looks as if it may have been there on my last visit probably nearly fifty years earlier.

I was very small at the time, maybe just three or four, and we stayed on a farm outside Saundersfoot. In those days we had an old black London-Taxi-cab-style Ford Popular, the sort you see in films of the War and the Forties, but still going strong into the Sixties. There was no starter motor, but a crank handle, and no indicator lights, but instead little lighted arms that popped out to right or left, in emulation of the driver’s arm, which Dad often used in addition.

I half recall, but maybe just from photos, sitting on the tractor in the farm, but do recall the sand sculptures Dad made each day. One day it was an ocean liner, shell windows beneath tunnels and sheer damp sand bows cutting through the ocean waves of golden dry sand.  Another day it was a motor-car, big enough for Jacqui and I to sit in and then a queue of other children wanting their turn at the wheel. I do not recall if we shared willingly, but if so Dad‘s heart was big enough to overcome any reluctance of our own.

However, before the sand sculptures and sand castles, which continued through every summer holiday, Dad‘s first task at any seaside, after setting out the chairs and towels, and before he sat himself with knotted handkerchief in Blackpool postcard fashion, on his head, was to make a rectangular ‘table’, on which to put the tray of tea brought down from the beach café.

I am trying to recall that holiday in Tenby many years later after Dad had died, and think I did continue the tradition and make the daily table.

I have not seen Saundersfoot since that childhood holiday when I was almost too young to recall anything. Certainly, I have no recollection of the town and harbour, and for some reason we never visited when we stayed in Tenby. Thinking back, none of the places we went in the years after Dad died were ones where we had holidayed together. Maybe this was just opportunity: without the car we were limited to the destinations of Golden Rail and Methodist Holiday Homes, but maybe it was just too hard for Mum to revisit these places of happy holidays together.

A hundred years earlier than my visit, Saundersfoot would have been a bustling, and probably very dirty, port with coal from the measures around, the same as those found in the South Wales valleys. But it has none of the signs of a centre of trade that Tenby has; the harbour breakwater and quay are plain, workmanlike, without a scattering of trading offices.

And now, fifty years after my last visit, and probably little different then, a seaside town of slot machines, fish and chip shops and guest houses, but somehow one that makes me feel comfortable, rather than overwhelmed, maybe because the gaudy trappings somehow sit lightly. It has always been the second cousin to Tenby, less prosperous, less successful, less historic, less instantly pretty, looking on, just a few miles from the belle of the ball, but with some of the charm of innocence of the neglected.

I scout around a little at Saundersfoot, but also know I will be here again with Fiona to do the section of the walk from Saundersfoot, under the tunnels and along the (less hilly) clifftop to Amroth. However, I am taken by the ‘Sensory Garden‘ (lavender and mini-fountains for touch, smell and sound), and also, predictably, by the kiosk selling ‘fried sausage hot dogs’.

There are frequent buses from Saundersfoot to Tenby and I start to write on the iPad as I wait, resting the polystyrene cup of tea that I got from the sausage kiosk on a ‘Bob the Builder‘ children’s ride (don’t worry about the hot drink, no children in it!).

At Tenby I go down to the station to meet Fiona, who has spent the afternoon in Carmarthen (and is very taken by it), and on the platform, none other than Bill and Pam waiting for the train to take them back to their holiday accommodation at Penally.

When the train arrives Fiona and I take a (rather grubby) taxi back to the campsite, where it turns out the taxi driver is also the lady who, with her son, provides carriage tours of Tenby. The next day we saw the carriage waiting in the town square, looking somewhat more spick and span than the taxi.

a short damp day starting with a steep hill, walking an embroidered landscape, a change of rock means a change of scene, and hubris: a walled cliff top surrounding a demolished mansion

2nd July 2013

miles completed: 848
miles to go: 210

I’m starting to write at y Ty Cychod (the Boathouse) National Trust café at Stackpole Quay.

The path from St Govan’s to here is easy going, Sunday afternoon stroll territory. The short stretch from St Govan’s to the end of the firing range is along tarmac track with grass down the middle, and thereafter the flat-topped cliffs have wide grassy paths clear along them, you can take the straighter path or divert along each headland as you wish. The only ascents are where you have dropped onto beaches to walk on the sand, which seems a good reason to climb.

However, the day starts with a more substantial and less reasonable climb.

I had slept the night at Freshwater West where the car park has no ‘no overnight sleeping’ rule, and it is wonderful going to sleep and waking to the sound of rushing surf. I drove to Freshwater East, saw a bus stop in the village itself, and then went down the long hill to the beach car park. It was only then I looked at the bus timetable and saw a time for the ‘crossroads’ in Freshwater East (really a T-junction!), but no mention of the car park or beach. I looked and couldn’t see any sign of a bus stop. The coastal buses will stop anywhere on request, but, of course, only if they are driving past. So, with not long before the bus was due, I ran all the way up the steep winding hill to the village.

The bus arrived, I paid my fare, and then … the bus turned down the beach road, down the hill, and down the hill, past bend after bend until it passed my neatly parked campervan and, 30 yards further on, the bus stop.

I was the only passenger. He expects to pick up more local passengers later in the journey going into Pembroke. In the mornings the locals want to go into the centres of population for shopping, dental appointments and hairdressers; it is only walkers who are going out to the margins, and on a dismal morning like this, with rain forecasts, precious few walkers.

We meet a car in the narrow lanes, and then a little later the driver stops at a wide spot, "just waiting for the other bus to pass", he says, while popping out of the bus for a quick fag. The bus comes earlier than he expected, and so the half-smoked cigarette is neatly extinguished between finger and thumb, and saved for later. This strikes me as a man expert in the art of the smoke in the gaps.

We start to talk about reversing.

Having seen the closely timed passing point, I ask, "what do you do if you do meet another bus on these roads?"

"Panic," he replies.

Often I find that in the campervan, when I meet a small car, they freeze, like a rabbit in headlamps, and I have to do the reversing even though it would be easier for them. I ask him if he has found this.

"No," he says, "they have to reverse or we are going nowhere."

He tells me that with a PSV (public service vehicle) you are not allowed to reverse while carrying passengers. There are clearly some exceptions to this, such as the reversing areas to turn round, or when you do meet another bus, but he says he certainly wouldn’t reverse down one of these lanes with passengers aboard, even if he is close to a passing place.

He tells me about one time when he met a car, and the car pulled over, but without sufficient space to pass.

He said, "I shrugged, and he shrugged, and we stayed there for ten minutes."

Eventually other cars clogged up behind and one of the drivers came and asked the bus driver why he was not moving.

"Ask him," said the driver pointing to the car.

The go-between went to the car and asked why they weren’t moving.

"Because he’s an idiot," said the car driver, and maybe more, but that was what the diplomatic go-between passed back to the bus driver.

Eventually the car did reverse, just 20 yards to a wider spot.

As the bus passed, the bus driver stopped, wound down his window and asked the car driver why he hadn’t moved. He said something similar to his response to the go-between, and so the bus driver told him the legal position and suggested he should read the Highway Code, which says car drivers should always give way to buses and lorries.

Public Transport: one; Car Driver: nil

However, the bus driver is not always right. This one told me about a new bus driver, who didn’t last very long. Quite early on the new driver was driving down a narrow one-way street, with cars parked either side despite the double yellow lines along one side. By the time he exited the street, there were twenty broken wing mirrors hanging from cars or on the street.

"Why did you do it?" he was asked.

"Because they weren’t supposed to be parked there," he correctly, but undiplomatically, replied.

We had got on to the topic of campers and caravans and the second-hand Shogun he

was about to pick up next week to tow his caravan, when we got to St Govan’s Chapel. I think maybe I would learn more taking buses round Wales than walking.

So, I start to walk from the car park at St Govan’s Chapel, where I met Mark and Liana yesterday. While still on the firing range I pass a series of grassy bunkers, each with an entrance facing the sea (and away from the way the shells would be coming); they look like burial barrows scattered across the landscape.

Just beyond is Broad Haven (not the first ‘Broad Haven‘), a wide beach with a car park and what appears to be a campsite (unless people camp at the car park) above it. As the day was forecast to be wet I had put boots on, so could not paddle as I walked, but it is still lovely to feel the sand beneath my feet if not between my toes. From the (slightly confusing) path options on the map, it looks as if there is an alternative route for very high tides, but this morning multiple lines of footsteps across the sands lead to the small rocky scramble back on to the cliff top at the far side. I wonder if these are there from the day before, as I meet few people along the way.

Just a short way on is an enormous gorge in the flat grass, a rocky depression maybe 50 yards in length and almost as broad, dropping down to near sea level. I assume it is a giant blowhole from one of the sea cliffs beyond, but I cannot see the gap to the water.

Sea stacks, caves, natural arches and blow holes litter the cliff-scape. The names say it all: ‘Stack Rocks‘, ‘Stackpole Quay‘, ‘Stackpole Head‘. Many of the sea stacks are sharp pointed as if they wanted to prick the sky. The cliffs themselves are sheer, sometimes overhanging, with beaches and coves inaccessible except by serious rock climber or brave boat.  However, the ledges and fissures in the vertical cliffs and stacks are perfect for many birds.  Stackpole Head is full of morning-suited birds with white shirtfronts and black heads, backs and even beaks, I think maybe guillemots.

Sometimes it is clear that the grass is only a thin layer above solid rock, but elsewhere the cliff is topped with soft sandy earth, pock-marked with rabbit holes. It is worth keeping your distance from this clifftop; the grass-bound earth often makes shelves with no solid rock beneath to support them. As if to emphasise the harshness of nature, the path is suddenly snow-strewn with down, where some young gull chick found its place in the food chain.

A few yards from the cliff edge, metal stakes have been driven into the ground, around 20 yards apart. If they had been taller, I would have thought them abandoned fencing posts, but they sit barely a foot above the ground. Then I see a slightly larger post, but this time round section with a larger circular top, like a giant nail or pin. Suddenly, it becomes obvious.

I recall the Dysynni map, the intricacy of the work, and realise that there is a larger Pembrokeshire, and I am merely walking a miniature landscape, sewn by giants. The stakes are the pins holding together the as yet unfinished work. What seems like rock beneath my feet is but giant polystyrene foam, shaped and painted to resemble the real landscape.

Occasionally amongst the stakes are what look like upturned flowerpots; in fact I think they may be concrete moulded inside flowerpots. They have obscure markings, two say ’15’ with arrows on them pointing to each other.

I am reminded of a library lavatory I once saw. Have you noticed that library toilet graffiti is a step above the norm of football and sex? In this loo on the right-hand wall was a black dot and the words, "look left for toilet tennis".  I duly looked left and on the left wall was an identical black dot and the words "look right for toilet tennis".

I wonder if the upturned flowerpots and stakes are something to do with mapping the coast, perhaps for wildlife purposes. Maybe the giant embroidered Pembroke Coast is but a figment of my imagination, but then again I look at the flowerpots and think, ‘map pins’. (I have since been told about the true purpose of the flowerpots. This is what I was told: "Many years ago I worked for the National Trust and had the pleasure to repaint the flowerpots – a lovely spot for such work but quite exposed and it looks like they have been redone since my tenure. The relevance of them is in relation to climbing routes, specifically, which sections must not be climbed during nesting season. I can understand that they seem a bit odd to the layperson with no explanatory info but this is a technical climbing coast and known for its conservation requirements so route guides explain where to find the relevant corresponding dates/info, etc."  Well, that may be the true story, but I still believe in the giant embroiderers.)

You can take a shortcut option that bypasses the full length of Stackpole Head, but I follow the track around its perimeter including along the narrow neck of Mowing Word, which looks precipitous, but is in fact broad and safe to walk.

Turning the head, the beach of Barfundle Bay appears. You have entered civilisation: the sandy path downwards ends in stone steps and the north side of the beach is framed with a cliff-top wall and walled steps cutting diagonally across its face. It is a solid stone wall, a work of serious engineering that suggests a story of serious landownership.

As I come to the steps, three girls, I guess maybe university students on holiday, come down to enjoy their day by the sea, no matter how dismal. As I get to the top I hear whoops and shrieks as they run down the sand to paddle in the waters.

Rounding the final head towards Stackpole Quay, there is an almost magic transformation, from bare grassed clifftop to a bramble and honeysuckle lined path through rich scrubby woodland, and steps leading down with a handrail. Later I read that a fault line ("like the San Andreas, but less dangerous") runs through the bay, displacing rocks 100 metres. So maybe the dramatic change in vegetation reflects a change in underlying rock.

There is a little disappointment as the National Trust café does not do all day breakfasts, but they do serve breakfast baps with bacon, sausage or mushroom, and also, my choice, a sausage and onion bap with salad, nourishment and a few vitamins to boot.

About 50 yards up the hill behind the café is the car park with a small National Trust information booth.  The girl there tells me that the wall at Barfundle Bay is the edge of the large estate of the Cawdor family, who also had property in Scotland (I am thinking of Macbeth connections).

In its heyday Stackpole Court was an imposing mansion, dating from the 18th and early 19th centuries. From a contemporary painting in the leaflet she gave me, I count ten windows across and three storeys high in one wing alone. However, its fortunes waned in the 20th century. First large tracts of its farmland were taken for the CastleMartin firing range, reducing the viability of the estate, then the house itself was requisitioned for soldiers, during which time its lead roofing was removed. Its fabric decaying with damp and Cawdor‘s interests increasingly lying elsewhere, it fell into ruin and was demolished in 1963. However, remains of the extensive lakes, the lily ponds and grounds are still there to walk around, as are woodland and, of course, coastal walks.

It is only as I start to climb the steps out of Stackpole Quay that I see the quay itself, nestling under the southern cliff side, a small breakwater making space for at most half a dozen small fishing boats, although just one sits there today.

Beyond Stackpole Quay is another small sandy bay, and then beyond that again a rocky cove which on one side has the grey limestone (I think) that characterised the flat, grassy-topped cliffs of the CastleMartin firing range, but on its northern side is old red sandstone, with smoother edged, rounded cliffs that I am expecting to be more ‘textured’ (read up and down a lot in little valleys). I wonder if the flat table-like grassland both on the cliffs to the south and far inland is simply the flat strata of the tough limestone, or whether it is an old sea level. There is still the odd sea stack in the red sandstone to the north, but instead of the needle-sharp or vertical pillars of the limestone, these are thin, flat-topped, sheet-like structures, as if they were fancy biscuits in the ice cream of a posh restaurant.

The ground does ascend slowly but steadily as the sandstone cliffs are higher than their limestone neighbours, but only undulates gently as, with one exception, the path manages to skirt the heads of valleys and depressions rather than cut straight across them.

The wind has picked up, partly, I guess, with height, but partly a sign of changing weather, and the overcast day turns to the forecast drizzle.  I had been trying to decide whether to end the day at Freshwater East, or go on to Manorbier, but the weather is deciding it, the visibility is reducing and even the approaching beach and houses of Freshwater East are soft focused by the drizzle haze. At least the approach into Freshwater East is easy, the path looking as if it has freshly had that little bulldozer come down it, wide flat earth path, with still fresh, crumbled rock along its sides.

I know there is a beach café, so I think that maybe if I go there for a cup of tea, the weather may clear while I drink it. However, the café, part of a ‘holiday village’ or Alpine-lodge-like apartments, is clearly still operating on ‘winter times’ as it is only open for Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday lunch. This does not help with my increasingly negative feelings about the place. These are totally unfair: the campsite was understandably closed, late arrivals disturb others (although many sites do have a late-arrivals area: life is not always neatly finished at 8pm for campers); the bus actually did stop at the bottom of the hill, I needn’t have run up it; the café probably does not do much business on weekdays until the school holidays start (there are only two other cars in the beach car park); and certainly it cannot help the drizzle. However, thus are impressions formed and it remains a dismal place for me.

To be fair, Freshwater East did have one positive feature. As I came down the path towards the bay, I passed an RNLI caterpillar-tracked tractor, with a smile painted on front, just like Thomas the Tank Engine, or the characters in ‘Tootles the Taxi‘, one of my favourite Ladybird books when I was little.

the second longest day, oil and power, whisky and waves, ribs in the rock

1st July 2013

miles completed: 841
miles to go: 217

This was my longest day since the wet odyssey from Holyhead to Rhosneigr in Anglesey, but more accident or happenstance, not planned that way.

This headland was one of my logistical problems, I wasn’t sure where to stay to do it and there are few stopping places en-route. It would be easier straight B&B-ing I think, but I’d not had sufficient connectivity and time to work this out. The bus routes are good around the headland, having passed both the watershed and also the bus-shed of Cleddau Bridge, but if I park at the end at Angle West Beach (15 miles) or Freshwater West (19 miles), the first bus does not get me to Pembroke until nearly 11 am. Even the short distance seems more than enough after the late start.

So I decided to do it the other way round.  Wild camping at Freshwater West made it easy to wake early and drive to Pembroke. Food is also a problem, there is nothing between Pembroke and Angle and then I wasn’t sure what there was beyond that, although the taxi driver the night before had helped fill in some of the gaps: evidently a very nice pub at Bosherton, and cafés at some other inlets.

My food problems have been compounded by a fault in the 3-way fridge. It is working fine off the mains electric, but I can’t get the gas flame to light, so cannot keep things cold when not in a ‘proper’ site.

So I drive to Pembroke, eat marmalade sandwiches and banana for breakfast and make doorstops of tinned ham. The latter is ‘Tudor’ ham, those oval tins with a sardine-can-key to open.  We always had one of these as a ‘treat’ around Christmas time, but at no other time of the year. Thinking back, I think there were two sides to this. First, it was a dinner that required no cooking, always a plus for Mum as we had half-board lodgers through most of the year. Second, I’m sure it will have had awakened war-time memories for Mum and Dad, when tinned meat would have been a rare luxury.

So I open my tin and, as I turn the key, juices flow everywhere. Large amounts of kitchen roll blot it from the worktop and I thankfully avoid any dripping onto the carpet. Note to self, "next time open ham over sink". Slicing the ham across into quarter-inch slices gives a number of rectangular pieces that do not obviously fit well onto the curved ovoid slices of the sliced crusty bloomer that I’d bought in a five-minute shopping dash round Morrisons before 4pm Sunday closing the afternoon before. However, this is no problem, the trimmings and the large chunk left behind become part of my balanced breakfast (fruit, bread, meat, sounds healthy to me).

So, four doorstops of sandwiches in my rucksack, the van parked at the ‘commons’ car park in Pembroke (£1 the whole day), I set off, still well before 7am.

I pick up the path where I left off at the bridge beneath the castle and the first quarter of a mile follows the water around the castle, which takes me back to the road to Angle and the west, within sight of the van I’d left a short while before. The path then follows the road past a few housing estates. I meet my first and, if I recall, only person until Angle as I leave Pembroke. An old, and slightly confused seeming, lady, asked me where I was going. "Angle", I said, but while clearly local, she did not recognise Angle; I guess as a tourist you visit places that a local would never do. "I’ve seen two cyclists this morning", she told me. I felt slightly guilty as I moved on, as I felt she would like talk more, but also feared that the conversation would centre on the same few sentences.

At Quoit’s Mill the road branches inland, but a smaller road leads straight onwards down a small hill to the water side, a road that can clearly (from road sign and remnants of dried mud) be occasionally flooded by high tides. The mill itself, if it still exists, is somewhere above, and the inlet seems to be sourced from what appears to be a giant tap, its outlet a foot and half across. It would take a very large big toe to get stuck in that tap. On the roadside below the tap is a large turd-like pile of white concrete, dumped and left to harden, and high above the tap, clearly the edge of some yard, where a few vehicles are visible, and an old, battered school bus overlooks the tree-hidden stream head. Soggy springs bubble beside the road, flowing across towards the tiny tidal marsh below. I wonder if this was the original road to Hundleton, the next village west out of Pembroke, and last before the coast, but then abandoned as the current road was built higher up and drier. This tiny valley certainly has a sense of abandonment.

Eventually the road leads out and then you branch off down green lanes and field edges heading gradually towards Pembroke Power Station, its four towers standing tall and initially distant. It is my first milestone of the day, about five and a half miles from Quoits Mill.

In fact, the closest approach to the power station is a few hundred yards to the south of what, I think, is simply a huge substation with humming pylons leading to those piles of glass plates that serve as high-power insulators. I can’t recall the exact voltages for long-distance wires, 135,000 volts comes to my head, certainly enough to fry you several times over.

Fiona‘s Grandpa used to work as an engineer of some sort in the power industry, but I think the more ‘white collar’ sort. He told me of the last-ditch test they would use before touching a power line. When doing work on mains electric, an electrician will sometimes flick a power line with the back of their hand. They only do this when they are certain the power is off, as they would get a shock from this, but by using the back of the hand they would not end up grabbing the live wire if their muscles went into spasm; it is better than grabbing it and then finding out. Similarly, in the power industry they had a long pole, with a fusible piece of metal at the end and an earth strap dangling to the ground. After doing every other check that the power had been shut off to the cable, they would tentatively touch the wire. If it was live the resulting bang would probably still knock them off their feet, but better than becoming instant KFC.

As I cross the road that leads into the heart of the power station, I see the Coast Path at the opposite side, but go down the road a little to take a photograph of the entrance signs, both a simple painted one, and also one of those orange moving LED lettering ones.  A car pulls up, I guess someone just on his way to work.

He winds down his window. "Just checking you know which way to go," he says.

I assure him I do and saw the path a short way back.

I wasn’t sure if this was simply being helpful, or if he was checking I wasn’t an eco-activist about to single-handedly scale the towers and shut down the plant – honestly, sandals, beard and straggly long hair, do I look like an eco-activist?

With the power station behind me it is the tall towers and domes of the oil refinery that lie ahead. There are two sorts of towers, the tall thin towers with flames burning, which are, I believe, to vent excess gas should pressure build up anywhere, and the slightly less tall, but still very tall, distillation towers. The domes are partly large circular, dome-topped tanks and partly spheres on legs, reminding me of images from Thunderbirds … in fact I think one of the opening sequences was just such a plant exploding. I’m guessing the cylindrical tanks are for liquid, or maybe low-pressure gas, and the spheres are pressure vessels, but I don’t really know.

Before coming alongside the refinery, I pass the disused church at Pwllcrochan. I say disused, but the churchyard serves as the entrance to a community nature reserve for local children. There are no houses very close to the church and I guess much of its old parish has been buried under the refinery or power station, which sandwich it to west and east.

Some while later the path leads off the road again and goes for several miles beside chain link and razor-wire topped fences.  Initially, this offers a panoramic view of the terminal, but then the land rises and the path runs through bullock fields on the slope running down to the wide estuary. There is a very faint, acrid, chemical taste in the air.

Unlike the caged-off paths and bridges near the jetties on the north side of the estuary, the path on this side takes you past a small slipway and under the jetty with pipes that leak a faint smell of gas and petrol. I’m not sure whether the difference reflects different levels of risk; maybe refining, having less volume, is regarded a lower grade risk. Or maybe it is financial, the storage on the far side will be a free zone, so Customs need to ensure that no fuel leaves it to the black market.

As well as the pipes taking fuel out to the tanker loading far out in the water, trucks rumble out and back along the jetty. On the waterside lie new pipes, destined for repairs somewhere in the plant or jetty, and a multicoloured metal fan spreads off one working pipe, the purpose of which is a complete mystery.

Past the jetty the path runs through waterside woodland, past an old lime kiln and ruined buildings, maybe a farm that lost its lands beneath the pipes, tanks and towers of the refinery. Beyond that an old concrete path, maybe wartime, eventually leads to a wide concrete road at the end of which is another Napoleonic battery, now sprouting grass and looking empty-windowed to the tankers passing, but in its time bristling cannons warding off the feared French invasion.

Ahead is Angle Bay and directly across the village of Angle can be seen. From this direction, the view is idyllic, yachts and fishing boats in the water, with cottages and church tower beyond. Further round the headland the lifeboat station stands, its long slipway dropping into the water. Although the path along the estuary, power station and refinery has been interesting, I am looking forward to the wild edge beyond Angle. It is a couple of miles round the bay, but initially on road and then waterside path, so I hope straightforward.

By the Napoleonic fort and where the path meets the bay-side road, there is a large compound. It appears to be a generic storage area, but in the middle, in a square formation, fifteen-by-fifteen, like a Roman army gathered for battle, over 200 portaloos gather ready to be sent into action wherever required.

As I turn to walk along the bay, I at first think there is a second refinery, a huge domed tank is closest and behind that more towers, but then I realise it is just the same refinery seen from the opposite end, over an hour’s walking end to end.

Beside the path are some old wartime buildings and what looks like a back entrance to the refinery, a gate that says:

This gate to be kept clear at all times
Emergency Access

It is wide open and looks as if it hasn’t been moved for years.

Beyond this last outpost of the refinery, on the far hillside, overlooking a lonely church in the middle of deserted countryside, is a relatively modern, low building, maybe administrative offices for the refinery. The church must be the remnant of Rhoscrowther, a medieval village abandoned and demolished when the refinery was built.

Beyond that the road heads inland towards a curious area, with what look like enormous artificial grassy banks. At the time I wondered whether this was the old Second World War arms dump, but checking on the internet that appears to be RNAD Milford at Newton Noyes, north of the estuary. In fact this area seems to be the site of an old BP oil storage site, and on Google maps you can see the circular marks on the ground. The storage area served the vast refinery 60 miles away at Llandarcy near Neath.

The path does not go on through the abandoned BP site, but continues along a footpath beside the water, bolstered by small-scale shore defences that look rather like sandbags that have been filled with concrete.  After a while the path is across water-side fields, and then along a small woodland estate path, before joining a road for the last quarter mile into Angle.

Angle is strung out along a road that leads for about a mile from Angle Bay, which faces north onto the estuary, to West Angle Bay on the far side of the headland, which faces out towards the Irish Sea. The church is at the east end near Angle Bay; inside is a children’s display about Africa and in the churchyard a tiny Seaman’s Chapel. I was wondering whether the seamen weren’t allowed in the church and why, but in fact it is not about where they worshipped, but where they were buried. Under the chapel is a vault where the bodies of unknown drowned seamen were buried when they washed up on the shores.

I’d eaten breakfast at 6am, and it was very hot, so I was considering taking a break at the pub in Angle and maybe having something to eat inside to supplement my Tudor ham door-stops. However, even after visiting the church and looking at the ‘Makers of Wales’ display boards opposite (from which I learnt that seaweed is still gathered here for laverbread), it was still well before noon, and so I decided to walk round to West Angle and then come back into Angle from the far side.

The path heads off along the waterside, with the refinery across the bay, past a farmhouse with a small square tower that looks very much like the Pele Towers you see in the Borders of Cumbria. I assume that this too was defensive, but maybe from a slightly earlier period.  There is also a beautiful bench where the natural shape of the tree trunk is preserved in the seat back, and then further on a sign that reads, ‘Caution, free range children playing.’

Less than half a mile along the path is The Old Point House and it is just noon. I decide that while I’ll still wait for some lunch, a half of Felinfoel Double Dragon would do no harm. However, once inside I discover they have some special ciders, so have a half of one of those instead.

It is a lovely old inn, tiny and cool inside, but with plenty of benches for those who wish to take in the sun. According to the Guardian‘s ‘Top 10 Pembrokeshire pubs‘, The Old Point House dates back to 1500. The girl serving at the bar was clearly new and the landlord was explaining to her about the different beers and ciders, their strengths and flavours. On the wall were lots of artefacts and cuttings particularly relating to the local lifeboat and past crews; the lifeboat is based just a short way further round the headland. However, the most interesting thing was about the Welsh ‘Whisky Galore’.

On a stormy night in 1894 a schooner, the Loch Shiel, ran aground near the fort on Thorn Island. The Angle lifeboat saved all the crew, but the cargo, barrels of gunpowder and whisky, was lost. Before the revenue arrived to secure the cargo the locals had already made good attempts to salvage the barrels of whisky that were washing ashore. Of seven thousand barrels only two thousand were recovered, although many of the remainder sank or were washed away. It is probably fortunate that not all five thousand ended up in the hands of the Angle villagers. Although all the crew and passengers were saved, there were three fatalities. Two were local men who were lost at sea trying to recover floating barrels; history does not tell how much they had drunk by this point. The third man who died literally drank himself to death.

The lifeboat station is no longer the same one that saved the crew of the Loch Shiel; instead a recent box-profile steel station stands on the north tip of the Angle headland.  While the cargo is now petroleum spirit rather than whisky, the channel is no less busy with both large tankers and many small pleasure craft.

The path leads through woodland and field sides along the north side of the headland. It is midday and the flies gather in each patch of shade in the still heat. Off the north west tip is Thorn Island itself. There is no trace of the whisky-laden wreck, but divers still recover bottles from the sea floor, and say that it is drinkable … but do they declare it to the Inland Revenue?

The fort is solid, almost filling the top of the island. With the first one on the headland at Dale it would have formed a pincer grip of cannon fire for any ship to pass between. Any that did slip through would find Martello Towers in the channel ahead.

West Angle is a sandy bay facing slightly north of west across towards Dale. Cars stand in line above the sea wall while children play in the waves. I am considering walking the half-mile back up the road to the Angle pub when I see a dilapidated beach café.  Unfortunately it is not only dilapidated, but also closed. However there is a small burger and ice cream van. It is so tiny that the man inside cannot move, simply turn on the spot. In front of him is a small counter to serve and hold sauces, to his right a little freezer with ice-cream and supplies, and behind him a single gas burner. I order a burger, which he cooks in a frying pan, the burger filling the small frying pan, and the small frying pan covering the tiny stove.  The tea he makes from hot water in a flask, which I assume he fills during quiet moments between customers.

I am always fascinated by the artfulness of those working in these vans with limited space and everything exposed to sight, but this is the smallest I have seen. I ask him what happens if he needs to cook more than one burger and he explains how he part-cooks sausages and burgers when it is busy so that he can serve them quickly. It seems such a small beach, but he says he is making a living. The café has been closed for a couple of years and he filled the void, but it is due to open again next season. There is no hint of chagrin or undue concern, he seems to have a wonderfully relaxed attitude to life, clearly not a ‘sit and leave it to happen’ attitude, but more an active one that gets things done, but stays laid back.

He tells me about his son who has got a degree in some form of marine engineering, but after working on a boat for a while and not being satisfied, is now ‘in catering’ like his dad. He and his mother are running another, larger van in an industrial estate at Pembroke Dock. He tells me about their search for a suitable van, the ones that were for sale nearby were all far too expensive, but they heard about a place down south (and I mean the far south of England!) where large numbers of catering vans are bought and sold, and here they found a suitable van.

They only started the new business this season, and it takes time for this kind of business to grow as people need to find it and then return, but the customers are growing. He is obviously proud of his son, who is meticulous about the food, seeking quality suppliers, including a local butcher with prize-winning burgers … and this is the burger I am to eat, which cost me the princely sum of £2.50.

Hearing about the son’s care for detail reminded me of Alan, up on Tiree, who, with Jeanette his wife, now runs the Cobbled Cow café. Before he had the café he ran a small catering van in the car park in Scarinish. Outside the van he had small tubs of herbs from which he would take clippings to garnish even the simplest food – fresh herbs on your burger. There is a wonder and a gloriousness in this. We are used to an age of fast food and ready meals, pre-packaged, and good enough. Here is a heroism that takes care in the small things, that treats a burger with the value of a cordon bleu meal.

I had been looking forward to the shade of the caf&eacute, but instead sit with my burger and tea on the sea wall. I am still amazed that in normal life I avoid sitting or eating in the sun as I find the light too bright, but because I have to I am walking through the peak of noon. This day I sat and enjoyed the prize-winning burger and watched the waves play.

A lady in a uniform I do not recognise wanders across to look at a noticeboard. It turns out she is from the Customs … the modern version of the revenue men who tried to retrieve the whisky a hundred and ten years ago. She explains how they have to check boats even at small ports like Angle, although I think they were here at West Angle to get lunch, not in the expectation of a boat turning up. I would have liked to find out more, but she is called away by her colleague – maybe a report of a smuggler sneaking into a secret cove, or more likely a French yacht berthed at East Angle.

Rosie had warned me about the portion of coast between here and Freshwater West, the large beach three or four miles further on facing directly out into the Atlantic. She described it as ‘challenging’, but as far as I could tell she meant exhausting up-and-down challenging rather than life-threatening, blob of strawberry jam challenging.

Indeed, partway along there is a warning notice saying:

‘This is a challenging stretch of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path‘

It also says:

‘Please keep to the path and avoid the cliff edge.’

Ok, so maybe an element of strawberry jam too.

In fact, I felt safe along the route, at most there were one or two places where the edge got close, but nothing like the Fishguard–Newport stretch. However, it does have quite a lot of undulations, so you do want plenty of puff.

Along the way, there are a variety of military remains, from a ruined Medieval tower to Second World War gun batteries, the rusting mount points on dry concrete catching the essence of the sintering heat. Although Pembroke did not escape the ravages of German bombing, these shore defences, and the Napoleonic ones beyond, never saw action, the last attempt at a sea invasion being the foiled French invasion at Fishguard in 1797.

At Freshwater West you can walk the length of the beach as far as the car park at the south end. It is clear when you have got there, both by the surfers, but also the lifeguard’s hut. It was the first time I’d seen lifeguards riding quad-bikes, which they can use to rapidly drive the length of the beach should someone get into difficulties outside the designated swimming area.

It is a wonderful beach, stretching for about a mile and opening nearly due west to catch the Atlantic breakers. The north end is quiet with just the occasional person and even the ‘busy’ south end by the car park has just a few dedicated surfers and beachgoers, even on a glorious day like this. I think it gets busier at weekends, but far out at the edge of Pembroke it is never going to be a Blackpool.

It is busy enough to support a bistro-style catering van, which sold burgers, but also seafood. One of the lifeguards was there catching her lunch and recommended the mixed seafood wrap, but having had a burger at West Angle, I didn’t think I could justify it as well as my doorstops, so I settled for a bag of fries and a cup of tea.

The lifeguard and the girl serving at the stall told me how part of one of the Harry Potter films, The Deathly Hallows, had been filmed here. The lifeguard was still in school and came down to see the set, which included the shell house. She had hoped to get a part of the shell house as souvenir, but it was removed entirely, evidently just before the filming of Russell Crowe in Robin Hood.

I had a strategic decision to make.  My original plan had been to get to West Angle or to Freshwater West, and I was already at the latter, a 19-mile day so far. It was a bit after four o’clock and the bus was due sometime after five, which would take me back to the van in Pembroke. Although I’d already walked a long day, I knew that the next day was forecast for rain, so it would be worth shortening the next day by walking as far as I could on this glorious sunny afternoon. So I decided that I could walk along the road towards Castlemartin. If the bus passed before I got there I could simply flag it down, as the walkers’ buses stop anywhere.

Beyond the car park, dunes continue across the clifftops and on to Frainslake Sands.  However, this is all in the military firing range; although no shots were fired in anger from these shores during the Second World War, many have been fired in exercises since the land was taken over by the MOD at that time. The eastern end of the range is open when there is no actual firing, but the west end, near Freshwater West, is permanently closed due to the dangers of unexploded ordnance. Looking on the map, as well as the expanse of beach at Frainslake Sands, there are also many archaeological sites.

Substantial areas of the South Wales coast were, and still are, in MOD hands for firing practice and exercises, as are large tracts of the Brecon Beacons; the setting up of these often involved the complete evacuation of farming villages and the destruction of communities.  This occupation was one of the complaints of the Free Wales Army and other armed resistance groups in the 1960s.

There was no sign of firing or Welsh paramilitaries today as I walked along the road to Castlemartin. I had been told by the taxi driver that there was a new route for the Coast Path near Castlemartin, following an old tank track. He said it was possible to download a leaflet and map from the Wales Coast Path site, but my older version of the map did not show this. I could see where it branched off, but wasn’t sure enough of the route and didn’t want to miss the bus, so stayed on the road. Looking now I can see that it simply runs parallel to the road, rejoining it at Castlemartin.

I made good progress and it was still before five when I got to Castlemartin. It is little more than a hamlet, with a scattering of houses. In the middle is The Pound, an enclosure that was once used to impound straying cattle and now has been turned into a tiny community garden.

Maybe if there had been a pub here that I could have waited in I would have stopped here for the day, but there was nowhere to shelter. I had been walking for ten hours and covered twenty-two miles, but still felt strong. I had been told by the taxi driver that there was a good pub in Bosherton, or ‘Bosh’, and, although this was another six or seven miles, I was still going strong, and the path looked as if it would be easy going along roads and the clifftop path in the firing range.

In fact, I was lucky. Usually the whole firing range is closed except at weekends, but there was no firing this week, so I would be able to take the route that leads down to the sea between the west and east ranges, and then follow the clifftop from there.

I was decided, and committed myself, walking past the unoccupied sentry post and along the road, closed to normal traffic, but open as part of the Coast Path. The road was eerily empty, and I kept rough track of how far I had come by the sight of the buildings of the village of Warren to the north. On days with firing the path leads along the road through Warren, and then out past the base at Merrion Camp, but today I could walk the two miles along this road and then turn down another mile and half through the range towards the sea.

It was odd seeing signs directing tanks as to which roads they were or were not allowed to follow. I guess this is a combination of the damage caused by caterpillar tracks on ordinary road surfaces, and the need to keep relatively slow tanks separate from other vehicles. Occasionally there are buildings visible in the otherwise empty ranges, and a church tower. I think I had expected to see any remaining buildings pockmarked and shattered, but they just try to avoid hitting them during firing. The other buildings visible are various bunkers; some, I assume, for firing from.  Indeed one set looks as if they are where tanks draw up into. Others look as if they are for spotters to shelter in and then report where shots have hit.

More occasionally there are abandoned tanks or armoured cars. Again, they are not as damaged as I would expect if they were being used for target practice, so maybe they are just there to add a element of realism.

The path hits the coast by where Elegug Stacks rise guillemot-coated from the sea.  The limestone is cut and eroded into headlands and natural arches, which then collapse leaving almost impossible stacks rising from the waters. They form natural nesting sites for vast flocks of sea-birds. Evidently these stacks are named from a Welsh word for guillemot (heligog).

A little further on is Huntsman’s Leap.  I recall seeing images of this on a documentary many years ago, and always wanted to see it for real.  Instead of cutting away soft rock and leaving harder rock as a headland, a vein of softer rock has been cut away, either from the sea inwards forming a blowhole, or maybe from a sinkhole outwards; after further erosion, all the rock is removed from the exit hole to the sea, leaving a deep slit inwards towards the land.

There are signs saying not to stray from the path inland to avoid unexploded shells, but it was not clear whether you could wander and walk closer to the cliff edge. I imagined finding boots, the feet of past walkers still in them, and decided to play safe. Later, from the patterns of trodden paths I decided that in fact it was fine to stray in the sea direction with no fear of being blown up.

However, approaching Huntsman’s Leap you realise that playing safe is no bad thing.  The sea has cut a slit into the cliff so that if you walk close to the edge, the slit cuts off your path ahead. In some places the slit is quite wide and easily visible, but near the cliff edge it narrows until it is barely six feet across, however the chasm below drops 200 feet to the sea.

The story goes that a huntsman was riding along the cliff edge. His horse, seeing the gap, jumped clean over and landed safely on the other side, but, as the horse landed, the huntsman looked back, saw the chasm that he had just leapt over, and promptly died from shock.

Even after I had decided that the cliff side of the path was safe, I still kept mainly to the military path, which was either concrete or cinder, and fast walking. It was now approaching seven and I was beginning to look forward to getting back to the van.

To the inland side of the path, in the danger zone, were more occasional bunkers and an armoured troop carrier. On the seaward side of the path I passed one group of climbers, two watching from the cliff top, while their colleague, well roped, made his way down the sheer cliff, fixing protection as he went down.

As I got to St Govan’s Chapel a couple, Mark and Liana, with their black and white dog, were also making their way down the steep stone steps. Having seen the height of the cliffs earlier, I was preparing myself for a long descent and equally long ascent on the way back.  However, I was relieved that the cliff is low and the chapel about half way up.

As I look at it from above I have a feeling we visited here with the girls when we camped at Tenby many years ago. We were living in Stafford at the time and, as always, I was trying to finish various things off on the Saturday before leaving for our week’s holiday. It ended with a frantic dash across mid-Wales to try and catch the campsite reception before it closed. In the end we failed, so stayed the night in their special latecomers’ area before setting up properly the next day.  This was in our old VW camper, not the swish camper I have today. I do like having the proper toilet/shower and the extra space, but the VW was such fun!

From above it doesn’t look as if there is any access to the chapel as it fills the narrow gap between the cliffs and all you can see is its roof. However, as you get to it, there are steps running down to a low arched entrance. You enter on the landward side of the chapel, and then go out the other side to go down to the sea.

The story goes that St Govan was threatened by marauding Irish pirates. He prayed and a fissure opened in the cliff, which then closed round him, hiding him from the murderous raiders. The chapel was built around the fissure, which I assume had reopened after the Vikings left, and the marks of Govan‘s ribs can be seen moulded into the solid rock.

Below the chapel is what appears to be another tiny building. Mark and Liana had read a guidebook that said it is a tiny hermit cell (Wikipedia says a Holy Well), but with an entrance just knee high I reckon it can only be one thing, the chapel for St Govan‘s dog.

I chat for a long time with Liana while Mark meditates in the chapel. As we all climb back up to the clifftop and the car park, I tentatively ask whether they can take me as far as Bosherton. If you are walking during firing times, the path comes down the road past it, but on the cliffside route it is bypassed entirely and I would have had to walk another mile off track.

They drop me at St Govan’s Inn and I ask for a pint and a phone … I have to get things in priority order, and I start to write about the day so that as I finish my pint the taxi arrives to take me back to Pembroke and the van.

This time I give the five-minute Indian a miss and instead get a Szechuan Beef from the Chinese by the car park. I make my way to Freshwater East, which will be my destination for the next day, but the caravan site is closed and doesn’t have a late arrivals area, so I end up driving back at the car park at Freshwater West to eat gazing out over the wild dark sea.