This was a very straightforward walking day along cliff paths, what I envisaged the Coast Path would be like. The Ceredigion Coast Path opened in 2008, well before the Wales Coast Path was conceived, and has been very well planned, laid out and signposted.  I’m sure the Pembrokeshire Coast Path will be equally good, so I am expecting, not necessarily the very last time I will get lost en route, but certainly a long respite from that "will it be there or won’t it" feeling about the path that was so dispiriting on earlier stretches.

The path goes over the lovely wooden arch footbridge across the river and upper harbour, then skirts the harbour along the back of brightly painted cottages and in front of the classic Georgian Terrace, until it hits the sea at the Harbourmaster’s office and Yacht Club, very much a low-key and working building, no Pimms, just a small beach café.

Then along a pebbly beach and up the first climb of the day, to the top of the cliff where the undulating coast opens up ahead, New Quay, where I was looking forward to a breakfast at a café on the quayside, clearly ahead.

From a distance, it looks like someone has pushed a thumb down in the middle of New Quay; it is nestled in the north side of a headland, and the rows of houses all slope down at angles towards the harbour in the centre, as if they had once been parallel streets running along the hillside and then gradually slid or been tugged down rather like the ruffles in an evening gown.

However, while looking close across the sea, it was still six hours distant.

The path leads over several streams, each with a small wooden bridge (courtesy Ceredigion Coast Path), and often the sound or sight of the waters tumbling down the cliff side to the sea below.

Approaching New Quay there is a very small inland detour to go round a caravan site, before cutting back down a wooded path to the beach. You pass the footpath leading to St Ina’s Church.  As it was a nearly 20-mile day and breakfast at New Quay beckoned, I did not visit, but did see a notice asking visitors to go to the church and paint a bird. The pictures are then going to be curated by a local artist, Philippa Sibert, into an exhibition for the Ceredigion Art Trail in August.

At low water you can then walk all the way across the beach to New Quay, but as the tide was half in I needed to take the steps up to the road. I asked some local dog walkers on the beach, they told me about the two sets of steps to avoid going through the caravan site, but I mistook what they said and took the first sets of steps up (which looks as though it is skirting round the site), rather than the second set (which looks as if it is going into the heart of the site). In fact, it is the other way round! However, after seeking directions from one of the caravan owners, I managed to find my way out of the labyrinthine site.

Following the road down into New Quay there is a small community wood where the path I should have taken joins the road, and then an alley cuts down towards the sea. There are various steps that then lead down to the sea itself, I took one that runs beside the lifeboat station, but this and others might not connect at high tide, so the formal path stays higher.

And then breakfast at the Old Watch House Restaurant on the quay.

I recall visiting New Quay twice with the girls. Esther loved dolphins and on our first visit to New Quay we walked up the cliff road and then stood for half an hour watching them frolic in the bay. It was a hot day and, when the dolphins eventually moved away, we had ice cream on the quay. However, the other time was colder and with no immediate sign of activity, we retired to this same café to watch through its windows looking over the sea.

I spotted no dolphins, but had a good ‘big breakfast’ to set me up for the day – no Snickers this day.

In the tourist office the girl serving had walked the Ceredigion Coast Path and also the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. She warned me that while well signposted, she had occasionally become confused in Pembroke by the numerous circular walks based around the Coast Path.  Remembering the time when I accidentally followed such a circular walk on Offa’s Dyke, went a mile off track downhill, and then had to climb back up again, I make a mental note to be more vigilant in Pembroke.

The cliff road south out of New Quay leads only to the fish factory, out of sight beyond the headland. The houses that line it, overlooking the sea and town, each front onto the small road, and then have a garden opposite the road on the top of the cliff. Some have been paved as parking, but some have decking, half glazed panels, deck chairs and barbecues, to enjoy the views. At the very last house there is a substantial barbecue and in a sort of half hut, sheltered on one side, but on the other open, looking out along the road and towards the town, a couple eating breakfast. Patrick and Brenda tell me that they live part of the year here and part in their other home in the borders. When here they clearly make the most of the morning sun and sea views.

Out of New Quay, the path cuts up a quarry behind the fish factory. Mostly it is climbing on broken stone, but partway up where smooth rock breaks to the surface, a short run of four steps have been cut out of the rock. Then on up, more steps between the different layers of streets until, a last flight of earthy steps takes you to the cliff tops.

I meet a couple on their way to Bird Rock (as it says, a rock that the birds nest on), about a mile along the clifftop, where you can watch the birds from a clifftop observation hut. They ask about flatter routes back into New Quay and we look out alternatives on the map. The lady is overweight but of the healthy and certainly up-for-a-walk kind, however the steps are a little much for them both. She is precisely the sort of person that the government would like to encourage outdoors. Clearly the Coast Path in this area will, by the nature of the ground, be challenging, and every route out of New Quay is quite steep, but there is certainly a need for routes and labelling of routes that allows the not so intrepid to walk with confidence.

The way then is relaxed until it drops into Cwmtydu where a small river, the Afon Fynnon Ddewi, joins the sea at a small sandy beach with a car park and lime kiln. I knew it was common to find lime kilns near the sea, but hadn’t realised that this was because the lime was landed on the beach and then burned there to make fertiliser to take further inland.

There is the Terrace Café, which sells ice creams, cakes and teas. Even though I had not long had breakfast, it seemed churlish to pass by. There was a closed restaurant and bar next door, which everyone seems to remember from when it sold carpets before it was a bar. Evidently it needs complete gutting, as there is asbestos throughout its construction.

This is exactly the kind of small teashop that I had expected to see along the coast. I asked about regulations and the owner said this hadn’t been a problem. There is a picture of her and her husband on the wall, somewhat younger than now, and in chef’s clothes. I ask her husband and he says that they have worked together in the catering industry virtually all their lives. So, maybe, used to the rules and regulations governing larger premises, they do not find those of a small place as difficult as a novice would.

After Cmtydu the Coast Path has two alternative routes, one inland and one along the cliffs.  A notice at the branch (and yes, compared to parts of the route earlier they sign BOTH alternatives) shows a map and warns that the four and half miles to Llangrannog are steep, exposed and deeply cut into cliffs, with few escape routes should the going get tough.  Rosie had mentioned this part to me.

I decide to risk the steep and exposed route, but it is actually not at all scary. Well, let me retract a little. In rock climbing, they rate routes independently by (a) the technical difficulty of the climb, and (b) the danger involved – how large a matchbox you need to scrape the remains into should you fall.

The section of the path cut into the cliffs is never narrower than four or five feet, with a rocky path to walk on and about two feet of grass before the edge.  However, the land below slopes at something between 75 and 80 degrees before it goes over vertical rocky cliffs.  In some places this is gorse and bramble covered, so a fall would leave you prickled and cut, but would be broken well before you were in serious danger. However, there is a short stretch with just a short, steep, grassy slope before the cliff and so only the possibility of grasping at grass stalks before a hundred feet or two to rocks below.

You would need to work really hard to trip so badly to take you over the cliff, but if you did, you would be unlikely to survive. I wonder if Arry slowed as she ran this part.

So difficulty score low, but danger score very high.

The path eases as it passes the Urdd centre.  Urdd Gobaith Cymru is the Welsh youth society for promoting Welsh language and culture and I went to a camp here when I was eleven. In those days we slept in tents, but of a superior permanent camp variety with bunks inside. Now there are posh residential blocks, a dry ski slope and kart track. As I pass by, a group of children are on a green artificial slope beside the ski slope dampened by water jets, where they are climbing up and then tobogganing down, screaming all the way, on what appear to be giant, round, plastic tea-trays.

Just before Llangrannog is a long headland jutting out to sea, clearly good fishing grounds from the cluster around it. At the land-end of this is a large rounded and flat-topped hill, which was both a Neolithic and Bronze Age hill fort. Together, the rounded flat-topped hill and long thin headland are also known as Pen y Badell, the ‘upturned saucepan’

Dropping down the last path into Llangrannog I meet two ladies sitting on a bench.

"As you are travelling," one of the women asks me, "have you met many people who will not use technology at all?"

"A few", I reply.

"Well, I’m thinking of one woman in my village," she continues. The woman in question is a bastion of the community, the sort of person you need to have supporting you if you want things done, and who gets things done. Only she will not have computers in the village hall.

"She says that like slow food, the old ways are coming back, and it will be the same with the internet," I am told, "She doesn’t even have duvets in the house, just old blankets."

I have some sympathy for the technophobe lady, and guess that being the person who is the fixer, the prime mover, the one who is always in charge, she is nervous of things that she doesn’t understand and might make her look less capable. I wonder how to address someone like this, to make the technology less frightening, as it is these core people who make things happen.

The lady I’m talking to, although, I’d guess, in her later sixties (she described the techophobe as "she’s 65, still young"), has no such worries and we talked about mobile phones.

"Orange is best here," she said, and as if to prove it her phone rang twice during the short conversation. "My daughter’s phone is different, works in Cardiff, but not here, when she is here I have to email her, that works but not voice."

Looking at her own superior Orange phone I ask, "do you have 3G here?"

"Oh no," she answers, "only in Cardiff."

A few yards further on I meet another couple walking up and chat to the man until he too is interrupted by his telephone ringing.

By this time, it is four o’clock, so no longer time for a drink at Llangrannog.  I add it to my ‘must visit again’ list and press on.

The portion of Offa’s Dyke Path north of Knighton is known as ‘The Switchback‘, but I can think of no better title for the Coast Path between Llangrannog and Penbryn. The path keeps dropping steeply down one little valley only to climb just as steeply up the next. The last climb is up a grassy slope and at the top a couple are sitting with their dog between them.

"A bit bumpy", I say.

"They add those specially for the Tourist," the man replies, what I at first took to be his cigarette smoking between his fingers.

Now I don’t know my smoking substances, but the ‘cigarette’ was like none I’d seen before. It started the width of a normal cigarette and then had a wider stubby cylindrical section, the size of a party popper, before shrinking once more to normal cigarette dimensions.

Is this some sort of device for filtering out some of the noxious elements in the cigarette smoke?  Or was he smoking something that was not tobacco?

The path at Penbryn cuts inland slightly in order to cut a better path back up the hill opposite (the switchback does not stop entirely at Penbryn!).  The small river that has cut the valley is set in a wood that feels like as if it is from the set of a Tarzan movie: huge ferns carpet the floor of a damp valley deeply shaded by moss-drenched trees and surrounded by birdsong. The path cuts steeply up the Amazonian hillside and eventually breaks out into the cliffside; I emerge blinking like coming out through the cinema doors and finding it is still daylight outside.

From then on it is just a short and relatively flat cliff walk until the path drops into Tresaith, with a small sandy beach and then back up to low cliffs with caravan parks behind.

This last stretch of cliff between Tresaith and Aberporth is the land of the forgotten railway, with at least three converted railway carriages along the way. My favourite is the least converted one, in colours of dull cream and muddy red-brown.

And into Aberporth, where we once looked at houses before our move to Tiree.  It seemed a lovely place then, with small sandy beaches and just a homely air. Today I went to the Ship Inn, to enquire about buses and take a pint while I waited. One of the regulars noticed my banner and when he read the leaflet said "well, if you want to know stories, you’ll need to stay longer". Sadly the last bus was in fifteen minutes, but it was one of those places where you feel instantly welcome.

Really, as it says on the can, a day spent at Aberaeron trying to catch up a bit, and make the most of the WiFi and the Monachty, the pub overlooking the footbridge over the harbour. I did some writing, but about half the day I spent sorting receipts and failing to find them all, as I urgently need to do claims for CHI and other work trips back in April.

It is harder to see Aberaeron than some places because I already know it well. We never spent any protracted period here, but several times visited with children in our old VW campervan, and, after they had grown up, I stayed here with Fiona in our Transit-based campervan.  In recent years, when I’ve been staying at Birmingham over a weekend, I have occasionally ‘popped’ over for a night or two at a weekend – living on Tiree, a day and a half’s travel from Birmingham, the three and a half hour drive over the Welsh mountains feels like an evening jaunt.

We have always stayed at the Aeron Coast Caravan Park, which is just at the edge of the town, though never more than two or three nights, so it is familiar: the walk along the prom and quayside from campsite to town; the wonderful New Celtic Restaurant – fish and chip shop, ice cream, breakfasts and meals as well; the Hive on the Quay – fishmonger, restaurant and seller of honey ice cream; and the little craft village on the edge of town.

Aberaeron‘s beaches are all stony, the only real sand is the silt river sand in the harbour at low tide. So this is not bucket and spade seaside, but is a popular tourist site, not least because of the picture postcard lines of Georgian houses overlooking the harbour.  A peek at the prices in the local estate agents will tell you that when one of these prime properties comes on the market, the price is not aimed at local fishermen.

The harbour that was once a major 19th century port is now filled with yachts and pleasure craft, mixed amongst the small fishing boats. From the size of the boats I assume the fishing is mostly shellfish, lobster, crabs, maybe shrimp, rather as on Tiree. However, the yachts are not overwhelming, or as densely packed as in some places, I guess the combination of the drive over the mountains, and the port opening directly into the Irish Sea does not attract the casual yuppie weekend yachtsman in the way the Solent or even the Menai Straits do.  Instead, the yachts are often homely, slightly weatherbeaten, not cocktail bars on water straight from the boat show, but real craft that have seen the sea.

The visitors are clearly expected to be cultured as one of the major signpostings in the town is the Dylan Thomas Trail around the town, as he used to regularly visit Aberaeron, which he described as ‘the most precious place in the world‘. I hadn’t been expecting to see much about Dylan Thomas until I got to Laugharne.  In fact, I have learnt there are Dylan Thomas Trails across South and West Wales, although the Aberaeron part has not yet made it to the official Dylan Thomas web site’s West Wales Trail 🙁

However, neither tourists nor yachtsmen dominate the town. Even in mid-summer, you are as likely to hear Welsh as English, albeit with the odd Eastern European accent serving you.

This is still, as it was in days gone by, a market town. No out of town supermarket, or New Look, but a mix of food shops and bit-of-everything for home and farm, serving local villages of a small catchment area. It is only half an hour to Aberystwyth and Morrisons (labelled like a town of its own on the bus timetables), so probably not the place for a monthly stock-up, nor the ‘pop in for a tin of beans’ of the village shop, but more a weekly shopping and natter with friends in a tea shop place.

But inflation has hit Aberaeron, the pound shop is now a £1.20 shop.

I had ‘wild camped’ in Aberystwyth to get an early start. By ‘wild camped’, I mean there is a stretch of the seafront where campervans are tolerated to stay overnight, indeed some have levelling chocks under their wheels. Sitting under the castle, the wild camp is actually on the Coast Path.

The Coast Path leads past the quayside, and up a narrow alley and steps behind the ‘Rumours’ bar.  Beware, these are slippery when wet; I slid down on my way to collect the van at the end of the day, painful enough, but probably would have been worse without the rucksack to break my fall.

The path then leads to the bridge over Afon Rheidol, and partway across is a plaque commemorating one of the early events of the Welsh language movement:

On this Bridge Cymdeith Yr Iaith Gymraig
held its first non violent protest for equality
for the Welsh language,
Saturday 2nd February 1963.

I had driven this way many times before, but never seen the plaque until now, walking across.  However, walking the Coast Path I will miss the more famous sign of Welsh nationalism.  Driving out of Aberystwyth, a few miles along the road towards Llanrhystud, there is a red painted rock bearing the words:

Cofiwch Dryweryn

I had seen this many times, but only realised a few years ago that this was a memorial to the drowning of the village of Capel Celyn and then Trweryn Valley to provide water for Liverpool‘s growing 1960s industry. The words on the rock translate, ‘Remember Trweryn‘.  Reading Roy Clews‘ ‘To Dream of Freedom, I’m learning a little more of the events of the time, some sad, some amusing. There were major protests at the official opening ceremony of the Trweryn Dam in 1965, but one group of hardcore nationalists did not take part, not for ideological reasons, nor because they were intercepted by Special Branch, but because they missed the bus.

Back to the bridge and the Welsh language movement.  Nowadays every road sign in Wales is bilingual, but it was not always that way. As a child in the 1960s everything official was in English only, despite the fact that Welsh was the majority language in many counties of Wales.  Indeed, from Llŷn down the Gwynedd coast, in every pub, café or shop, if you listen to the locals speaking it is nearly always in Welsh.

There were already some changes, even by that point, and in school I had token Welsh lessons, but if I had been in many schools 50 years earlier, I would have been punished for speaking Welsh at all.

However, it was the non-violent protests of the Welsh language movement, given extra impetus by the common anger at Treweryn, that changed the typographic landscape of Wales as dramatically as the dam changed the topographic landscape of Treweryn.

Back to the sea, Afon Ystwyth, after which the town is named (Aberystwyth = ‘Mouth of the Ystwyth‘), comes into the harbour, just behind the southern harbour wall. It runs parallel to the sea for a while, separated by a spit of large fist- to football-sized pebbles.  It looks, as a notice admits, a barren and lifeless environment, but is in fact a rich ecosystem and SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) where {{ringed plovers nest and there is a prostrate blackthorn believed to be 200 years old.

At the end of the shingle beach the path cuts steeply up as the cliffs rise and start their long undulating journey south. The land of long sand beaches is giving way to a coast of cliffs and rocky coves.

Over the clifftop ahead I see two birds of prey, split-tailed, a brown fleck on their breasts and wings hooked back like Stukas poised to strike. They wheel and glide, their wing edges split shaggily to catch each breath of air, then, perhaps because they sense my presence, fly off inland.

A short while later I find a trail of feathers leading under a gorse bush, softer down on the far side. Was this the last struggle of a gull chick, torn from its cliff nest, then dragged in talons, like meat on a hook, to the waiting raptor brood. I imagine the parent gulls, returning to find their season’s effort squandered, their choking gullets filled with now unneeded fish, which were themselves once spawned, each another fish’s child.

Later in the day I saw another similar wheeling bird and realised the Stuka-like wings were due to a white bar under each wing, which against the sky, gave them their hooked appearance.  So, I think red kites hunting along the shore … and the red kite is a symbol of the Welsh language, so fitting.

Feeding on a cereal bar and later a Snickers, I was hoping to get a breakfast at Llanrhystud, the first village the path goes through south of Aberystwyth, although it is a good ten miles distant. However, much closer the cliffs drop down into a wide valley and a large caravan site. I can see a substantial building and wonder if the clubhouse serves non-residents; perhaps I can get my breakfast earlier than midday. But the path gives the caravan site a wide berth to the landward side; clearly the caravan site does not want walkers anywhere near their land. This does seem short-sighted; either there will be so few walkers that they will not cause any nuisance, or sufficient that there is a business opportunity.

In fact, when I get to Llanrhystud, the path up to the village runs through a caravan site and past its clubhouse, which very clearly said ‘All Welcome’. However, I’d already asked a lady walking her dog, and she had told me there was a pub in the village where I could get food, so I headed on to that. I never did get to the pub, as where the path meets the main road there is a garage, shop and café, of the all day breakfast kind, where I stopped to write about the birds of prey and wrote my first poetry of the journey, “Rock“.

As the path rejoins the sea out of Llanrhystud, it meets a pebbly beach, where the deep rumble of wave on stone sounds like a heavy train passing in a distant tunnel. I am guessing the pebbles were transported here as sea defence to protect the low-lying farmland behind.

Anglers huddle down against the light rain, and anglers’ families huddle down beside them.

After a while the land rises once more, but only slightly, an earthy sea cliff rising a mere twenty feet or so above the waves. I see signs of sea defences, piles driven into the gravelly beach below. I understand the reason to put dykes around farmland, but here, to slow the erosion of the cliff edge, it seemed futile, and nowadays the eventual loss of land is accepted. Maybe one day the once drained low-lying farmland will also need to be ceded to the sea like the Lost Cantrefs of old.

Coming into Llansangffraid, where the church has a slate tiled wall on its east side, there are two alternatives for the Coast Path: one along the beach, and the other inland through Llannon. The notice says that the former may be impassable after wet weather, and the impassable point is where the river meets the sea at the far end from me. It also mentions shops and food in Llannon. I opt for the lower risk strategy and head inland; it is all on roads, so albeit a little longer in distance, it will probably be no longer in time.

Going through the village I spot only a butcher and music teacher. To get to the food and shops you need to go into the village and then turn back along the road in the Aberystwyth direction. Having eaten a little earlier, it didn’t matter to me, but if I had needed food, I would have had to backtrack when I got to the end of the village.

There is a small estate being built where I expect the path to lie, but just before the estate is a footpath. In fact if I had waited there is a Coast Path signpost at the entrance of the road into the estate, but unsure whether the new estate has disrupted the coastal path route I follow the footpath, down beside the stream and behind the estate.

The fences of the new houses back onto the stream and I notice one of them has sacking hung down the banks. The banks of the stream are simply earth, and the fence is built on the outside of a bend, it will eventually erode, the sacking a vain attempt to hold back the inevitable. Sooner or later earth bank, garden fence and flower bed will fall into the waters. Thinking about the large tracts of housing on floodplains around the UK, now at risk with a changing climate, maybe some basic hydrology would be worthwhile in architecture courses.

The estate itself consists of pastel-coloured houses with what the estate agent described as ‘Georgian style windows and decorative bandings’; the former meant lots of square glass panels, and the latter mock stonework around windows and doorways. However, the dimensions for the windows were anything but Georgian: instead of the tall airy windows, these were short and squat, more like cottage windows than the Georgian townhouses the buildings were meant to emulate.

I thought the designers clearly knew as much about architecture as they did about river flows.

However, my judgement was, perhaps, a little premature. Later, on the approach into Aberaeron, the first terrace of houses are classic Georgian, similar colourings, and the characteristic tall windows of the period, but down the back streets, near the quay, there is a run of smaller cottages, which are Georgian in general appearance, but have squat cottage-style windows almost identical to the Llannon estate.  Then as now, glass was probably more expensive than brickwork, so, at the risk of mixing a metaphor, you cut your cloth.

Returning to the coast, I see that the river would have been passable, it cuts a path through the pebbles, but has stepping-stones over it. However, I think the path literally cuts around the pebble beach, so would have been heavy going. Later, at the second-hand bookshop in Aberaeron, I hear what I think is the story for this stretch of the path. There had been a path on the top of the small grassy bank above the sea, but it was eroding and parts of the path falling into the sea. The owner of the land, a hotelkeeper, asked the council to share the costs of repairing the path, but they refused. Later when the Ceridigion Coast Path and later the Wales Coast Path sought to take more of the hotel’s land to reinstate the grassy path, the owner, not unreasonably, said "no".

After this the path rises over another hilly section, but simply higher earthy rock, not like the hard black, up-ended strata around Aberystwyth. These cliffs are unstable, and every so often you can see where a fence has had to be remade, extending in a rough inland arc around a crumbled gulley, sometimes with the remains of old posts and barbed wire dangling down into the abyss.

Along the way there are frequent signs that say ‘cliffs can kill’, and remind you to stay on the path.  They are dangerous both above, where the cliff edge is often unstable, and even more so below. I recall a year or so back a girl was killed by the South Coast Path when, after heavy rain, a portion of cliff, not unlike this, collapsed, burying her.

Turning a bend I could see down the cliffside and about six feet down, on a ledge barely the size of a table, were a sheep and a lamb. The sheep was lying down and at first I thought injured or dead, but later stood up. On the clifftop a lamb grazed on the cliff side of the fence and too late I realised I should have taken a wider path around as, on seeing me, it too jumped down the cliff to join its mother and sibling.

Although I have many photos of cliffs and sheep, I note I have none of this sheep, I guess I was too worried about it; clearly I lack the journalist’s instinct.

The only thing I could think of was to find a pub or shop in the next village, Aberarth, which was just a half mile on, and pass on a message for the farmer; I was worried that the sheep would not be noticed as it was not making any noise and only noticeable from particular angles. I couldn’t imagine how the farmer would get it up without the sheep panicking and leaping down to its death, most probably taking the farmer with it.

In Aberarth, I passed by the footbridge and went on to the main road and the road bridge, thinking I would find something there, but, whether there is a pub out of sight or Aberarth is too close to Aberaeron so doesn’t have one of its own, I certainly couldn’t spot one.  With nothing else I could do I set off down the street towards the sea and then spotted a man coming out of a house.

"Are you a knowledgeable man?", I said.

"I am," he replied (they don’t normally say that!).

I told him about the sheep.

"Oh, they are always doing that, its a mystery how they get there, it is fenced off and blocked at each end, maybe they get up from the beach, winter and summer. The farmer knows about it."

What had seemed to me a major rescue operation requiring at least the Fire Service, if not Mountain Rescue and Prince William in a Sea King helicopter, turns out to be everyday routine for the Welsh sheep farmer.

The final walk into Aberaeron is uneventful and eventually I am walking along streets I know well and not least the Bookworm bookshop, where I buy a map and learn about the hotelkeeper’s struggles with the council over the Coast Path, and am warned to take care on the Aberaeron to New Quay section, as it is slippery after rain.

I talk with the shopkeeper about the problems of having the Coast Path through your land. Most walkers will be careful with gates, but of course it is the small proportion who aren’t who cause problems. She has a friend who has valuable horses, but finds that the gates through the land are sometimes left ajar, or dangerous litter dropped in the fields.

I wonder whether it would be possible to in some way compensate those who have footpaths through their land. Actual payments would not be possible in straitened times, but as the presence of public footpaths effectively reduces the amenity of the ownership of the land, it would seem fair to have some sort of formulaic reduction in the rateable value of the land, reducing the council taxes paid. By not being taxed and then paid, this would not increase headline public spending …, although of course would be effectively the same. It is crazy, but a part of current politics and economics, that key metrics are more important than the real underlying economy. If a privatised company borrows, it is financing growth, but if a nationally owned body does exactly the same it contributes to government deficit. The impact on the economy is, in real terms, equal, but by changing the key indicators it may affect exchange rates, and credit ratings. As I said, crazy.

And, for this day, it only remained to wait for the infrequent Sunday bus to Aberystwyth, slip down the steps there on the way back to the van, and then sore-bottomed, drive the van back to the Aeron Coast Caravan Park to spend the night.

The path out of Machynlleth goes up the Roman Steps.  Given the ‘Roman Road‘ out of Aberdyfi is actually an early 19th century failed turnpike, I reserve judgement. The first section has concrete steps, reinforcing my scepticism, but then it turns into stone steps cut from the raw rock, but smoothed over many, many years. As I climb higher and the path flattens, it is still rock underfoot, and along the side, where tree roots leave a gap in the vegetation beside the path, it is clear that the grain of the rock lies upwards, the flat path and worn steps have been hewn with great effort.

Just as the day before, the road cuts directly along the estuary-side to the sea, but the coastal path has to cut inland over hills and up and down the valleys that feed into the Dyfi. However, it is clearly marked and mostly leads along lanes or forest paths, so is easy to follow.

As the path leads down the Llyfnant Valley, I follow what at first seems to be a rough leaf- and mud-floored forest track.  However, as I look over the edge towards the river breaking in small cataracts below, I realise that there is a retaining wall, and that under the layer of leaves it is, in fact, like the Roman Steps, cut from the solid rock. Maybe this was a major route in the days before agricultural drainage and engineering advances made the current riverside road possible.  Or maybe it is a far older route.

The last section before the path heads towards the coast is from above Furnace to Tre’r-ddol.  This is mostly not marked as footpath on my 25,000 map, so must have been agreed and marked out specially for the Coast Path. There are many new kissing gates, and also – hushed silence – quite a few tall white-topped poles to help you find your way. Again, I saw no sign of the world ending or civilisation falling into ruin.

At Tre’r-ddol I was hoping to find a pub or café, and indeed found Siop Cynfelyn, a community shop and café. It has only been open six weeks, I feel so privileged to eat there :-).

At the next table a man has a t-shirt saying “Urban Saints” I wondered if it was a pop group or something, but he said that it is the new name for what used to be called ‘Crusaders‘.  I think the Crusades will maybe be reviewed more positively in the future, but for the time being I can see that ‘Crusader‘ is not the best image.

He tells me about the village where he lives, near Bala. The shop, post office and pub had closed and it seemed the heart had been taken away from the community.  However, they applied for funding from the Welsh Assembly and other bodies for a new community hall. Now many new activities are starting because there is now place to meet.

However, I also recall Eban saying that in his village, near Caernarfon I think, there was a similar story, people got together around creating a new village hall, which is hardly used.

The difference may be because the Urban Saints‘ village is more isolated, whereas Eban‘s village has easy links to Bangor and Caernarfon, where many people also work, and so their focus is elsewhere and not the village.

And I almost forgot to say, the shop has a small secondhand book shelf, so my pack was made heavier by:

Tony Hawks, Round Ireland with a Fridge, Ebury Press, 1998

Simon Winchester, The Map that Changed the World, Penguin, 2001

Alise Warrender, An Accidental Jubilee, Stone Trough Books, 2012

Alan Jenkins, The Drift, Chatto Poetry, 2000

The Coast Path from Tre’r-ddol to Borth follows the main road for about half a mile and then goes along a dyke, emerging in the middle of Borth. However, this misses nearly two miles of beach. So instead I take the car route to Borth out of Tre’r-ddol. This leads along a B-road, which may be more busy in mid-season, but is certainly not so now. This is a longer route than the official path as it swings further north, but hits the coast nearly two miles north. The road itself swings round and follows the coast with a golf course between, but at the point at which it swings round to track the coast there is a bridleway leading to the beach.

At high tide one would either have to (a) balance on the sea wall, (b) walk over the piled pebbles at the top of the beach, (c) walk along the edge of the golf course and risk being told off, or (d) go back to the road. Happily, the tide is low, so I walk along the beach, stepping over groynes periodically.

It is glorious, the wind is beginning to pick up, so it has that excited wildness of winter sea, but not so cold!

I recall the first time I visited Borth, thinking it was nice enough, but very run down.  Nowadays, there seems to be a slightly bohemian side with the odd gallery alongside the fish and chip shops and amusement arcade, not to mention  kite surfers.  Incidentally, the official Coast Path emerges from an alley beside the amusement arcade. I feel there is some sort of message there.

The housing is quaint without being whimsical, tiny cottages cheek by jowl with still small, but more substantial houses.  At the north end of the prom there is a terrace of three-storey Victorian houses painted in those nursery colours and in the road leading to the station a glorious terrace of rainbow-painted houses, with tiny pillars supporting their upper bays.

The wind picks up further as I continue the five miles on to Aberystwyth. The path runs along the clifftop the entire way. Being a cliff path it goes up and down a lot as it descends and then climbs back out of various coves or where streams cut tiny valleys, but it is easy ‘Sunday afternoon’ walking. The wind lashes the waves in the rocks below.

The rock strata are almost vertical with one cliff face riven almost completely along the strata line, leaving it sheer and smooth like a giant child’s slide.  Where the vertical strata have been sliced off by the sea, the black parallel lines poking through the sand are like the carbonised pages of a burnt book.

Just a mile or so before Aberystwyth is the caravan settlement of Clarach Bay, complete with its own mini-funfair. The dodgems are still and the hot dog stand closed, as the wind whips sand and dust off the beach, stinging eyes and legs.

Another short cliff stretch takes you above Aberystwyth, but, oh, how are the mighty fallen. The pride of Aberystwyth, maybe slightly behind the University, which was created from public subscriptions, is the Camera Obscura, reached by the funicular railway, but the first glimpse of the octagonal building says ‘Camera Obscura‘ on one side, and ‘Frizbee Golf‘ on another. However, earlier along the path an empty can was taped into a post with a notice, ‘pinhole camera, please do not touch’; the love of optics has not died.

On the train back to Machynlleth to pick up the van, I sit opposite a woman and her grown-up daughter. They will miss the last train on to Newtown, where they live, as, in the words of the daughter over the phone as she tried to arrange a lift, "My mum was pissed and forgot her bag so we had to go back for it. When we got back to the station the train was just pulling out".

To be fair on the mother she didn’t seem that inebriated, but the most amusing phone conversation was to someone, I’d guess her son, who had arrived at the home to find them away and it locked. "Go to your dad’s", she said, "don’t break the window," and then a few moments later, "no, don’t break the window."  Later in the journey, the daughter takes a call and three times in as many minutes she says, "don’t break the window."

I will never know whether the house was intact when they returned.

As I walked the extra mile yesterday (well four extra miles) to Aberdyfi, this is a short day, just twelve miles. It is also an inland day, as the path wends its way up the Dyfi valley to the first road bridge at Machynlleth.

As I got off the train in Aberdyfi, a crowd of young children, maybe 5-year-olds, with parents, disembark and crocodile file towards the town.  They have come all the way from Telford, a long journey for little children. It is looking pretty dismal at present, "I hope you get some good weather during the day," I say to one of the mothers, "although the children will like it whatever, I’m sure."  "At least it will be a quiet journey back," she says, and I wonder what the journey out has been like.

Wandering along the promenade I see the Lifeboat Station open, and a portion of a huge caterpillar track tractor for dragging the inshore boat in and out of the water. One of the lifeboatmen standing around invites me in to see closer. He and all the lifeboat crews are volunteers, regularly risking their lives, for no reward beyond knowing they have done something for others.

With the lifeboat and tractor, the lifeboat station has hardly room to move. However, it is soon to be extended so that the tractor will sit in the new half and the boat in this half. As well as giving the crew more room to move it will mean they have more room for visitors. I mention the new station at Moelfre, with its planned visitor gallery. Obviously Anglesey is far enough from here that news does not travel, as he didn’t know about the rebuilding at Moelfre, but had seen similar stations elsewhere.

While we chat, another lifeboatman gets in the tractor and drags the lifeboat towards the entrance, making a large area behind, into which a caterpillar of bedraggled Telford children trail to eat their packed sandwiches in the dry. While I was inside the heavens have opened, as if all the seas have been sucked up and dropped in one go.

At the tourist board I chat to the young man who had directed me to the bus the day before. He has the most enormous Welsh dictionary, but sadly no copies for sale! However, I do buy ‘To Dream of Freedom‘, a book about the Free Wales Army, as I only have a sketchy idea of the events of the 1960s when Welsh and Scottish armed resistance grew alongside the peaceful protest movements and political parties.

I had also briefly thumbed through a short booklet about the Aberdyfi Literary Institute, and had almost forgotten, until a few hundred yards on from the Tourist Information Centre I see the Literary Institute itself. The reading room is open. It is lovely, a huge window overlooking the bay, pictures of old Aberdyfi on the walls and local newspapers laid out on the table. The rest of the books are on a bring and buy basis: pay a 50p or more donation to take a book and drop off your unwanted ones; so maybe not the highbrow collection one might expect.

The rain had now passed with even the hint of sun, so I set off properly.

The road from Aberdyfi to Machynlleth skirts the river Dyfi for most of the way, but, like so many other roads, it has no separate footpath and is unsafe for the pedestrian. The valley is wide, and the deep track of the Dyfi meanders across it, but the tidal sands of the estuary cut right to the edge of solid rock. It would be a wonderful walk, but of course far too dangerous, narrow, winding and with no footpath or verge, rock on one side, wall on the other.

So, the ‘coast’ path once more heads inland up a series of steep but well-made paths. It is the last time for two days when I will be close to, indeed usually even in sight of, the sea.

In stark contrast to the paths above Fairbourne the previous day, this is a well-signed path along a combination of clear paths and small country roads where I only once encounter a vehicle.  A couple of times I realised how easy it would be to go wrong on even a well-marked path, when the rain is pelting in your face and eyes focused on the ground a few yards ahead.

On an early (and rare) field-cut there was an open gate that was in a line with the last arrow, but it had no Coast Path roundel.  In some stretches this would be normal, but given the well-signed-ness of earlier stretches, I looked again and found another gate further up the field, but it was only within about 20 yards when the Coast Path badge became clear.

On another occasion the signage was very apparent (two roundels and a finger post), but it was just off to the right on a lane that cut back in a switchback.

The latter could have been made unmissable by a roundel beside the track, but was definitely in the "kick myself, how could I miss that?" category, but the former because of the strange rectilinearity of Coast Path signage. At one point, at the top of the first slope above Aberdyfi, the Coast Path arrow points sharp right, but what it means is bear very slightly right of straight ahead.

The ordinary footpath symbols of yellow arrow on green background are placed at all sorts of angles, to attempt to point you in the right direction, maybe it is the writing on the Coast Path notices that discourages angles other than 90 degrees.

I should say also that on this day, and indeed on the Harlech–Tywyn stretch also, I spotted a few footpath posts with … wait for it, don’t be too shocked … their tops painted bright yellow. And, amazingly, the world did not collapse, there were not hordes of disgusted-from-Tunbridge-Wells-ers with placards protesting at the chromal despoliation of the countryside.

As well as being easy to follow, the route does have some amazing views both of the estuary and the green valleys behind. However, for a coast path it would be so much nicer to follow closer to the water.

The route finally drops through a Macdonald ‘Resort’, Plas Talgarth ‘Health and Leisure Club’, and indeed before walking through the chalets (sorry ‘luxury self-catering lodges’) and bungalows, there was a short section through the woods on a ‘Trim Trail‘, where every so often amongst the trees there would be a fitness station with heavy wooden equipment and instructions of how to do sit-ups or a pole climb.

Finally, you approach Pennal passing a small tree-ringed grassy knoll, which looks artificial, maybe a burial chamber.  The map names ‘Comen Las‘ although it is hard to make out the capitals in the OS antiquities font.

As I arrived into Pennal I was photographing a wonderful number snake on the school wall, when a man called from across the road, "you should be taking that," and pointed to the words in the gable end of the school:

Gwell Dysc na Golud

"What does it say," I asked, and he answered, "Better Learning than Wealth".

Across the short narrow bridge from the school is the church of St Peter ad Vincula (St Peter in Chains), which has a prominent sign saying:

EGLWYS A GARDD AGOR POB DYDD
Church and Garden Open Daily

St Peter’s was a Chapel Royal of Owain Glyndŵr, and of the Princes of Gwynedd, Llewellyn the Great and others before him.  The gardens, funded by Council and European grants, are a celebration of the Princes of both dynasties, a combination of well-planned plantings, upright stones, carved paving slabs, and a statue of Owain Glyndŵr. I didn’t notice when I was looking at the gardens, but this is an oval churchyard, which is rare, and evidently suggests an earlier pre-Christian site.

The church is indeed open and welcoming, with a basket of wrapped sweets saying: "Please help yourself to a sweetie."

There is an upper area and this includes a number of symbols of other faiths, a seven-headed candelabrum for Judaism, a seated Buddha, a Hindu god, and, for want of a ‘standard image’ a decorated leaf for Islam.  By each is a notice in English and Welsh:

With this symbol, we offer a warm Christian welcome
to all those of the Buddhist (Islamic, etc.) faith who visit our Church.

Gyda’r symbol hwn rydym yn cynnig croeso cynnes
Chrstnogol i bawb o’r ffydd Fwdhaidd sy’n ymweld a’n
Heglwys

On the one hand I feel this open hand to others is wonderful; and yet also I feel a little discomfort, especially at the statue of Buddha and the Hindu deity.

Personally I felt I would have instead looked for things in the Bible or Christian tradition that are held in common and emphasised these, rather than bringing these other symbols into the church.

While there, and after whilst walking, I tried to make sense of this discomfort.

I think there are two separate feelings.

One is related to the sort of syncretism that was common in RE in schools in the 1970s, and indeed by some ‘liberal’ Christians then and today. This effectively says, all religions are the same in the end, it doesn’t matter what you believe, what matters are the universal principles and that you have faith in something.

I don’t think this is the intention of the symbols in St Peter’s.  Indeed this kind of syncretism would be unwelcome to many of other faiths, certainly to most Muslims.  However, I guess the possibility of it being construed or appearing to be like that worried me. But fear of misconstrual is a reason to think, to be careful in one’s choice of words, but not a governor of action, certainly not for a follower of Christ.

Arguably my own ‘finding things in common’ has more danger of syncretism than an upfront display, that says, "these are *your* symbols; we do not believe the same things, and indeed believe that there is only one truth, one way, but still offer these for your own prayers and contemplation."  The leaflet for the church says

Ty Gweddi i’r Holl Bobledd

A house of prayer for all people

The other reason for my discomfort is probably some more vague sense that the non-Christian symbols in some way harm the purity or holiness of the place. Whereas fear of appearance of syncretism seems a valid, though not overriding worry, this fear of contagion, of unholiness, is pure superstition. We even have a word for it, desecration, things or acts that make a place less ‘holy’, as if holiness were a thing that could be so easily sullied.

Jesus said, "it is not what comes from the outside that is unclean, but what comes from within."

Jesus, who touched the ‘unclean’ lepers, who ate with tax collectors and with prostitutes, and did not recoil, as ‘holy’ people of the day would, from the woman with a ‘discharge of blood’.

Given it is the church of St Peter I am reminded too of the vision he had of the sheet with all the forbidden foods, where he is told to eat freely.

To make way for the community garden outside, the old gravestones have been moved aside, in some places lining the walls of the churchyard, in others laid flat on the ground lining the gravel paths.  In one place a collection of gravestones, so old they look like natural riven stone on a riverbed, are set around an upright cross.

The cross looks as if it is shattering a single huge tombstone, like resurrection day itself; a fitting image of the Lord of Life, who died on a cross, sunk into hell, preached to the dead and then tore apart the very maws of death itself on Easter morning.

The holiness of Jesus is not like pristine clothing that must be kept free from dust and grime, but like free-flowing waters that cleanse all. The contagion of Christ‘s holiness is positive, it is not threatened by the unholy, but sanctifies all by walking alongside all.

After visiting the church, I look at the restaurant/bar opposite, hoping for something light to eat as it is nearly four and a long time since breakfast, but it is only open for lunch and dinner, so I pop into the shop to renew my ’emergency’ supplies and ask if there is another pub or café in the village that would be open. There is none. "He’ll open at ten to six," says the shopkeeper, referring to the restaurant.

She asks me about my route onwards to Machynlleth, and when I say I’m taking the Coast Path she says, "ah, they take you up around, it is only four miles by road."  I say I guess it is not safe for walking, "yes, these roads were designed for horse and carriage, not cars."

I have become increasingly ‘radicalised’ about the lack of footpaths and cycleways alongside roads. Sometimes I can see it would be very expensive, as along the initial part of the route out of Aberdyfi, but even there if they decided the road should be an extra 10 foot wider for lorries, they would manage, either by cutting into the hillside or building out into the roads.  However, for the stretch between Pennal and Machylleth it is different. When driving Pennal is perhaps two-thirds of the way to Machylleth, but feels nearly there, as the valley sides are wider and the rest of the way is an easy drive with wider roads beside farmland.

Given the costs of a road, it would add only a small amount to lay a footpath beside when they are periodically upgraded. For fitness and also energy use, we are encouraged to use bikes more, and yet this is not part of road policy. Roads are public rights of way, and yet effectively barred to the pedestrian. I have begun to imagine mass action, like the Kinder Scout Trespass in the 1920s, where large groups of walkers invade a major arterial road, blocking it, like the farmers with their cattle in French protests, or the lorry drivers when fuel prices rise.

The lady at the shop thinks this is a wonderful idea and thought on a far grander scale than I, "you could block the A1," she suggests.  I was soon to begin to think that maybe her scale was the right one.

I had thought I was nearly at Machynlleth, but the Coast Path had one last sting in the tail of the day.

It is still largely very well signposted (with one exception), and runs along (largely) easy to follow major forest roads, but rises inexorably. The road is virtually flat, but the path mounts hills of around 200m or 700 feet. "Why?", I wonder, surely there is an easier route. Indeed if it had been the end of a longer day I might have been cursing the Wales Coast Path again.

I should say there are high points of this part of the route, a few bubbling brooks beside the grey gravel forest path, a broken safety glass windowpane, its plastic laminated inner layer bent and sun-browned like an over-ripe banana skin, and a big JCB-like machine, with tracks and what looks like an enormous hook for pulling out tree roots.

Looking later at the map, it is almost possible to get from Pennal to Machynlleth along existing public footpaths by the riverside; not coast, but at least next to the water running to the coast.  However, there is a short stretch, of perhaps a third of a mile, where you would have to follow the road. However, it is in one of the road’s wider stages with open ground on the riverside. Maybe they will lay path there at some point.

The path is almost all along these major forest tracks and eventually a small lane, except once, when it cuts off a portion of a track–road triangle, by heading straight up a bracken-covered hillside. The point to do this is well marked, but if you missed it, it would not matter greatly as you would come to the lane anyway another third of a mile along the track. The path through the bracken is fairly obvious as it has been beaten down by previous walkers, and is marked periodically, although the painted bamboos that have been added by some previous walkers again help give confidence.

Over the top the path cuts down a field, and there is a small marker on a fence post where the arrow points straight onwards, but which ‘straight’?  Across the open grassland beaten tracks spread uniformly, although whether laid by human feet and or by sheep is not clear. I take the most straight-ahead and well-trodden track, but try to keep an eye to the right where another well-trodden path runs close to the field fence and eventually the other side of a small wooded stream. Gradually the path gets less and less clear, and it becomes simply a thickly grassed hillside as any traces of trackway bifurcate and bifurcate into a maze of indistinct, almost windblown lines.

But at least I can now see Machynlleth, tantalisingly close, down (a long way down) in the valley below.  If I keep going down I can’t go far wrong.

But at the bottom, there is a fence and no apparent way through; to the right I can see the corner of the field, with fencing rising back up the way I came. Maybe I should have taken the path that ended up the far side of the stream and there was some sort of stile or gate there, hidden by the trees. I almost turn to go back up the field and try again, but the thought of climbing back up a few hundred feet is daunting, so I decide to scout to the left along the fence at the field bottom away from the fenced-off field corner. "It is bound to meet the road," I say to myself, "and there may be a way through."

Indeed it does meet the road, and there is a way through, and there is even a Wales Coast Path fingerpost, pointing exactly along the way I came. They obviously intend you to skirt close to the field edges, but why, oh why, not add a few markers along the fence so that you know you are on the right track?

The rest of the way is down a lovely lane, at one stage passing a tiny waterfall, its back shining black as if running over jet. The blackness was some sort of slime, but I have never seen this deep black rather than the more common vivid greens. This is one of the lanes, I am told, where Led Zeppelin, who stayed at a house nearby, used to drive their bikes, annoying the locals.

Crossing the river bridge I can see clearly why they keep you clear of the road, it is a breathe hard and walk confident moment. "I have walked across Piazza Venezia in Rome, I can cross a river bridge at Machynlleth," I say to myself.

Machynlleth was home to the last Welsh Parliament, that is the parliament of a completely independent Wales under Owain Glyndŵr, rather than simply a ‘devolved assembly’.

It is also the home of CAT, the Centre for Alternative Technology, in the vanguard of sustainable living, wind and solar power, recycling and conservation. Sadly, I hear and see in the press that parts of CAT are struggling and they have recently sold the Quarry café in the centre of Machynlleth.

However, the presence of CAT runs deep, attracting individuals and businesses with similar ideals.  At the edge of Machynlleth is the Dyfi Eco Park.  I didn’t go in to explore, but the business closest to the road is a home energy company with a mural covering their entire end-wall.  A man, dressed a little like an American Amish, sits fully clothed in a bath tub playing his violin and attracting what I think is meant to be solar power from the face of a beneficent sun, but looks rather more like a golden Medusa, her snake-like hair reaching out to get him.

Of course Machynlleth is now best known for the abduction and murder of April Jones, and bedraggled pink ribbons can still be seen scattered around the town and its environs. The Radio Wales reporter who interviewed me in Conwy said that he had been involved in the reporting of the trial of her killer. The guilty verdict and the knowledge that he is behind bars for life will not ease the pain for her family, but maybe help to draw some sort of line and allow new life to grow in this community.

However, new life is difficult for other reasons.

On the way into town I passed an open bookshop, and spotted a copy of ‘The Planet‘ in the window. I had been told about this by Jane Whittle; it describes itself as ‘The Welsh Internationalist‘, and I could see it also had an article about Machynlleth itself. There was also a copy of Robert Macfarlane‘s The Old Ways, which I’d been planning to get, and thought better I buy it from a small bookshop than tax-dodging, supplier-screwing, global monopoly Amazon.

So I went in, and, on the shelves, found many books I had in my campervan library, as well as many I did not.

You can fill out the details.

I can say there at least several thousand books in that bookshop that I did not buy, but now in my campervan library there are:

The Planet: The Welsh Internationalist. Volume 210, Summer 2013.

Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways, Penguin, 2012

Ross Bradshaw (ed), Maps, Five Leaves, 2011

David Evans (ed), The Art of Walking{{, {{Black Dog Publishing[/sem], 2012

The article in The Planet is entitled ‘Closed/Ar Gau, sorry’, from a shop sign in Machynlleth, one of many. CAT has reduced its staff by a third, and most of the rest are on zero-hour contracts, that is, paid only when there is work; other local employers have closed down or reduced staffing. In a local newspaper I saw that across Wales unemployment has stayed static or gone down, a sign of recovery according to the government, but *employment* has dropped far more significantly. For some reason (emigration, giving up), there are fewer people in the job market, but the actual number of people working is still reducing, and at an alarming rate.

The ‘closed’ signs have been common across all of Wales, and indeed much of England and Scotland as well. While prosperity may be returning in a limited way to the South East, it is not for those in the already poorer areas of the country. It is noticeable also that the prices of holiday-home-worthy houses did not dip significantly during the recession and of course luxury car sales have boomed whilst mass-market car factories have closed or cut production.

The plentiful years of the ‘noughties‘ were not shared equally, with the well-off benefiting from the ready credit of a deregulated banking sector, whilst the poor struggled with the corner loan shark, and the buy-and-sell-back versions of the old pawn brokers proliferated. And it is no surprise that the years of recession, brought on by that easy credit, are not felt equally.

The day did not start auspiciously; the wet forecast was mirrored in the heavy clouds.  However, I had woken early enough to get down to Tywyn station for the train at quarter past seven, and successfully reversed through the narrow gate of Jane Whittle‘s yard, so it seemed to be going well.

Entering Tywyn there are signs to the station, but then they stop – have I missed it?  But then ahead I can see the railway bridge, and something that looks vaguely station-like.  As I turn I see that instead, in large letters, it announces ‘Tywyn Spiritualist Church‘. Further on I pass the railway station for the Tal-y-Bont Railway, and then the town peters out.

Turning round I again pass the spiritualist church and turn back onto the High Street.  Spotting a man crossing the road I ask him where the station is, "back there," he says, pointing at the spiritualist church, and sure enough it is the station car park. The station is hidden behind the church; no station sign, nor railway logo.  Maybe you are supposed to consult spirits to find it?

Just in time I park as a train draws in. I rush to the platform, rucksack and clothes in my arms.  I realise I’ve forgotten the water bottles, but the conductor says I have five minutes; back at the van I realise I am still in sandals, not the ideal footwear for hill walking on a wet day.

Barefoot, boots and socks clutched to my chest, I clamber aboard, and collapse into my seat. A few minutes later the train pulls away … in the wrong direction. There is a train at quarter past seven going south as well.

The conductor is very sympathetic and does not charge for the trip to Aberdyfi, where I can get a bus north to Fairbourne. A lady at the end of the carriage tells me where to catch the bus.

So, about an hour later than planned, I get to Fairbourne, where I hoped to get a breakfast before setting off.  Unfortunately the café near the station does not open until 10am, so with a Snickers bar for my breakfast I set off out of town up into the hills.

This day will have a lot of inland walking in the hills that rise from the sea here. The main road and railway both stay close to the sea, but with no footpath, so the Coast Path heads steeply upwards towards the disused quarry that hangs above the town. The path is initially well signed, until it gets into the quarry where, I assume, the ground is too stony to hammer in a post.

My first wrong turn of the day: I follow the main path into the heart of the quarry when (obviously) I should have taken the smaller side track that leads further up the hillside.  Happily not too much of a problem as there is soon a gate clearly signed ‘no entry’, and the smaller track does have a Coast Path roundel … just round a bend out of sight of the path junction. However, going into the quarry meant (a) I got to see some of the remains of abandoned quarry machinery and (b) some misty views of the sea. Indeed, for the first part of the day when I see the sea it is almost always because I am on the wrong path.

Oh yes, and it started raining – hard, as the path led up above into the cloud line.

Above the quarry the track turns through a gateway through a stone wall. There is no sign. On the on hand the track through the gateway is the larger track. However, (1) the gateway has wooden side posts on which it would be easy to nail a Coast Path roundel, if it is the way, (2) it is a turn and surely that would be marked, (3) there is a small track leading straight onwards through the grass and gorse, (4) major paths are often simply where the tractor goes, not a sign of people’s passing.

So I go straight on, not through the gate.

I was wrong.  After a while the track breaks up into multiple tracks, which pick their way across bog, through gaps in the broken-down stone walls. I try to follow the contours, keeping a wall in sight as the visibility is not more than 50 yards, until, eventually, I meet a solid, barbed-wire-topped wall that leads down the hillside.

I decide the initial trodden track was either (i) the footsteps of those who went this way and turned back, doubling the wear, (ii) the footsteps of those who went this way, got stuck and came back another way, or (iii) the footsteps of those who went this way and never returned. Sheep skulls, skeletons and carcasses litter the hillside, showing what happens to the unwary. I imagine I might, like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, at any moment trip over a half-buried rucksack and find myself staring through the wet bog into the rotted eye sockets of a past ill-fated rambler.

Corralled by the continuous walls, I nearly double back on myself until I eventually climb a gate onto the small road I should have joined by an easier route. On the plus side, I was evidently closer to the sea … I could hear the waves breaking through the mist even though I could not see them; and I also went past three standing stones in a line … although with 50-yard visibility I could not see if this pointed along a ley line of monuments.

I just wish that was my last lostness of the day, but each time I found the Coast Path, in a short while I would lose it again. At one stage I must have walked a path that crossed over the true path, but saw no indication.

However, on the whole I ended up closer to the sea than if I’d followed the official route, even if it meant climbing the odd locked gate! The final wrong step led me along a minor road that ran alongside the railway, just 50 yards from the sea, while the official route was somewhere up among the hills.

A local philanthropist has funded a new cycle and pedestrian bridge across the Dysynni. This will save a six-mile inland journey upstream around the flood plain and estuary. I can see that the bridge is there and the lead-in path looks nearly complete, but there are no notices to say that it is now open. Although tempted to see if it is passable, I decide to follow the formal Coast Path as it is now clear and so for today I have only managed to be with it for about a quarter of the distance!

Food had been a problem all day. After being too early for breakfast at Fairbourne I hoped to get some at the first drop from the hills into Llwyngwril, but the pub only opened for lunch at 12:30 and the café was closed; whether it was too early, out of season or permanent was not clear. After this the path bypasses every village until Bryncrug at the end of the Dysynni Valley.  Its pub was open and had an interesting, but inexpensive menu. However, by this point I was only maybe an hour from Tywyn and remembered a lovely little café in an old cottage by the sea, so decided to press on, but stocked up with more Snickers and Peperami at the shop.

The last stretch into Tywyn is easy along the dykes beside a tributary that runs into the Dysynni and then the meandering Dysynni itself, where, in the widening tidal river, a party of school children were being taught balance and confidence in the water by jumping in a boat, and, on the banks, the odd dog walker and runner passed. Eventually the path passes a ruinous brick bunker, along the remains of an old wartime, metalled road, soft-edged, the grass encroaching on either side, through a static caravan site, and reaches the prom.

To either side waves rush onto sand held captive between fresh wooden groynes, sea defences renewed, a stone plaque says, the year of Prince Charles’ Investiture. Sand, waves, groynes, prom and seafront houses are all soft-focused by the wind-flung spray.

From the seafront, on a wet and wild day, Tywyn has that abandonment of the winter seaside town. A few scattered pensioners walk, rain-coated and bent into the wind.  "We’ve had flaming June,", remarked one, "now its another kind of ‘flaming’ June."

I love this starkness.

Tywyn seafront is not thickly spread with amusement arcades, but they appear intermittently and are all open; but the ice cream shops are all closed, except one café/kiosk in a modern red-brick municipal building, which makes me think of  a tiny library, or maybe a large public convenience. However, I pass by the temptation of a hot dog, or maybe seaside chips, and eventually find, at the end of the prom, the little cottage café.

I recalled the Pebbles Tea Room on a hot summer’s day, its maze of small rooms and outside seating full, and either many books around, or maybe selling books as well as cakes. Although my heart was set on an all day breakfast, I would have been happy with toasted tea cake. Given the weather, the outside furniture was all in piles, but the window blinds were also shut, not a good sign. However, the door was open and as I approached a girl came to the doorway and stared quizzically at me. A few moments later, pushing her way through the dangling ribbon fly-screen, her mother appeared. Vainly I asked, "are you open?", but I was not surprised by the answer, "we open tomorrow".

I pressed on, with another Snickers to keep me going the remaining four miles to Aberdyfi.

This is a wonderful walk, flat sands, the sea breaking to the right, dunes to the left. Fast walking along the mostly hard, sea-damp sand, with just the occasional tide-washed sculpture, fire circle and abandoned or collapsed war-time concrete lookout, but with that vastness and openness that breathes the sea and opens the heart.

The sea is mid-height, but at low tide the sea-blackened remains of an old forest are the sole reminder of the land that is now lost.

Slowly the final bend appears, marked by one of the less ruinous war-time lookouts used well to hold beach dustbins.  A scattering of people appear also, speaking of approaching civilisation, and bright coloured kites swoop above the edges of the dune and shore, long before their attached leaping surfers can be seen.

Aberdyfi itself appears gently, mostly a single line of soft-palette nursery-coloured, Victorian houses on the wooded hillside, until slowly the main town appears, huddled tight, clinging precariously between hill and sea as if it remembered the lost cantrefs too, drowned in drunken carelessness, the sunken bells of the dead cities pealing out at dead of night, a town that remembers that sea and land are not kind to mankind, shrugging us off with as little care as when we wash or even scratch an itch and a million skin mites are sent to oblivion.

However, I have little time to ponder as I go into the tourist board to check train and bus times and realise there is a bus due NOW to Tywyn.  After ten minutes I think I must have missed it, but as I start to walk to the train station for fear of missing that also, the bus appears and I hail it down … try doing that in a city!

Back in Tywyn to pick up the van, the town centre is more like a small market town, where the people of the Dysynni Valley come for cinema and shopping. Maybe it was once on the coast, and the dunes came after, or maybe it is simply built on solid ground, the memory of the lost cantrefs still sharp in the communal mind, until the age of seaside campsites and apartment complexes spread outward to the sea, houses built on sand.

And food? Well, with no time at Aberdyfi, the day’s diet was not the best, three bars of Snickers, two Peperami and a packet of Quavers, until, at 8:30pm, a much-needed pizza at the little pizzeria attached to Wynnstay Hotel in Machynlleth.  Not surprisingly, as I write this the following morning, my stomach is rumbling for breakfast.

If you look on a map Barmouth to Fairbourne is just two miles, and an easy two miles too, but very lovely across the estuary-end railway bridge.

This was really a ‘finishing off’ of the day before, when I’d stopped at Barmouth because of the train times.  Going out by train is no problem, but the logistics of returning by train are far more difficult; it is so hard to predict the time taken to walk along differing kinds of surface … and manage any detours or confusion along the way, and then the need to sync this with trains that run every two hours, or even, as the previous night, with a four-hour gap.

However, this was a day when I needed to move the van from its campsite at Tal-y-Bont, and also when I hoped to visit, in the van, the Dysynni Valley to find the locally produced textile map that I had read about in a 1996 Common Ground booklet ‘from place to PLACE: maps and Parish Maps‘.  I also hoped to meet Jane Whittle at her gallery, an artist who was involved in the Dysynni Valley map when she moved to Wales in the 1990s.

Having parked the campervan by Barmouth Station, not a problem, but I’d guess a somewhat harder task in full season, I have an all day breakfast at Rosie’s Diner.  I had seen this the day before, and had first been tempted by the large notice that read ‘Famous All Day Breakfast‘, despite its hyperbole (I’d not heard talk of Rosie’s Diner in Tiree), as any mention of ‘all day breakfast’ tends to catch my attention, but also partly eating there in honour of Rosie, the other long distance walker! Anyway I can never pass by a good ‘caf’.

They offer three breakfasts: a smaller one, a larger one and a ‘Belly Buster’ breakfast.  If I had been doing 20 miles, I would have been tempted by the Belly Buster, but 2 miles seemed a lame excuse. However, as the larger breakfast included a pot of tea whereas the smaller did not, simple economics dictated the larger breakfast!

I head through the town streets towards the railway bridge which takes me through tiny back alleys, whereas the Coast Path stays on the prom, but both take you to the same coast road and a tiny park with a sculpture of three men tugging together on a fishing net. Bodies pressed close in joint effort, mouths gasping with the strain, the stone seems in tension. Later, looking at the photograph, I think of the disciples told, "Cast your net on the other side," and having to drag their catch ashore for fear of over-spilling their Galilean boat.

The railway bridge is a wonderful affair, the initial section, over the deepest part of the river, suspended by arches of steel, and thereafter simple piles, all supporting a wooden platform of sleepers that seems plenty strong enough for foot passengers, but hardly sufficient for a train.  I do note that the train slows as it crosses the bridge.  In fact the structure is cross braced, with the sleeper-like timbers running from side to side, but then the track actually sitting on two long thicker timbers that run one under each rail, so that the weight of the train is not focused on any single timber, but spread amongst the whole.  I think back to the three men pulling together on the net.

The bridge is a toll bridge for pedestrians and cyclists; cars have to go upriver to either the road toll bridge at Penmaenpool or the river bridge near Dolgellau, the reason for the importance of the town.  In fact the road toll bridge only carries vehicles of 2.5 tons (or 1.5 tons, it says on the other side; surely it doesn’t matter which direction you drive in?), so when I drove to Tywyn later that day I needed to take the long route.

There are signs to say there is a toll to pay and a schedule of charges, but the toll-keeper’s window is closed.  The local council pays the railway £40,000 a year as a contribution to the maintenance of the bridge to allow pedestrian access. Some of this comes direct from funds, but the rest comes from the collection of tolls.  However, the couple who had been toll-keepers for many years gave up the job, and so far the council have not found a replacement, leaving a hole of £23,000 in the council finances.

Evidently some local businesses have been in discussion about alternate uses of the toll-keepers’ cottage, and it would certainly make good sense to supplement the toll-keeping charges with a simple kiosk with cards and refreshments, as many simply walk the bridge for the views over the estuary and the experience of nearly a mile of wood-planked suspension over water.  I am certain many of these would buy booklets, polystyrene cups of tea, or toy trains for children or grandchildren.

The experience was not as profound as that on the Severn Bridge, gazing across the vastness of the estuary, but the views are wonderful, and there is something so special about the combination of solidity and yet precariousness, as one steps from plank to plank.

Beyond the bridge the path should lead along the riverside to the sea, and then along beside the Fairbourne Light Railway into Fairbourne.  However, this is closed for works and the suggested alternative cuts into the hills, bypassing Fairbourne.  So, instead I took the main road route into Fairbourne and seemed to survive. I was happy I had done so as I just got to Fairbourne with six minutes to spare before the train. I had been a little too leisurely with my big breakfast.

Back in Barmouth, I decide to walk along the small piece of seafront between the railway station and the bridge, partly as I had ‘missed’ this before when I walked through the back alleys, and partly because I had seen a building with ‘Bath House‘ written on it, and wondered what its story was.

The Bath House, beside the quay, is clearly now a café, but a closed one, so I couldn’t go in to get a cup of tea and the story.  However, I then noticed a round house, which is aptly named the ‘Round House‘ or ‘Ty Crwyn‘ and is the old town gaol constructed by the council in 1834 following a petition by the residents plagued by the ‘drunken riots’, which were a matter of ‘notoriety’. Barmouth was a major sea port at the time, filled with seamen who drink hard, and in all likelihood fight hard also. The Round House is split into two equal semi-circular cells, one for men and one for women.  In the spirit of true equality, the women were no less riotous than the men.

From the Round House I see a curious sign, a handmade swinging arrow mounted on top of an orange traffic cone saying ‘shipwreck museum, free’.

The Shipwreck Museum is housed in Ty Gwyn, the ‘white house‘, the heart of Tudor support in north Wales, preceding Henry Tudor‘s successful campaign, which made him Henry VII and started the modern age.  It was built at the water’s edge so that participants could arrive by sea for secret meetings, maybe including representatives of Henry Tudor, then in France.

The museum is not about shipwrecks in general, but the story of a single wreck discovered just off the coast, a story of marine archaeology and painstaking detective work.  The wreck was in shallow waters, so the ship’s timbers had long since rotted, but metalwork was scattered widely amongst a boulder field, which made scouring the sea bed difficult for the divers. The ship’s bell was discovered, but it bore no name; there were coins, some dating back to 1500, some to the late 17th century, but of mixed origin.  The cargo, however, was clearly marble, and the statue on the seafront is carved from one of the pieces recovered from the sea floor.  The marble was eventually traced by its chemical analysis to a particular quarry in Carrera.

Carrera marble is the best in the world, and was used by Michelangelo, amongst others. At that time the sculptors would often travel to the quarries to select the stone to work with. I recall visiting the area many years ago when at a conference at Marina de Carrera, the port where today the Carrera marble is shipped across the world. The narrow roads zigzag their way to the ‘cava’, the individual quarries in the white hillsides. They feel precarious enough in car or bus, but the huge lorries that transport the marble cannot turn at the hairpins, and instead go forward and in reverse along alternate stretches. This will be bad enough on the way up with an empty flatbed, but perilous indeed on the way back with a 40-tonne block of marble.

The cava of the marble from the wreck is no longer in operation, as the marble has all been dug out, but it was once the premium marble, the best of the best.

From this and other scraps of evidence the archaelogists surmised that the ship was Italian, maybe from Genoa, and was maybe wrecked in 1701 when a three-day storm ripped across the whole of Britain, ships and buildings alike, tearing the English fleet from its moorings on the East Coast, and driving it across the sea to Norway.

Finally in 1901 an old chart was found in an archive, with a mark, just where the wreck was found, saying, "Genoan ship wrecked here in 1701". The detective work had been right.

I had read about the Dysynni Map in ‘from place to PLACE: maps and Parish Maps‘ a small book reporting on Common Ground‘s Parish maps project in the 1990s.  I’m not sure where I originally got the book, I assume a second-hand bookshop at some time, and I don’t recall reading it until I was starting to think about the walk and scanned my bookshelves for books on maps and found it.

The Parish Maps project encouraged communities to create their own maps of their localities, using local knowledge, and in general emphasising the things that make the land meaningful to them.  The Parish Maps website has a complete list of the maps created during the project, some by individual artists, some as group projects. The book consists of a series of short chapters talking about the production of some of the maps, and reflections on the project. Frustratingly, neither book nor website has many images of the maps themselves. I guess nowadays they would all be photographed for the web, but in 1996 the web had only just begun.

One chapter was by Jane Whittle, who had originally been part of a Parish Map project in the South of England, but then moved to the Dysynni Valley, so she facilitated a community map there also. The chapter said that the map had been put on permanent display at St Cadfan’s church in Tywyn.  However, when I looked up the church on the web there was no mention of the map. It had been more than 15 years since the book was published, so I assumed the map had been removed, but, on a whim, I tried to look up Jane Whittle herself, and found links on several artists’ websites in west Wales, some of which included an email address, which worked!

Jane explained that St Cadfan’s church had found that the map was too popular and had it removed. This still astounds me. I can see that the church is a place of worship and prayer, not a tourist destination, but still, anything that brings people into the church, whatever their initial motivation, must be good. Happily, another church, St Michael’s in Llanfihangel-y-Pennant, at the top of the Dysynni Valley beneath Cader Idris, thought differently, and the map is now displayed there.

I had originally intended to visit Jane and see the map on a pre-walk visit to Wales, but snow had prevented that trip and so it was only now that I was able to visit. However, there were some problems. It had been several days since I’d had any internet connectivity so (1) I hadn’t been able to email Jane to say I was coming and check she was around to visit, (2) I hadn’t been able to find the email that said (2.a) where she lived and (2.b) the name and location of the church.

However, when she had originally told me about the church and given me instructions to find her, I had looked up both her gallery and the church on Google maps, so I had a rough idea of where they were.

There are only two roads up the Dysynni Valley, one to the north of the river and one to the south and I was 99% certain Jane lived just off the northern road.  It couldn’t be difficult.

I turned off the A-road to Tywyn, through the village of Llanegryn, and on up the valley.  I kept a look out for turnings to the left, looking for a sign to an art gallery. Eventually I got to the place where the road crossed to the river and joined the southern valley road. I had clearly missed Jane‘s gallery.

My original plan had been to see Jane first and then make my way up the road to the church.  However, as I was already a substantial part of the way up the valley, I swapped destinations and kept following the road upstream. I could see the church marked on the map at Llanfihangel-y-Pennant, and while I couldn’t remember the name (my mind and names do not suit each other), it looked in the right sort of location (mind and maps work better).

The road leads beneath a spectacular craggy pinnacle, which I later learnt was called ‘Bird Rock‘ and is the only place in the UK where cormorants nest inland. Evidently the sea once stretched this far inland, and as the ancient sea levels dropped, the cormorants ended up flying further and further to get to the sea, but stayed nesting on the old cliff face.

Eventually there is a branching of the ways, the larger road heads over the mountain pass to Tal-y-Llyn, while I took a narrow, single-track road towards Llanfihangel-y-Pennant.

On Tiree and in many places in the west of Scotland and the Isles, the roads are all single track, but they have well-marked passing places every hundred yards or so. However, this very sensible style of road is not followed in other parts of the UK. I know from past experience that when I am driving a large campervan and meet a small hatchback in a country road, the car driver almost invariable freezes and I have to do the reversing. I have no idea what happens when two hatchbacks meet along one of these roads, I can only assume that they stay there forever frozen, like Sirius; Zeus presumably thought that, in our mechanical days, he had seen the last of uncatchable foxes being pursued by inescapable hounds, but then came the irreversible hatchback and the single-track road.

As I drove along I kept track of every driveway, or slight widening of the road, in case I was called upon to back along the road to the closest place to pass. The road got ever narrower, and as each bend passed without either tractor or, heaven forbid, hatchback approaching in the other direction, my mind turned more and more to the fact that at some stage I would need to turn round.

And then it happened, a small church rose up over the wall on the left and opposite it an equally small and empty car park.  I parked, but not before turning the van and making sure I was positioned so that I could drive straight out down the road back. In a campervan you soon learn that parking is often not the problem, but rather getting out after other cars have parked inches from you in all directions.

St Michael’s sits low, its grey stone hunkered down amongst the bleak drizzle-damped hillside, an open bell its vestigial tower. The lych gate is equally squat and solid and in the churchyard a stone slab sits supported on two pillars, some sort of cromlech-like memorial.

Inside the church a notice directs you to a vestibule on the far side of the church and there the map lies in an acrylic case.  I had expected it to be hung on the wall, and had not realised that it was a deep contour map, built, I later learnt, over polystyrene layers, hand-traced, scaled and cut from the contour lines of the OS map of the valley.

It was also huge, filling the length of the vestibule, perhaps seven or eight foot end to end and three foot wide.

The porch roof was some sort of soft lime-wash plaster that scattered gritty layers over the horizontal surface of the acrylic box, so I returned to the van to fetch my dustpan and brush for a little impromptu church cleaning. I keep them in the van to occasionally clean it during my journeys, and, being only a little over halfway round and long before Fiona would be visiting me, it was so far unused.

I had been hoping to be able to make a navigable map of the valley using the textile map as a backdrop, but, even swept of its plaster coating the low-light reflections on the acrylic made the map impossible to photograph clearly. So you will have to believe me that it is wonderful and go see it yourself. Every field and hedge is lovingly rendered in stitch and thread.

I had gone to the church to find the map, but I hadn’t realised that there was also an exhibition about Mary Jones as this was the church where she was baptised, and this is the area from which she set off to walk across the mountains to Bala.

Now, if you are from Wales you will have been brought up with the story of Mary Jones, and I know it permeated as far north as Carlisle where Fiona also heard it as a child.

Mary Jones was born at the end of the 18th century, and her father died when she was just four.  When she was just nine, a preacher visited, Thomas Charles, who had a Welsh Bible. Mary asked how much it would cost to have a Welsh Bible of her own.  The answer, three shillings and sixpence, seemed a fortune to Mary, but she decided it was what she wanted, so for six years she did jobs for people and saved, occasionally going to the house of a woman two miles away who would let Mary learn to read her Welsh Bible.

Eventually, when she was 15 years old, Mary Jones had saved enough and walked the 25 miles over the mountain to Bala where Thomas Charles lived.  Charles‘ heart was moved by the girl who had worked so hard and walked barefoot over mountains to be able to read the Bible in her own tongue.  Spurred by the example of this young woman, he founded the British and Foreign Bible Society to make the Bible available across the world to people in their own language, starting with a translation into Mohawk in 1804.

The exhibition at St Michael’s is quite small, but next year the Bible Society are opening a new visitor centre in Bala.

Although I knew the story well, still I found myself moved by it, just as Thomas Charles had been 200 years ago.

I was glad I had manoeuvred the van before going into the church as by the time I left other cars had come to the small car park, and as I drove away I passed two or three vehicles coming in the opposite direction. Happily each meeting was at a wider section of road, so Zeus was saved from having to cast us up as new constellations in the heavens.

I was determined not to miss Jane‘s gallery on the return down the valley, and even took the second route through the village of Llanegryn, which I was certain was too close to the main road, but thought I should check just in case.  This secondary route was so steep and narrow that it almost required Olympian assistance to negotiate, but all to no avail.

Again, although I was convinced that Jane‘s gallery had been off the road on the north side of the valley, just in case I also drove up the southern road. Partway along this road I spotted a man out walking and stopped to see if he was local. He was, and he knew Jane. He told me where to look on the original road, and he also explained that she had no sign, hence my inability to find it.

Aided by these instructions I found what appeared to be the right gate, which, as warned, led up a rough track through fields. I walked up the track, not wishing to risk the van’s suspension unless I was sure I was going to the right place. It led to a small group of houses, which I assume once was a single farmstead, and sure enough, in a corner of the yard was a sign that said ‘gallery’. Beside it was a cottage with a curtained and lighted window through which the occasional sound of what I took to be radio emerged.

I knocked; I waited; no answer.

I find the process of knocking on a door or ringing someone up hard at the best of times, but this was now early evening and I was knocking on the door of a stranger who was not expecting me. I waited a few moments, and then summoned up my courage.

I knocked again; I waited; no answer.

I stood back, looked around, checked that there were no other entrances. There was a car parked, but maybe she had another vehicle and had simply left the radio on when she left. Convinced now that my efforts were in vain, I was about to give up, but then thought, "one more time".

I knocked a third time.

In some way this last knock was easiest, as I had by now decided there was no one there to hear.

But instead, almost instantly, I heard shuffling sounds and then the door opened.

"Hello, I’m Alan", I said, as if that explained everything, "we mailed about the map".

I can’t imagine what went through Jane‘s head in those few moments. When she wrote the chapter in themid-1990s it was after retiring out here, to the wilds of West Wales; now, nearly twenty years later, she must be into her late 70s. Then here, on her doorstep, a man arrives with unkempt hair, bare-kneed and sandalled.

Maybe for an artist this is less disconcerting than for the average elderly lady, but Jane took it in her stride and invited me into her cottage kitchen with the Aga burning and a cat wandering from surface to surface.

She offered me tea, and while the kettle boiled I jogged back down the track to drive the van up as it was parked dangerously close to the bend. I drove carefully through the gateway to her yard, just a few inches either side. The yard was quite small, and after a failed attempt to turn round I realised that getting out was going to entail reversing through the same tight gateway.

However, there was a cup of tea to hand now, and we introduced ourselves to each other and began to chat before Jane took me over to see her gallery.

Jane‘s gallery is a wonderland; just stepping through the door my jaw dropped. It is mostly her own work, but with some work of other artists also. It is in a converted cow shed, only it has not been converted much, the old stalls are still in place and each one creates a frame for a group of pictures and ceramics. Above your head, dresses are suspended from the roof beams like swooping angels, and at the far end a red dragon fills the rafters from wall to wall.

Everything seems to have a story, the dresses left behind after an exhibition, and a stained glass in the window because her neighbours have a hot tub where they skinny dip, and it is there to protect their blushes, and those of Jane’s visitors. The dragon is a longer tale.

In the Dysynni Valley is Bird Rock, a sheer rocky hill with a craggy rounded top and a slight hook, rather like the second horn of a rhinoceros. It is the only place in Britain where cormorants nest inland, still remembering the time when the sea lapped the bottom of Bird Rock, rather like the salmon recall when Europe and America were close and still make their five-thousand-mile journey to lands that were once close.

Jane‘s grandchildren would visit each summer, and made pterodactyls, inspired by the cormorant’s primeval outline as it spreads its wings. One year, one of them decided, "I want to make a pterodactyl with a 20-foot wingspan".  He made the first wing, and then hoped Jane would be a good grandma and complete the second, but instead in the future years she helped him finish the huge red dragon that swoops above the visitors to her gallery.

Jane‘s own work is in a variety of media, but the majority uses torn coloured paper, glued to canvas to make pictures that at first glance look like bold oils and then the texture of the paper gradually reveals itself as you look closer.  However, she also seems to use whatever materials make sense for what she is creating.  There is a sculptural group of carbonised lemons, I assume simply left in the Aga hot oven for a long time, and a second carbonised vegetable or fruit, which clearly burst as it heated, as it now looks like a cracked raku bowl with a small black lid.

However my favourite work, which took my breath away, is landscape, rather like the Dysynni map, but made like a quilt over a sleeping woman.  Jane had earlier described how as a child she had played on the hills and valleys of her own quilt, just like Robert Louis Stevenson before her, and that this had been an influence in the Dysynni map.

Jane told me about the making of the map, the way each person took an area and studied it, walking the ground, and then reproducing features based on a large-scale OS map. Then, when the map was launched, they placed an small errata book where local farmers could write down where gateways and hedges had moved since the OS surveys on which the map was based. I’m not sure whether this led to re-stitching before the map was displayed.

A neighbour of Jane‘s was preparing for a huge house party to arrive the following day, and invited Jane and I to an impromptu dinner, combining the spare ingredients of both their kitchens. I was never quite sure whether she approved of me, this ragged itinerant who had turned up, unannounced, at Jane‘s door, and our politics were clearly not completely aligned.  However, she welcomed me regardless and it was fascinating hearing some of her experience both in a senior position at a major retailer and as a school governor.

Jane and I had a final nightcap at her kitchen table before I retired to my van in the yard ready for an early start in the morning to catch the train at Tywyn.

After the night before my spirits were good to start the day. Passing some llamas in a field I made my way to Tal-y-Bont station and then on to Harlech.

Harlech Castle stands high on a cliff and the road towards the sea runs almost directly below, outwards for nearly three quarters of a mile, past a golf course to the dune-backed sea. It is hard to believe that the castle was once at the water’s edge, the cliff rising directly from the waves, making it virtually unapproachable by sea. While the land is gradually sinking and the Lost Cantrefs drowned beneath Cardigan Bay, the volume of river-eroded material running out of Snowdon is enough to build a giant sandbar for miles south along the coast. At the edges the land is never still.

So, the day proper starts with a mile walk beneath the Harlech dunes.

Eventually the path cuts inland where the Snowdonian sands give way to rocky cliffs. As in many areas the railway cuts close to the sea, but the path goes through Llanfair (yet another) and few hundred yards inland of the railway, but then cuts back towards the sea at Llandanwg.

Llandanwg is a scattering of a few old cottages and some newer bungalows, leading down to, as the proprietor of the ‘Y Maes Café‘ proudly announces, a beach that was in 36th position in best beaches in a Sunday Times listing.

St Tanwg’s Church sits behind the dunes, but so closely that the sand seems to be fighting to get in; on one side a low window is filled in with stone where the sand is piled to its sill. It was closed when I visited, but is evidently open on Saturdays, Fridays and other times when manned by volunteers.

Unfortunately, Y Maes Café does not serve breakfasts, but over a cheese and ham toastie, I read the Daily Post, a North Wales paper, and see that new gypsy caravan site pitches are to be introduced across North Wales; however, whilst Flintshire, which already has 66 pitches, is to be asked to provide an extra 32, the rest of North Wales, Anglesey, Conwy and Denbighshire, which currently have no sites at all, will only be asked to provide a grand total of 16 between them. Flintshire is once more feeling it is the dumping ground for anyone the rest of England and Wales does not want.

The treatment of gypsies has been abysmal over the years. During the war the effect of the Holocaust amongst the gypsy population of Germany was even more thorough, albeit less well known, than it was amongst the Jewish population. However, whilst the exposing of the concentration camps led to a mass sympathy with Jews, which would have been rare before, there has never been any comparable sympathy for the Gypsy, who are hounded across Europe and the UK with vitriol that would not have felt out of place in 1930s Germany.

One of the differences is that the post-war Jewish ‘problem’ could be made to literally ‘go away’. Hitler‘s final solution was the gas chamber; the post-war nations’ solution was Israel. Somewhere for Jews to go that was not here. In an unholy alliance of Zionism and latent anti-Semitism, a nation was born; it is no wonder it has been a cause of friction ever since. I’m sure if there had been a convenient part of Egypt or West Africa, where the local inhabitants were ‘underusing’ the land (nomad farmers for example) and this declared a homeland for Gypsies, then maybe late 20th and early 21st century history would be different.

But, as it is, the persecution and vilification started by Hitler continues today.

I recall hearing a French Canadian, and two Romanians discussing Gypsies in terms that they would not have dreamed of using for any other group: they were simultaneously ne’er-do-wells who skived and lived off the State, and also all really rich with fancy cars, not to mention criminal intent. For each generalisation there was at least one example, usually from a newspaper story. I recall also the mayor of one major Northern Italian city say to a reporter "they’re not like us, they have brown faces.".

In the UK in the 1960s an act of Parliament made it easier for the police to evict and move on Gypsies who are camped illegally. Given it is almost impossible to get planning permission for a Gypsy camp, this effectively means anywhere. However, as a sop to liberalism, the same act put a responsibility on local authorities to create a certain number of sites. In fact the number of pitches they were to provide accounted for barely a tenth of the known travelling Gypsies at the time: the real agenda was still to get them to ‘settle down’, become like ‘normal’ people.

In fact, local authorities across the UK failed to provide even a fraction of the already insufficient number, and more recently even this minimal (and ignored) statutory requirement was dropped.

Beyond St Tanwg’s Church, the path cuts across flat grass towards a sandbar-closed estuary, almost a tidal lagoon. The bar was presumably not always there as it is ‘Bar Newydd‘, the ‘new bar’, but now nearly cuts off the waters behind. Where the river cuts through a narrow channel, the edges are perhaps 40 yards apart, but I guess it is difficult to bridge on shifting foundations, especially as boats need to pass below: an ideal place for one of those rope-hauled rowing-boat ferries.

However, there is no bridge or ferry and so the Coast Path cuts inland up the banks of the river, and through the grounds of an outdoor pursuits centre where a group of teenagers had just arrived back from a session on the water and were stripping off wet suits.

The Path misses Llanbedr itself, but, as it cuts back towards the sea, skirts Llanbedr Airfield. This is marked as ‘disused’ on the map, and several of the old hangers and buildings are clearly used for a variety of commercial uses. However, later as I go past the far side of the airfield, the runways look as though they are still maintained. Maybe this is retained as an emergency runway for military use.

The ‘lagoon’ is a sort of L-shape with one arm of the L cutting up the river towards Llanbedr, and the other running behind Bar Newydd towards Shell Island where there appears to be some sort of yacht club. When the road past the airfield meets this broad arm, it turns and runs alongside it towards Shell Island.

On the Coast Path map there is a dashed line running out from this point, across the broad arm, and straight onto the sandbar. If I could cross there it would mean I could walk the length of the bar rather than across the wetlands along the official Coast Path route – my personal rule was that it was OK to ignore the official Coast Path if it meant I could be closer to the sea.

There were clearly 4×4 tracks leading out to the island that sits in the middle of the broad arm of the lagoon, so I set off onto the island and walked round to the other side. The route over had been firm enough, but at the other side the way was much softer and I decided the straight line across was either for yet lower tides, or maybe an administrative boundary!

So I retraced my steps to the landward side of the lagoon, and was sorely tempted to follow the road straight to the club on Shell Island, but while strictly closer to the sea, still it felt a little like cheating, so instead I followed the path round the back of the airfield and then along wooden decked paths across the wetlands behind the lagoon.

Partway along I spotted something beside the path. It was two adders sunning themselves. I’ve never seen an adder in the wild before. One started to move leisurely into the grass when I approached, but the other ignored me and only buried its head slightly when I started to photograph, as if by ignoring me I would go away.

Across the marshes, the path gets back onto solid sand, and follows a road almost back towards the direction I came. It is as if the Coast Path planners were guilty … having cut across the marshlands rather than taking the direct route along the road, they had cut off a lot of beach, so the path almost turns back on itself in order to recapture some of the missed sand.

Behind the dunes is a campsite, with just a smattering of campervans and tents in it. They are very spread out and it is a ‘basic’ site with, it appears, just water and fire points.

I know I must cross over the dunes at some point, but they are high ones, maybe 50 feet or more, and from experience on Anglesey I know dunes can be deceptive. Also I didn’t want to ‘cheat’ and cut onto the sand too early! Eventually there was a road, part covered with sand, leading to a car park, so I decided that, in the absence of any obvious Coast Path signs, this was the way to go.

There followed about two and half miles’ walking along a near-deserted beach backed by high dunes.   The sun fought the clouds and highlighted beach sculptures as seabirds paddled on the shoreline.

While working out how to get onto a beach is rarely difficult (albeit with exceptions like this one), working out where to get off can often be problematic. Happily this time there was a tall red and white striped pole to mark the end of a boarded path across the soft sands to where there was a small picnic place, and more boards cutting inland and eventually joining a small lane. An information board was set in a foot-like mound of concrete, with words that had clearly been cut into the wet mixture when it was laid:

llwybrau hen oesau dan hiraeth y dwr

fronds flutter on ice-built roads

The latter is not a translation of the former, which seems to says something like, ‘the routes of ancient times beneath waters of longing’. Hiraeth is that untranslatable word, which is so quintessentially Welsh; it is an unsatisfiable longing or yearning, especially for homeland, rather like the Portuguese ‘saudade‘ or German ‘sehnsucht‘.

After cutting across a few fields, past ruins and old farm machinery, the path leads out onto the road, which it follows almost all the way into Barmouth. The road down into the campsite where the campervan is parked is almost straight away and I’m tempted to pop down for a quick cup of tea, but decide that if I do that I will probably not start again, so continue along the road.

Barmouth stretches for about a mile and a half, a ribbon development between hillside and sand. At the outskirts the Coast Path cuts down, past a wonderful red-painted clapperboard beach house, onto the groyne-sliced sands, and a beautiful walk in the late afternoon sun.

I had thought of going as far as Fairbourne, across the rail bridge, but as I get to Barmouth, my feet are already very sore. I notice that the train is in just 25 minutes; if I go on I will have to wait more than four hours until the ten o’clock train. I might have considered this if the way had continued flat beyond Fairbourne, but, while the railway and road are cut into the cliffside, there is no pedestrian route. I could probably have managed more beach and road walking, but hill tracks and forest paths do not seem a good idea in the falling evening.

So, back to Tal-y-Bont and the mile-and-a-half walk to the campsite, and, boy, do the legs and feet feel more tender after sitting for half an hour on station and train. Stopping was probably a good idea!

In Tal-y-Bont there is an Italian restaurant ‘Tonis‘ and outside a pizza takeaway van run by Toni‘s son Christian. I decide to opt for his ‘Gladiator‘, that is a ‘bit of everything’ meat pizza, but where this is not the mixed scattering on a standard ‘meat feast’ pizza, but more like every layer put on top of the last.

We talk pizzas and pies, thin Roman pizza and Cornish pasties. I learn that the pastry of the Cornish was originally just to hold the meat within. With blackened hands the miners would break off the top of the crust, eat the filling with a fork and then discard the dirty pastry. Also, like a Bedfordshire clanger, early Cornish pasties would have a second, sweet end for desert. However, they never had carrots, the soil was too thin for carrots in Cornwall, the carrot is the preserve of the Devon pasty. And I find I have forgotten the name of the local equivalent that did not mix potatoes and meat, but had them at separate ends.

When talking pizza, Christian said that they too had originally been dough plates, for holding food, not eating. I was reminded of the old bread trenchers, used as plates at the upper end of the table, then passed down for the minions to eat, with some of the meat juices, and maybe the odd forgotten morsel of flesh, sticking to the thin bread.

The idea of pizzas, now eaten as the classic Roman dish, but once being simply plates, is fitting. When Aeneas was given safe passage from the burning Troy and sailed away to found a new city, he was told he should build when he and his crew ate their tables and chairs. At first he thought it a foolish prophecy. However, at a later point, they have for some reason no furniture and so make tables and chairs out of plain dough. You can guess the end of the story: they are sailing up a river, the Tiber, and have run out of food; in desperation they start to eat the dough furniture and then remember the prophecy. Rome was founded where a dough table was eaten and now they eat dough plates.

Christian also told me stories of the wool trade. Welsh wool was the finest in the world and during the American Civil War Merionethshire supplied the Confederacy while Montgomeryshire supplied the Union, between them growing rich on the bloodshed across the Atlantic.

He also told me of a town up in the hills whose name translates as ‘English Town‘. This dates back to the drovers, who would come from England, collect cattle and other animals from the Welsh coast, and then drive them across the mountains to the markets in England. ‘English Town‘ was a place where they stopped on the way. The soft feet of the geese would get sore from the long journey, so they were wrapped in little leather bags, which were then covered in pitch, to make tiny galoshes, booties for the journey.

When Christian heard about the walk, he gave me my pizza for free, so, for the second night, I ended the day basking in the extraordinary kindness of those I have met on the way.

a day on the coast path with no sea, oak wood and hydroelectric, exhausting, depressing, and encouraging at the end

10th June 2013

Penrhyndeudraeth is where the toll bridge crosses the Afon Dwyryd, which runs down the Vale of Ffestiniog.  The official Coast Path for some reason does not cross the toll bridge.  I had assumed this was because it does not carry pedestrians, but in the Lion in Harlech I was told there was a pedestrian toll (I think about 6p), so maybe it was deemed too dangerous to funnel walkers onto? However, as it is closed for works, it is a moot point. I just hope the works will include a pedestrian walkway, as this would save the ten-mile diversion up the vale that takes up the majority of this day.

Out of Penrhyndeudraeth, the path quite quickly enters woodland, which is sometimes pine forest, but sometimes oak plantation perhaps 50 to 100 years old.  At one point I spot a broken tree trunk, I guess snapped in a gale, with a silver birch sapling growing from its broken top.

The path runs roughly parallel to the Ffestiniog Railway, sometimes only yards away, sometimes only discernible by the occasional train whistle. At one point, when the track is visible through the trees, there is a rusting water butt beside the track, like a giant bathtub, and echoing that thought, on the surface of the water float two yellow plastic ducks.

In the woods the path is well signposted at each junction, but along some of the small paths, someone has placed red tipped bamboo canes and the occasional dab of red paint on a stump or tree trunk. Although strictly unnecessary in some places where there is only one clear path through the trees, on the bendy sections, where the path switches back on itself, or takes unexpected turns, the red markers are welcome reassurance.

Although the path is well signposted, you do have to keep your eyes open, and there is one significant exception. At a large Y-junction in the woods there is no signposting. It may be that the signposting was there once, but has been broken down and crushed by passing forestry machinery. One path heads off to the right, but seems to grow gradually less as I scout down it, so I return to the larger path, a small forest roadway, which runs above the railway. At some point I need to cross the railway, but looking down the smaller path it appears more to double back, so I decide to take the larger one. This turned out to be the wrong decision, but by the time I realised, I had gone so far I continued on until it hit the minor road that runs back down and eventually meets the correct path.

This diversion added a mile or so to the day, and meant I spent longer road walking later, but did mean I got to see the small upper lake up in the hillside as well as the slightly larger Llyn Mair.

The signpost for the Coed Llyn Mair nature reserve describes the woodland around the lake as one of Wales‘ ‘rainforests’; the moist atmosphere under the thick oak cover encourages all sorts of mosses and lichens. Rosie, who had walked in the opposite direction a few days previously, described the woods here as magical, making her feel Druid-like.  Sadly the wrong path meant I missed some of this, including the reclusive hermit and his bivouac that she spotted.

By the time the road met the footpath at Tan y Bwlch, the Oakeley Arms was a welcome sight.

With a meal inside me, a sort of late breakfast/early lunch, I set off again. The main A496 runs alongside the river and would have been the fastest way down the valley, maybe an hour and half at most to get to the far side of the toll bridge, rather than the four and half hours it actually took.

However, the A496 is busy normally, and even busier given the closed toll bridge.  With no footway at all and heavy trucks and fast cars, even the couple of times when the path touches it for 50 yards at most, it feels dangerous and I find myself pressed flat against the wall. The coastal cycleway, which would normally cross the toll bridge, also avoids the A496.  As well as being dangerous for the cyclists themselves, the bendy road means that cars are forced to either slow down to the pace of the cyclist or overtake dangerously.

Here as in other places, I realise just how terrible it is, in an age of global warming and growing obesity, that the inclusion of a cycleway and footpath is not a standard feature of any road.

Happily the short stretch of road between Tan y Bwlch over the river bridge to Maentwrog does have a footpath.

In Maentwrog, the church of St Twrog declares it is an ‘Eglwys Masnach Deg‘, a ‘Fairtrade Church‘, and has a prayer posted on the notice board labelled ‘Croeso’ (welcome), starting:

O Dduw, gwna borth yr eglwys hon yn
ddigon llydan i dderbyn pob un sydd angen
cariad dynol a chyfeillgarwich

And an English translation, headed "Welcome, Benvenuto, Welkom, Shalom, …"

O God make the doorway of this church
wide enough to receive all who
need human love and fellowship

Thereafter, the Coast Path is signposted up a small lane. About a half mile up the lane the footpath is signposted off to the right. It will rejoin the same lane after a mile or so, cutting off a small amount of distance, but taking the path entirely off-road.

I must admit my heart does drop now when I encounter these off-road inland sections of the path, but I pressed on. On the map I could see that the footpath immediately diverged from another path, and this was exactly the case, so I took the leftmost, and larger, path, and continued up the hill. The views are spectacular (even if you are tired!), although you need to remember to look back sometimes.

After a while a sign announces it is ‘Coed Camlyn‘, and I think of the ‘Battle of Camlann‘ reported in one of the early documents about Arthur.  Sure enough, around the turn of the path is a small castellated tower, only made of concrete not stone, so probably not Arthurian in origin.

A sign on the tower says it is for pressure relief.  I know that down below there is a hydro-electric station driven from Trawsfynydd Lake; I assume that this tower is connected to the underground pipes so that, if for some reason the turbines seize up, there is somewhere for the water to go, like a giant toilet overflow.  Only this overflow is perhaps 15 feet in diameter: if thousands of gallons of water were to suddenly spurt out of this then where I am standing would be very wet indeed.

The path then heads down the hill and comes to where the twin water pipes, each around five or six feet in diameter, emerge from the ground and head down the hillside on their final approach to the turbine hall below. I can only imagine the power of the water flowing down these pipes rushing from the mountain above. A small building where they emerge says it houses high-pressure valves; high-pressure valves indeed, each one will be holding back several thousand tons of water.

After breaking my reverie, I return to the pathway, only to find a turning circle, the end of the line; it is a path to service the valve house. There is a small stile, but no onward path as the slope below is steep and thickly covered in bracken and brambles. I may have only been a few hundred yards from the power station, but I had to turn back. Looking again at the map I realised that the Camlyn tower was at the top of the hill I should have skirted to the south of; although I’d taken the leftmost branch at the beginning there must have been another path branching left further on.

Despite looking carefully all the way back to the road, and then scouting back once more on my tracks for a few hundred yards, I never found the missing sign. So I took the road instead, my initial misgivings, sadly, justified. Later I found the other end of the path, well signposted.

On the road back down the hills towards the power station, there is a picture postcard cottage beside the road. Only as you draw closer you see just behind the cottage, running beside its cottage garden, is an enormous water pipe, far larger than those I’d seen earlier, maybe 8 foot diameter.  I wonder if the dull rumble of water rushing through it keeps the cottage dwellers awake at night, or maybe scares away moles from their grass.

Down at the power station, Maentwrog, I chat to an engineer taking a fag break by the gateway.  He talks about the twin turbines driven by the two pipes, but has no idea what the single large pipe is for; it heads far away across the landscape, maybe to supply a new power station.

This plant is owned by Magnox, which is also responsible for running and decommissioning Britain‘s end-life nuclear power stations including those at Wylfa and Trawsfynydd.  I have a feeling this was a semi-random decision at the time the power industry was privatised. The old Magnox stations were a poisoned chalice that could not be sold off, just as the new planned nuclear stations can only be built if the government underwrites decommissioning. So they were retained in a government-controlled company – Magnox. The Scottish hydro stations went into their own company, but the few non-Scottish hydro stations didn’t fit anywhere, so were tossed into Magnox as well.

The Coast Path leads up to the final steep climb of the day. Partway up there is a red sign on a track branching to the right, ‘Path in dangerous condition’, but then a few yards later the Coast Path arrow indicates joining the very same track. I think, having walked the track, the danger sign is for something now past … but it did not inspire confidence.

The track (safely) leads past a small mountain lake, either artificially made or at least height managed by two small dams, and then back down the hillside, and, eventually, at 5pm, for the first time this day, on the Wales *Coast* Path I see the sea.  Then, a short time later, I am at the road leading to the southern end of the closed toll bridge, less than a mile away from where I started the day, seven hours previously.

Thereafter the path is on the flat. The expanse of Morfa Harlech stretches out towards the sea, but it is a nature reserve, so the Coast Path skirts its inland edge along the side of a dyke, not daring even to take the well-made track following along the seaward, and nature reserve, side.

Eventually you reach a small industrial unit and the Coast Path is signposted onto a straight and apparently endless concrete road, which is crossed periodically by other concrete roads. It feels as if it is the site of an demolished industrial plant, with concrete roads between the now-gone buildings. But then I notice that the raised grass between the banks is pockmarked with breather tubes, as if something is decaying below. I imagine anything from noxious chemicals forever poisoning the land, to abandoned war-time nerve agents.

Later, at the Lion in Harlech, I learn that this was a war-time site, but is now the county recycling centre.  The vented area is collecting methane. I had noticed a slight smell at one end of the concrete path, which was presumably near where new material was being buried, but nothing in the grassed vented areas, so it is clearly being well managed.  They also produce compost, which is then available free to gardeners, although it evidently took them a while to sort this out as the early batches had too much salmonella and so could not be used.

Coming into Harlech, the castle dominates everything, the railway station huddled apologetically below its grandeur. The castle is now about three quarters of a mile inland, standing high on a precipitous rock above a flat plain where the station and modern estates gather, rather like in Edinburgh, always looking upwards to the castle.  But it was not like this 800 years ago when the castle was first built. At that point it was on the coast, the precipitous rock face cliffs falling directly into the sea.

Of course further back again, the whole of Tremadoc Bay, indeed large chunks of the entire Cardigan Bay that stretches across the whole west of Wales, would have been dry land, drowned as the southern part of the {UK gradually sinks, seesaw-like as Scotland rises with post-ice-age rebound.

For Wales and even more so Cornwall with its huge drowned river valleys, it is like being the small child suspended in the air on one end of the seesaw, while your elder sibling sits on the far end: eventually the glaciers left Scotland, and as when the older child gets bored and jumps off the seesaw, the smaller child comes thumping down.

However, that is the overall state, and even in areas where the land is still sinking (a few centimetres a year), sand deposition can be far faster. Much of south eastern Snowdonia drains into Tremadoc Bay, down Glaslyn, tamed by the Ffestiniog Railway causeway, and down the Vale of Ffestiniog itself.  The rush of water after winter thaw, the lashing winter rain or sporadic summer downpour turns each mountain stream into foam-filled fountains, rushing down, rolling stone upon stone, ice-sharded fragments tumbled into dust, moraine soil, dumped by the receding glaciers scored from stream sides, washed down together into larger waterfalls and rushing rivers that gradually spread and slow until, youthful force spent, their last ageing strength is broken against the power of sea and tide. Like an old man putting down his burden, or maybe a walker taking off his rucksack at the end of the day, the assorted grits and silts, soil and stones are dumped, tide sorted, wave washed, wind scattered, grass gowned, thrown into unlikely dune ranges, or spread thin in salt marsh.

Thus is the land we stand on.  Built hard by toil and tumult, but, as easily, washed away by the next spring tide.

The main town of Harlech is up on the hillside, behind the castle.  There are slow roads that cut up diagonally across the hillside, but when you are at the station, directly below the castle, there are two roads up, the more obvious, and easier, one is a 25% slope, or 1 in 4 in old terms, and that is the gentle slope. There are some steps in parts for the walker, but if you drive up you need to believe in your low-gear torque.

It was after seven when I arrived, and most of the shops and cafés long closed.

At the beginning of the day I had wondered if I’d be able to make it all the way to the campervan at Tal-y-Bont, so it wouldn’t matter how late I was. However, this was still twelve miles away, so I would be trying to navigate the final parts in the dark. I was also so exhausted by this point, that I had decided simply to find somewhere to stay in Harlech, and set off first thing to continue south.

So, amongst the closed shops, I was scanning for a small hotel or B&B. It seemed a nice place to stay here, high overlooking the sea that had eluded me the whole day, with the mountains as backdrop, and castle in near focus.

A couple of restaurants were also closed, I guess still not high season, but at a crossroads a chalkboard advertises the Lion Hotel, which oddly has no name sign on the actual building, just a sign saying ‘Bass in Bottle’, a menu board and an Irish Tricolour.  There is scaffolding up, so maybe the pub sign is just temporarily taken down, and I forgot to ask why.

Ah yes, the other signage, a small hanging sign in the window, ‘No Vacancies’, but I went in anyway to ask if they knew anywhere else I could ask.

It had been a depressing day, hard work, wrong paths, aching feet and legs, and no sea.  Not a day where I felt I’d learnt anything of any significance, merely covering some miles that were on the official path, but would probably disappear from it once the toll bridge reopens.

But small kindnesses can change everything.

Although they had no rooms themselves, the lady behind the bar and a young man who was obviously connected with the pub started to discuss options, rang one place and, when another lady came in, she started to look up the phone number of another option on the internet … a laptop on top of the (not alight!) woodstove under the chimney breast.

Then they noticed the banner on my rucksack, and remembered when Christian Nook had come by as part of his all-Britain walk last year.  He had refused a bed for the night as he is rough sleeping to highlight ex-Forces homelessness, but they had given him use of a shower and a man from the village had taken him home for a meal, before he eventually slept in the covered alley that leads to the beer garden. Since then they have been keeping watch on his website and knew his progress.

They asked about my walk, gave me a drink and food, and the lady behind the bar gave me her night’s tips to go towards the charities.  When accommodation was proving hard and I considered a taxi to Tal-y-Bont, they reminded me that the last train had not yet left.

While waiting, the young man talks a little of a trek he took across one of the pilgrim routes in southern France.  He’d like to do the Spanish Camino some day too.  He belittled the tiny path signs in Britain compared to France where large markers were painted on roadsides and arrows painted on the track, none of our British pretty-prettiness.

Eventually I took the other road down the hill to the station, round the north side of the castle, at 40% not a slope I’d like to drive up, and walking down definitely better than walking up.

My feet still hurt, my muscles were still in knots, I was still tired all over, but my spirits, which had been depressed all day, were lifted by the kindness, interest and encouragement of The Lion.

a short day to start the second half, an ice cream parlour and quay-side bistro, a steam railway and a surreal village

7th June 2013: flickr  | audio | map

I come into Criccieth off the train from Porthmadog, there are not many trains a day, so it is definitely worth getting your timing right, but there are also buses.

Criccieth is a traditional seaside town, not of the Blackpool variety with wall to wall slot machines, but seaside guesthouses, prom, small cafés, which are clearly doing well, but do not appear ‘gentrified’.  Indeed maybe not so different now than in its Victorian heyday.

The castle dominates the town, you can see why it was built there, with sea cliffs and steep ascents to landward.  Unlike the other castles of North Wales this was built by the Welsh rather than built by the Normans to subjugate the Welsh.  However, after Edward 1‘s successful campaign in Wales, Criccieth fell to the English and remained that way until Owain Glyndŵr‘s glorious rebellion when the castle fell to siege aided by French and Irish ships.

Just below the castle is Cadwaladers Ice Cream shop.  I’m not sure how widely it is sold, but I certainly saw signs in cafés in Porthmadog saying ‘serves Cadwaladers‘.  After a little investigating amongst the staff, they thought it had been operating since the 1950s or maybe early 1960s, but looking at their web site it is 1927. Seeing the little shop reminded me of Thayers in South Wales.

Nowadays {{Thayers} is sold over a large area and has a factory, but when I was little it was served in only two places, a little kiosk on Penarth Pier and their shop in Wellfield Road, the next street to Bangor Street where I lived. From the back bedroom of our house, you could just see the dull-green-painted, two-storey building in the back yard of the shop which was where the Ice Cream was made until production moved to the factory in 1966.

I think they may have had Italian connections, but it is not like Italian ice cream, much lighter and milkier rather than thick creamy.  Gelato is good, especially stracciatella, but to my mind never as good as Thayers.  Their signature ice was plain dairy, which was pure white, and had no discernible vanilla flavour, and this in the days of virtually luminous yellow Wall’s and Lyons Maid vanilla ice cream blocks.  But they also served orange ice cream, not sorbet, which they made later, but ice cream.  You could eat in at the shop, take a cone, or buy blocks of ice cream to take home to either have in a bowl or cut in slices to eat between two rectangular wafers.

I would embarrass my parents, as when we went to a café, the waitress would say, "do you want ice cream," and I would answer, "is it Thayers?"  At this the waitress would scurry off to find out, despite my Mum and Dad‘s protestations, as they knew it would not be. A few minutes later the waitress would come back and say, "sorry it’s Wall’s," and very politely I would say, "no thank you then."

Cadwaladers signature ice cream is vanilla, but a very subtle one, virtually pure white. Of course, nothing can ever match Thayers for me, although nowadays it is not hard to find locally produced dairy ice creams sold in most areas of the country. However, Cadwaladers was very good ice cream :-).

I walk out of Criccieth along the beach (eating my ice cream). The formal Coast Path runs on a path the far side of the railway, but crosses over and mounts the headland just at the end of the beach. Maybe the beach route is inaccessible in parts at high tide, but today the sand stretches all the way to Black Rock.  You can almost go round Black Rock by clambering over the rocks, but the water the other side is just a little too deep for wading, at least chest height, so I follow the Coast Path along increasingly high and precipitous cliff and then inland, just a half a mile or so, before coming back down to Black Rock sands the other side of a campsite. On the way I pass a couple, and we stop for a few moments’ chat, where it turns out the man had just finished a Land’s End to John O’Groats cycle ride in the last few weeks.

Black Rock sands is wonderful, a mile and half of open sands, backed by dunes, hills and Snowdonia beyond, and looking across the estuary to Harlech and the Cader Idris range.  The sand is firm, so cars are parked and maybe in high summer it will be too busy, but today, even with all the sunshine, not densely parked.

Wandering along the water’s edge alongside pottering gulls, I wonder if I can wade across to the Harlech side, but then realise that I have simply waded a little tributary and the larger river runs close to the other side, so I follow the path of the end of the beach, and along a cliff path toward Porthmadog.

Coming into Borth-y-Gest, just before Porthmadog, I pass St Cyngar’s Church, a solid grey stone church, I guess made from the quarry on the far side of the Ffestiniog railway causeway.  A man sits in the churchyard; he tells me how his parents’ ashes came to be scattered here. Although his parents came from England, his sister married a Welshman and hence they ended up here. The church is so small, he said, that the coffin needed to be spun round to get down the aisle.  But it is clearly a lovely spot to be remembered at, looking out over the sea and mountains.

The Moorings Bistro I will pass soon is run by his nephew and his French-Canadian wife. "Tell them you’ve been talking to Steve‘s Uncle Tom," he said.

So, I do visit there for lunch and it is a lovely place … they even serve drinks in traditional dimpled pint mugs.  Evidently, one of Jamie Oliver‘s cafés serves using miniature half-pint versions, so rather than being the old man’s glass, they are now trendy!

I see the bistro is for sale, so if you fancy a change of life …

Porthmadog itself is more port than seaside, but also has that old market town feel, with traditional shops in the centre, and it is one of the stops on the Ffestiniog Railway where you can take a narrow gauge steam train up the Vale of Ffestiniog.  I see that the Coliseum Cinema is under threat and with a community group working to keep it open. As a child on seaside holidays, a trip to the cinema, the old time music hall or theatre, was one of the holiday treats.  With DVDs in holiday accommodation, and expectations of multiplex choice and seating, it must be hard to compete.

In Oban, where you get the ferry to Tiree, the cinema closed, but has been re-opened as a community enterprise, and so far, I believe, is being successful.  The tiny community-run Ringside Cinema on Tiree won a popular vote for funding for its innovative dual use of the cattle sale ring as a cinema; however it ultimately failed to attract sufficient numbers for regular screenings. This was partly because the cost of film hire means a small cinema cannot screen the ‘just released’ blockbuster, but it is also simply a matter of scale.

On an island of 750 people the number of people who can go out on a particular evening and are interested in a particular film is always bound to be small. In fact this is also true of the big city multiplexes; if you go to a film on any night, except the first few post-release nights, you find the auditorium virtually empty, it is just there are a lot of auditoria for the number of staff. It would be interesting to see the financial books of these large cinemas; I would guess that the benefits of having multiple screens reduces the per-customer costs sufficiently to make it break even, but the profits come from those few first screening nights, which a small cinema cannot afford.

For the seaside town cinema, the secret for sustainability must be to make the most of the complete ‘experience’, maybe making a virtue of the olde-worlde-ness of the venue, whilst offering more modern comfortable seating inside.

The walk from Criccieth was only short, as the previous day had been longer than I’d originally intended, but the latish start to sync with the late morning train meant I didn’t have time for a full day.  However, I decided to go on the extra few miles to Penrhyndeudraeth, starting up the Vale of Festiniog, where you have to cut five miles inland to the first river crossing at Maentwrog as the toll bridge below Penrhyndeudraeth does not take pedestrians. The bridge is in the process of being upgraded, so I hope this includes a pedestrian footway to shorten the route for future years.

The short way between Porthmadog and Penrhyndeudraeth takes you over the causeway carrying the Ffestiniog railway and old road, with what look like wildlife-rich marshlands behind.  Once upon a time the causeway will have destroyed the previous tidal estuary ecosystem, but a new one has taken its place. The path also takes you just past Portmeirion (but not into, you have to pay for that!), the surreal Latinate village, home of ‘The Prisoner‘ and flowery pottery.

Penrhyndeudraeth itself became the UK’s ‘first networked village’ in 1998, delivering internet access in a rural location, and then a few years later upgrading this using wireless links, rather like Tiree Broadband does on Tiree.