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

6th July 2013

miles completed: 877
miles to go: 181

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5th July 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

… and presumably his battery does not run out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4th July 2013

miles completed: 867
miles to go: 191

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3rd July 2013

miles completed: 863
miles to go: 195

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2nd July 2013

miles completed: 848
miles to go: 210

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We start to talk about reversing.

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

"Panic," he replies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Public Transport: one; Car Driver: nil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1st July 2013

miles completed: 841
miles to go: 217

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This gate to be kept clear at all times
Emergency Access

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed, partway along there is a warning notice saying:

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

It also says:

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

Ok, so maybe an element of strawberry jam too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

military heritage and maritime houses; bullocks, bridges, mud and swans; a bad takeaway with a glorious view

30th June 2013

miles completed: 813
miles to go: 245

The Cleddau Bridge rises high above the estuary, dominating the view east from the Brunel Quay in Neyland, where I had parked the van. The Coast Path rises up through the back streets of Neyland to a terrace overlooking a small park and the estuary beyond.  Against the metal railings a fire grate sits with scrap wood in it, in some surreal, unfathomable parody. The path then wends its way through scrubby woodland overlooking a smaller grey-mudded tidal estuary.

At one point I hear some whoops of delight and then some yells. A few moments later a rope swing appears and below it two boys peering down into the bracken below. I hear odd snatches:

"he just fell off"

"I saw his head for a moment, he was smiling"

"come out you f*****".

I wonder whether I should stop to check that their friend really is OK and is not lying down the bank with a broken leg. However, they seem to think he is just hiding, and, in the current climate, a lone man approaching young boys in the woods, however well intentioned, is likely to be misconstrued. How bad would it have to be before that reticence would be overcome? Would I have to hear screams, see blood?

After a while the woodland walk comes out beside the main road, and for a moment I think right by the Cleddau Bridge before I realise that while substantial, this is still a relatively small river bridge. However, the ‘small’ river it rides high above manages its own marina of vessels and a swan left dry on the mud when the tide went out.

As I criss-cross, taking photographs of either side, a cycling family passes with a combination of young children on small bikes, and the smallest child on one of those tag bikes behind the mother. The road is clear, so I step off the footpath to let them pass. How far are they going?  I don’t see them again, but I can’t imagine them crossing the Cleddau Bridge so assume they took some side road.

Coming to the Cleddau Bridge itself, I guess I would have been more instantly awed if I hadn’t already walked the Severn Bridge. However, it is still pretty long and pretty high.  One of my first sightings from on high was the Brunel Quay and my campervan sitting there, waiting for my return. Directly below, a little hamlet sits in the shadow of the bridge, I guess originally gathered around the old ferry jetty before the bridge was built.

It is only afterwards, reflecting, that I realise this is a pure clapper-style bridge, with no suspension cables above, or supporting arches below, just long, self-supporting spans between tall concrete pillars.

Where the roadway passes over the pillars there are maintenance access structures sitting off the side, although only projecting a few feet further than the carriageway; still, the wind made high pitched howling through them. By the time I got to the middle, the light breeze felt like a heavy wind. A cyclist passed and I was glad I was walking rather than being buffeted on a bicycle.

I almost feel guilty passing the tollbooths without paying, then turn right at the roundabout into a housing estate, part of Llanion. The estate pub, the ‘Cleddau Bridge‘ looks out over its namesake and sports a cannon matching one on the public picnic area near the bridge. This area has been an area of abandoned forts and weaponry, from Martello towers and Napoleonic forts to Second World War gun emplacements and a pre-First World War popgun. So it is no great surprise that the National Park offices are in an ex-MOD property; although to look at it I would have said wealthy Victorian industrialist or Lord Mayor‘s house, definitely admin and command not plain barracks.

As I come down to the quayside at Pembroke Dock I suddenly realise that the houses, which I had been passing by as a standard Victorian terrace, are in fact all slightly different.  While now mostly rendered, this appears to be a classic waterside accretion of cottages, even to the extent of a half-sized house being squashed into a gap, just like the ‘smallest house’ in Conwy.

A Martello tower stands very slightly out to sea at the corner of the walls of Pembroke Dock, with windows, which I assume are really for guns, facing in all directions. I don’t know whether this is for symmetry, for subjugating rioters or for denying invaders free passage even once they have landed.

On the walls of the naval dockyard are brass plaques commemorating different aspects of the history of the docks, from oil tanks burning in the Blitz to payday for the thousands of workers who were once employed here.

Following on up the road, the path cuts into more scrubby woodland before emerging at a fort that covers the top of the hill. Once a major garrison, it now stands derelict and fenced off.

I wiggle through the back streets of Pembroke Dock and then find myself in a combination of open farmland, lanes and yet more scrubby woodland. Twice I missed signs, but did not go too far out of the way before realising.

Going through a field of bullocks I’m reminded of ‘Walking Home‘, Simon Armitage‘s account of his walk down the Pennine Way, which I am reading at present. Armitage writes two lists during his preparation entitled ‘Not Afraid Of’ and ‘Afraid of’.  Under the former are bulls, but under the latter bullocks. I have discovered that bullocks are as timid as anything; if you even take a step towards them they disappear into the distance. However, there is something definitely spooky about the way they turn to watch you, and then gradually walk, almost in unison, towards you, like a four-legged zombie movie.

My only concern for safety with bullocks would be if there happened to be someone else coming the opposite way in a confined area (such as a clifftop path); the bullocks are so skittish the approach of a hiker can set them stampeding away … and I wouldn’t like to meet them coming from the opposite direction.

Eventually I emerge in the midst of a small estate above the shores of the Pembroke River and as I turn the bend in the road, Pembroke Castle appears, dominating the rivulet-creased, tidal river mouth. The path opposite the castle is clearly also tidal, from the pieces of seaweed strewn on it and the path-side sculptures. The bridge across the river here is also a tidal defence and river weir as the waters beyond are still, high and spreading, a swan gracefully sailing across the surface, in stark contrast to the sticky mud of the tidal-side, which is filled with an unreasonable number of abandoned oily-grey-coated bicycles.

I wonder at the old meaning of North Gate Street, ‘historically known as Darklin‘, but, it being too late for a search in the local archives, I opt instead for a half of one of the pump draught beers at the Royal George, and ringing for a taxi from Castle Cars to take me back to the van at Neyland. The driver is very knowledgeable about the Coast Path as a lot of their business is connected to it, including lots of baggage transfers. He tells me about the new route along old tank routes where it skirts the Castlemartin range.

It is too late to think about campsites or accommodation, so I head back through Pembroke and on to the coast, stopping at the car park at West Fairwater, where other campervans are also parked, and eat an Indian takeaway. It is not the best: the answer, "just five minutes", when I had asked how long to wait, should have given it away. The chicken seemed to have been microwaved to a leather-like texture before being mixed with the sauce. However, the glorious view of waves and the western horizon more than compensated.

tidal detours and delays, the unforgiving sea, caged paths and a town with good taste

29th June 2013

miles completed: 807
miles to go: 251

I want to walk from Dale to Neyland, just before the Cleddau Bridge crosses the river at Milford Haven. The first bus to Dale from Milford Haven is at 9:22 to get to Dale just before 10am, but to catch this I must get the 8:15 from Neyland. Unsure of how long it will take and where the parking and bus stop is at Neyland, I leave all the roof blinds open to wake me and set the alarm early, and am on the road at 6:30am. Food will not be a problem this day as I intend to get a good breakfast at the beach café in Dale.

On the radio as I drive there is a piece about a private innovation park in Caerphilly, where the owner talks very cogently about the needs of entrepreneurs and in particular managing a lot of the paperwork. This is something I wish universities could manage better.

At Lancaster, before we licensed the technology, the University encouraged Jo and I to set up a company to exploit Firefly, the intelligent lighting we had developed, but instantly you are dropped into a world of forms for Companies House, Inland Revenue, etc., many of which are nil returns, or simple copying, but take time to make sense of. I had done all this years before with aQtive and vfridge, but then with enough venture funding to pay an accountant and lawyer to help us manage. It would be so simple for the university to act as company secretary and take this load, literally a few hours a year for someone who knows the ropes, and let the academic/entrepreneur get on with developing the core products and business.

Another very relevant item was about a new ‘click and collect’ point at St David’s Centre, Cardiff.  This means that you can order things online and then collect them in the city centre in your lunch break, rather than come home to one of those postcards saying "we tried to deliver, but you were out". This was precisely one of the services I advocated for the electronic village shop twenty years ago!

Finally, also very relevant given the themes of energy use and transport that have recurred in the walk, a news report about the government’s infrastructure plans, which are based on various projections including a year on year increase in car use. This sounds sensible, whether or not desirable; we all know there are more and more cars on the road. Only that is wrong. Car use in the UK maxed out in 2002 at about 500 cars/vans per 1000 people and 8000 miles per car. The same thing happened in the US five years earlier. It turns out that at some point pretty much everyone who wants a car has a car, and they drive pretty much as many miles as they want. From an ecological point of view we may want to reduce this amount by improving public transport, but irrespective of this, the numbers are not growing. Yet the government wants to build more roads.

Brunel Quay, where I park the van, is so named because Neyland grew up when Brunel intended to create a transatlantic port at the end of the Great Western Railway. Although the grand vision never materialised, the town is here because of that vision.

An information board also talks about a rare hexagonal post box, and as I go to look for the bus stop, there it is just across the road.

I have plenty of time as it only took me 45 minutes to drive from St Davids, so I write for a bit, but of course write for too long and in the end pack my rucksack in a hurry and rush for the bus.

The bus driver says the easiest change for Dale is at Tesco. I wonder if it has one of those little in-store cafés, to get a cup of tea, or even a quick breakfast to save time at Dale, but sadly there is just a coffee machine … and by ‘coffee machine’ I mean ‘coffee’ – no tea.

At the Tesco tobacconist I buy a newspaper. The man serving asked where I was walking today and, when I said Dale, told me he knows it well as his parents originally came from there.

"I do pilgrimages every year," he said, "one to St Davids, one to Fishguard and one where you went yesterday".

"I didn’t know I was on a pilgrimage route," I say, and he replies, "no, just mine."

A personal pilgrimage to places of individual significance.

So eventually, I get to Dale and have the long (since 5am) anticipated breakfast at the ‘Boathouse Café and Shop‘. Leisurely eating and more writing mean it is almost eleven before I leave, and I set off for the causeway to cross the estuary.

On the water bright-sailed windsurfers were already out and a few small yachts already launched from the slipway. Beyond them, in the wide bay, more yachts and leisure boats bobbed under the sun with the refinery across the waters a heat-mist-softened backdrop.

However, when I get to the start of the causeway there is a sign explaining it is only crossable within three hours of low tide. I knew that would be the case when I got to the stepping stones at Sandy Haven, but had not realised that this crossing was also tidal. I asked a local man as I was walking in sandals and didn’t mind getting my feet a little wet, but he said no, the water on top of the bridge and stepping stones leading to it would be up to my thighs and with a strong tidal flow, which would sweep you off your feet. It was still half an hour before high tide, so even if I tackled it a little before the recommended time, it would still be several hours before I could continue. If I had realised I could have driven to Dale very early and done the tidal crossings then taken a bus back at the end of the day.

It was only a three mile detour and about half on roads where I would walk quickly, so I set off.

An hour or so later I looked down from the other side, such a short distance that takes so long. I imagine people in earlier times, before any of these bridges, waiting for low tide to attempt fording rivers or having to push and cut one’s way through undergrowth and forests upstream. The odd extra few miles seem far less significant.

In fact, the way had been uneventful, starting out along the road to go upstream and then through paths and farmland back downstream again. There was a large field that I at first thought was set-aside land left to grow as flowery meadow, but then realised was flax.

Although there are plenty of signs in this area, the alternate high-tide/low-tide paths made signage confusing; not for the first time I wished there was a distinction on signs between clockwise and anticlockwise routes. I know it seems obvious, and is when you are on the actual coast, but inland, even a short way, it is not always clear from which direction you are re-meeting a path. This was not helped by the exit from the large flax field. I had seen a farm gate, but there was no hint of a sign, so I scouted the length of the field, finding no other way. Happily a farmer in the next field saw me looking puzzled and directed me back to the gate. Sure enough, hidden from view until you were right by it, was a stile and sign nestled amongst the hedge.

The path now runs along the clifftop, soft red sandstone, thickly covered with vegetation. Sometimes clear views over the seas, where a boat sends hose sprays into the air, the wind-spread water like translucent insect wings. I assume this is some sort of testing of equipment, maybe a fireboat or one for dispersing oil in the case of a spillage. At other times the shrubby bushes and trees rise around you, shutting you off from the sea and all but the way ahead and heat-risen flies.

At one small bay, Monk Haven, there are the remains of an old wall across its entrance, a huge gateway in the middle, but one end curiously ending, not meeting the far side of the bay. If I recall correctly, I was later told that this had been part of old abbey lands, so the wall would have marked out the bay as belonging to the abbey, but I still don’t understand why it appears incomplete.¹.

After passing more old wartime buildings and guidance beacons for the ships coming into Milford Haven, I come to Sandy Haven.

At Sandy Haven there is another tidal crossing. It is ten past two when I arrive, and based on the tide tables it should be crossable in forty minutes. A man is coming up from the shore with his dog, so I ask him where the stepping stones are.

"There," he says, pointing at the river between the opposite bank and where we are standing. It does not look hopeful, but he assures me that the tide is going out quickly; a boat that is now aground was afloat just a short while earlier when he was throwing a ball for his dog.

He tells me about the area, how the ships would come in his father’s day, beach here at low tide and the horses and carts would come to unload and load them. The stranded remains of some of these river boats can still be found a little upstream.

The tides move fast; even as we speak the boat that had only recently come aground is a full ten feet from the water’s edge, and waves can be seen above where the stepping stones lie just below the surface. Although I say waves, it is almost the opposite, a large standing wave that leaves the surface smoother than the surrounding waters, just like the slightly oily streak after a boat has passed and the bow waves settled, or one of those long-exposure photographs that smooths out wave or waterfall.

One day the man and a friend went out in a small boat on a calm day like today, but then the tide turned and an offshore wind came in and it was all they could do not to be washed out to sea or flipped over into the sea. They made for some shelter, but then, in a moment, it stopped again, as if the wind and rushing waves had never been.

Another friend had not been so lucky. Three young men from the village had been out fishing. It was near midnight as they made their way back along the shore and up the cliff path. Then a freak wave struck, dragging two of them into the sea. One managed to grab onto the rocks from where his friend hoisted him to safety using a fishing rod. The other was lost, his body washed ashore the next day.

The stepping stones are almost clear, a few bare-footed children in bathing costumes are already playing on them, and I see a couple on the far side tentatively waiting for the last of the water to clear. I sit on a slipway and write, and then notice the couple have crossed with their dog, and I start chatting to the man about dogs and walking, until the woman begins to look impatient to be off.

The way now leads past the large oil terminal to the west of Milford Haven. I am expecting to be walking, maybe, on a service road, alongside a chain linked fence, looking onto tangles of bright painted pipe-work. Instead, the path is more of a heavily wooded cliffside path, often quite overgrown as it is clearly not well trodden.

I have been told, and would have guessed anyway, that most people walking the coastal path stop at Sandy Haven and go straight to Angle, the sandy bay opposite, skipping a day of walking past oil terminal, power station and road bridge. However, I am on a mission, treading every mile of the Coast Path, pretty or not.

In fact, you can hardly tell that you are close to anything industrial, except when occasionally you see across the water to the oil refinery at Pembroke. This reinforces the slightly ethereal, other-worldly feel of the industry here, which struck me when I first glimpsed Milford Haven and Pembroke from the path in St Brides Bay. The towers and tanks are frequently seen at a distance, in a slight haze, as if a mirage or projected in Victorian theatre illusion, but when you get close there is nothing solid, nothing to touch or see clearly.

I often walk quickly, because the afternoon heat has brought out the flies in the dense undergrowth, and, if I stop, they gather quickly.

After about a mile of this, the jetty for the terminal begins to appear, with vertical stacks that reminded me of the missiles rising in the Stingray introduction, "anything can happen in the next half hour".  A sign says, ‘Danger Keep Out, unsafe structures & Deep Excavations’, and some sort of concrete foundations can be seen. I don’t know whether this is to do with past oil activity, perhaps semi-sunken tanks, or with wartime batteries.

Eventually I do start to see parts of a chain linked triple razor-wired fence and oil tanks beyond. It is real.

Then there is a place where the oil and gas pipes cross the path to make their way out to the loading jetties. The fences become more imposing, tall green metal paling with electric fencing atop, and the path drops below the concrete jetty and then rises back on concrete steps the far side.

Beyond this the path runs for some time along concrete and tarmac paths amongst shrubby woodland before emerging past a fence topped with medieval-looking wheeled spikes, and into the rather superior housing at the edge of Gilliswick Bay and the outskirts of Milford Haven.

Gilliswick Bay is the home of Pembrokeshire Yacht Club, so boatyards of leisure craft sit on the shoreline whilst oil tankers pass through the wide reaches of, according to my map, the ‘Man of War Roads‘.

I am now in a built-up area, steps lead into Hakin. I was told here was just one ‘rough’ area of Milford Haven, and I can remember it began with ‘H’, but there are two areas to the west of Milford Haven, Hakin towards the sea and Hubberston behind it, and I cannot recall which it was. The steps lead to a point where on the left appears to be council housing and to the right a private housing estate. A car passes, one of those black 1940s taxi-cab-style cars that my Dad drove when I was little.

The houses of Hakin are individual. I see a tile-fronted house, another with a steep, stepped, slate roof that would have looked more at home in the Alps, or maybe Holland, and another with a sort of concrete bridge leading to a first floor garage; goodness knows the fire and building regulations for this.

Coming into Milford Haven docks, where I had waited for the bus at Tesco in the morning, I pass the Cleddau Community Church in top-floor premises above a warehouse building, and in the water ‘Jenna’s Island Barge for hire’. The latter is a flat-bottomed barge with a crane on it. I have seen similar things before, but did not know they were called ‘island barges’.

Strictly the Coast Path leads one street in from the quayside (why?), but I ignore that and walk the quay, to see the boats and in hope of a café. I am satisfied in both with forests of yacht sails and a cheese and ham toastie é with salad, positively healthy.

Looking at the map now, I can see that the ‘proper’ path is through the shopping street at the top of the hill above the quay. As I passed off the quayside, there was a path leading up the hill, but it passed closer to the waterside, initially down a wide path that may have been a disused railway line, but then along a less salubrious public footpath behind houses, where, from the abandoned cans, the local teenagers go to drink their cider and beer.

Eventually I come out into what appears to be another of those watersheds between council housing and private housing; on a corner on one side a pub with washing hanging in its yard, on the other a general store and off-licence. Outside the latter was a man in what appeared to be a full suit and a lady in an evening gown, but I assumed the latter was really some sort of summer dress, until rounding a corner and starting down a lane, I see the Pill Social Club and a bridal party about to enter their reception. One of the bridesmaids looks at me as I take a photograph, a "don’t mess with us" look on her face.

Coming now down the hillside again, towards the water, four boys accost me, two with home-made bow and arrow in their hands, every bit like William and the Outlaws.

"Where are you going to?" one asks.

"Cardiff," I reply.

"That’s a long way," he remarks, and then one of his friends adds, "five miles".

"A little further than that," I correct.

"Can we come too?" they ask.

"I’m afraid not," I say, "and it’s a long way so I’d better go on."

The road crosses the river at Castle Pill, near the site (from the map) of an old castle. A small group of houses stand clear of the river on tall retaining walls, a slipway between and boats sit on the mud below. The path stays with the road as it cuts steeply up the hill the far side, before cutting across inland farmland to skirt the next oil refinery. Partway, I pass a junk-filled farmyard, with some piece of machinery that looks at a distance as if it is a gun. The reason for this becomes obvious; it is a gun, a 60 or 80mm gun that would maybe have sat on the foredeck of a coastal military vessel during war, now rusted and (I assume!) unusable.

I see the oil terminal approach, its massive tanks standing tall above the farmland, but again, as I get close it disappears, with only a rare glimpse of rusty metal palings and triple razor wire to hint at its presence. Large white and black river signs help the ships to navigate the channels, like those I’d seen the day before near Dale, and then, in occasional glimpses, the brightly coloured pipework, blue and orange/red, of the loading jetty appears.

Getting closer to where the pipes run out to the jetty, security tightens with CCTV cameras above double layers of fencing and then, like something in airport security, a metal tunnel, electric fencing to either side and above, to lead you over the lines of pipe that run beside one another down the hillside and out to sea.

The secure walkway reminds me a little of the An Turas installation beside the ferry pier on Tiree, except that here the metal walls and floor make a deep groaning as I walk across; below my feet, unseen, thousands of gallons of petrol and cubic metres of gas flow past every second.

A little further on a bush breaches security, its trunk and branches knitting back and forth through the ageing chain link.

Then another security bridge over the second pipe run. It is slightly less major, a simple chain link above and to the sides, and metal grating beneath your feet, you can see the pipes through the gaps. Many relatively thin pipes make their way up and down the hillside. I’m not sure of the difference between the two pipe runs and the different levels of security, except that this one appears to be private and the other port authority.

A little further again and a final security bridge, but this time without even a top cover, just chain link sides and wide-gapped metal mesh running over a road leading to the facility. The view down through the metal grid to the road below could be disturbing for those with vertigo. The man with the dog and impatient wife at Sandy Haven had mentioned a place where the dog was scared to cross and had to be carried; perhaps this is it.

Eventually, more woody paths, wider and more trodden as we approach civilisation, lead to Hazelbeach and Llanstadwell, ribbon settlement along the waterside leading towards Neyland. Highlights include ‘Jones Casa’, in appropriate Mediterranean style, a beautiful racing-car green VW camper and jaunty angled gravestones of St. Tudwal’s church.  Like Dale church it has one of those vertical half-steps part way along the tower that looks almost as if a narrow tower and wider tower are superimposed, although this is unrendered stone.

And I almost forgot the binary house 111.

Neyland itself has a small prom and beach to the west before coming to Brunel Quay, where I started the day and the van is parked, on the east side. On the beach a family potter, the mother and daughter picking things from amongst the pebbles, and the boy kicking at a smouldering mound, I’m not sure whether from a beach barbecue they had lit or the remains of a forgotten fire they had come across.

Father stands looking on, then, as I pass, shouts a greeting; I didn’t catch the words, but I wave and say hello back.

"You look cool," the woman shouts.

I like the people of Neyland. They have good taste.

And so, eventually, past a trio of flags – Union Jack, Welsh Dragon and Yellow Smilie, and a Masonic Hall, back to Brunel Quay, the red postbox and the van, and in time for a last fish and chips at St Davids.

1. The wall is listed, according to the British Listed Buildings website, and according to ‘Blue Sea Surf‘ it marked the boundary of the Treewarren estate[back]

candles for peace and fortifications for war, a Twitter contact and a volunteer coastwatcher, a tantalising isthmus and a giant popgun

28th June 2013

miles completed: 801
miles to go: 267

I have to get up early to drive to Dale in time to catch the bus. I’m not expecting anywhere to buy food this day, so call into Nisa to stock up, mainly with near out-of-date half-price things as I’m planning to eat them all today.

On the radio as I drive there are reports first about Balsam Bashing in the Dee valley, trying to get volunteers activated to attack the ‘alien’ species that are devastating the indigenous ecosystem. I have spotted significant amounts of Himalayan Balsam as I’ve walked around, often in unexpected places, far from gardens or built up areas from where you’d expect it to spread. As I heard it, I recall the ‘Aliens’ notice near St Dogmaels.

The other major item was a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, published that day, which looked at the items needed for ‘basic living’. It found these items, food, heating, etc., had gone up 25% since the beginning of the recession, far more than the headline inflation figure; that is the inflation rate for the poorest is far greater than that for the richer.

They interviewed someone high up in the Citizens Advice Bureau, and a working mother who is earning £16,000 a year, but also volunteering to give advice to many worse off still. She said there was nothing left to cut, the things they were wanting were not holidays or other luxuries, but simply to be able to afford to keep warm. I think of George Osborne, with his £4 million fortune and £10 burger, for whom austerity will mean choosing a slightly less vintage wine. In South Africa in the apartheid years the white government could not conceive of life for the black majority. Here it is not colour that divides, but in so many ways our government is just a different species to those who are suffering most.

A few days later, in the Western Mail, there is an article (Western Mail, Sat 29th June 2013, page 1:’Scurvy and rickets on rise in poor-diet Wales‘; and page 5: ‘Diets “worse than in the war” bring back scurvy and rickets’) that says scurvy and rickets are on the increase in Wales, diseases of malnutrition that had seemed to be a thing of the distant past, but now re-emerging as nutrition is worse than during the years of wartime rationing.

Having parked, and failed to find where I put the Garmin after changing its batteries the night before (later turned out to be at the bottom of the rucksack where I’d put it so it wouldn’t get lost), I catch the bus at Dale.

On the bus, the driver and two regulars exchange banter. As I’ve seen before, these coastal walkers/tourist buses are a lifeline also for locals. The two ladies are from Milford Haven and off for a day out (cup of tea!) at St Davids, so, like me, they change buses at Marloes, but we are now further from their regular haunts, so they do not know the next driver. They tell me that they know the first driver’s brother even better as he drives one of the buses to Milford Haven that they catch all the time.

At St Brides I go into St Bridget’s Church. The notice on the door states that it is always open during daylight hours and says:

Come in – Make yourself at home – Have a look round
Light a candle as you reflect and pray

So I do.

At the back are two windows, one of St David and one of St Bridget. St David is in full ecclesiastical garb and holding his cathedral cradled in his right arm, as bishops are always portrayed in stained glass windows. Given that, according to the stories, St David was an ascetic and wore animal skins, the bishop’s robes seemed a slight reconstruction. St Bridget‘s robes were no less ornate, but I don’t know her story. Instead of a cathedral, in her right hand she carries a lamp.

Looking to the left, behind the solid stone font, is a window portraying Christ the shepherd, and he holds a lamb in his arms. I was reminded of Skirwith Church, nestling under Cross Fell in the Eden Valley, where we lived for many years. Wainwright is a little scathing about its tower as a small steeple is attached to the top of a square tower; the story is that the landowner was miffed because a neighbour’s church was a little higher, so added the steeple in a fit of ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’.

I had also heard the main window at Skirwith disparaged for being twee as it represented Jesus with children gathered round, which reminded me of the Sunday School pictures portraying the same scene. The images of Jesus were clean-shaven and blond-haired, set against a verdant English-like landscape; all very Victorian. But, however inaccurate in terms of clothes and very non-Middle Eastern physiognomy and landscape, still they were a great reminder of the way Jesus invited the children to come, and being too young to care about tweeness or historical precision, they said that I too was welcome.

However, my favourite part of the Skirwith window was the way that Jesus held a small child in his arms. He stood, his right arm bent in exactly the same stylised gesture you see for bishops in stained glass everywhere, and indeed St David in the window at the church here in St Brides, but instead of a cathedral, a small child sits there. What a potent image for the one who said that we all have to become again like children if we are to come to the Kingdom of God.

Inside the church are various notices about the candles; one seemed particularly pertinent:

Pilgrim
as you pass by
lighting a candle
of hope
for
peace
in our land
and throughout the world

Pray for
peace in St Bridget‘s Ireland
peace in a world of conflicts
peace in your own heart

and may the peace of God
go with you
as you leave this hallowed place

I think of the news: moves to arm the favoured rebels in Syria, US troops redeployed in Iraq to prevent weapons getting to the less favoured rebels, patriot missiles arriving in Jordan; pray indeed.

There is also is a sonnet to “the Madonna of the Cherries“.  From the words, this is clearly a multicoloured statue or window, but I cannot see anything that matches the description in the church.

Outside the church I meet a couple coming in.  They are experienced walkers, having done the Camino trail in Spain. They ask if I have a religious aspect to my walk, am I visiting sites along the way? I always find this hard to answer as there are so many personal, professional, spiritual and secular aspects and, as in day-to-day life, there is no clear boundary: they are all life, and now they are all the walk.

I can’t remember how it came up, maybe the man saw the word ‘poetry’ (maybe I should have put ‘podiatry’) on my leaflet or backpack, but it turned out that the lady had just that morning started a poem about the current crisis for those in poverty based around the metaphor of a circus. They had also heard the news about the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, and shared in the sadness, tinged with anger at the powers that make this worse for people, not least the imposition of the ‘bedroom tax’.

Back down at the water of St Brides, I notice that the rock on this side of the bay looks like old red sandstone, and have since got a small booklet, ‘The Geology of Pembrokeshire‘ to verify this. I think the black, slag-like rocks the other side of the bay are just the same rock weathered and discoloured.

The path out of St Brides is fast and easy, some worn-down sections, but always wide enough not to force heel to toe walking. I think I will lap up the miles today as there appears to be nothing along the way but a couple of car parks and public toilets, so nothing to report and a short day blog as well.

About a mile from St Brides I meet three women coming the other way. I recall seeing them at the St Brides car park pulling on boots and rucksacks. Evidently I spent long enough there for them to walk to where they were going and come back.

We pass and, a few moments later, one of them calls out, “are you Alan?”

It is Jan, a local teacher and keen walker, who, she explains, as been following me and other Coast Pathers on Twitter.

One of her co-walkers is a student at Trinity St David at Carmarthen, the old art college there that merged with Lampeter to make the current institution. The other works on disability support, and says she has been looking at wheelchair access to the Coast Path. One of her clients is an amputee, who might find it a little easier. But I’ve been noticing along the way when there appear to be wheelchair-friendly sections, and they are few and far between.

Perhaps because it is out of season, the majority of people I have met along the way have been retirees, from early sixties to late seventies. All of these clearly enjoy walking, but will become less able at some stage. I think about the discussion of mobility scooters at the Solva café, or the couple I met a few days earlier, where the lady was finding it hard going and said it would probably be the last long walking holiday.

Clearly some parts of the Coast Path will, by their nature, be tough and inaccessible, but creating disability-friendly sections will also mean they are elderly friendly, family with pushchair friendly, and, thinking about health agendas, novice walker friendly.

The day before I had wondered whether I’d have time to get further, either as far as Martin’s Haven, or where the Coast Path comes within half a mile of Marloes. This was all dependent on catching the last bus back to St Davids. In the end I’d stopped at St Brides, but I wondered how easy it would have been to find the right point to leave the path. In fact, there was a very clear finger post to Marloes, and in general I’ve been impressed with the off-path signage in Pembrokeshire.

Although this was the closest point to Marloes village, it is called Musselwick Sands, whereas Marloes sands are on the west side of the peninsula and slightly further from Marloes itself.

After this it is another short walk to Martin’s Haven where the boat trips leave for Skomer and Skokholm islands. The whole area is a marine nature reserve and Skomer is home to a large puffin population. Puffins are such glorious birds and always feel as if they would be more at home on the pages of a medieval bestiary than a modern bird guide.

I’ve only seen puffins on Staffa island near Iona off the coast of Mull. The girls were maybe six and eight, and we were on a holiday on Mull in our old VW campervan. We camped near Fionnphort and took the boat to Staffa. As is the normal pattern for visitors, we first went down to Fingal’s Cave, which I knew about from Mendelssohn‘s overture, the only piece of classical music I knew well as I’d studied it for my ‘O’ Level Music exam.  After clambering over the massive hexagonal columns of frozen lava, we went back up to the clifftop and across to where the puffins nest.

Despite, or maybe because of, the large numbers of boat-trippers, like ourselves, the puffins seem fearless and you can approach to within a few yards of where they sit at the clifftop, waiting to plunge down into the sea below. Maybe you can approach too close. Miriam, with her camera held to her eye, and oblivious of the cliff edge, walked blindly towards them. I didn’t dare move to grab her or say anything too loud for fear of startling her. Happily our gentle beckonings eventually worked.

I knew of the puffins on Staffa, although I’d never seen them, from my last year at university. I had a ‘spare’ year as I’d already completed the necessary Mathematics exams and toyed with various things, maybe a final year of the Computing Tripos or Theology, although I’d have struggled with the Greek or Hebrew language element of the latter.   In the end I opted for the post-grad Statistics Diploma; my heart is in pure mathematics, but I thought it would help ground me in more practical aspects of mathematics. My project for this was in cooperation with the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, looking at early growth patterns for young puffin chicks and their impact on eventual survival. Sadly I did not get to do any field work, I was just given the numbers, but I recall that the data on the birds came from two sites, one was Staffa and the other in Wales, I think Skomer.

At Martin’s Haven I chatted with three folks from Birmingham, who, like me, were admiring a huge boat winch. I’ve seen and photographed many of these around the coast; they are as ubiquitous as lime kilns, but this was the biggest by far, its thick cable still reeled in. We talked about the mechanism, the multiple levels of gearing so that a single person could drag up a very heavy boat, the ratchet to prevent it slipping back, and a large flat surface wheel, like a pulley in an old watermill, that we took to be where a leather strap would act as a brake. However, there were bits of the mechanism for which we could not work out the purpose – very frustrating!

We also talked briefly about the Coastguard Station on the top of the headland above Martin’s Haven. I wondered if it were volunteer manned like the one I saw in Anglesey; they didn’t know but had chatted with the person on watch there, who had a kettle and things, but had evidently run out of water. Happily it was near watch changeover time, so he wouldn’t have long to wait for his cup of tea.

They also told me that there was a small shop just a few yards up the road, which sold cups of tea. The path led past the bottom of the road, so I would have otherwise passed it by. The shop was obvious and well marked if you came down the hill from the car park, but not if you are going past on the footpath; an ‘off path’ destination can be as little as twenty yards if it is not marked.

The shop is run by some sort of trust and mainly sells souvenirs and information about Skomer, Skokholm and Grassholm islands.

At the base of the hill is another small, unmanned information centre, run I think by the Countryside Council for Wales, about the marine conservation area, with one of those interactive exhibitions that must have cost a lot, but leaves you thinking ‘so what’, and knowing far less than a simple information board.

I do wonder too at the fact that these two are so close and yet not interconnected in anyway. I know they will be different bodies, different budgets, different priorities, but …

At the shop I get my cup of tea, a paper cup from a machine, but a real tea bag and, most important, real milk, as the machine just has a ‘hot water’ option and the staff at the shop provide the tea bag and milk. They talk enthusiastically about the volunteers at the Coastguard Station, and so I decide to take the short excursion up the hill.

I see the blue uniformed duty officer, Jo, looking through telescopes out the windows. When I tentatively knock on the door, she invites me in and tells me a bit about the station. Some years ago, as the larger ships all got radios, the manned coastguard lookouts around the coast were becoming increasingly redundant, or at least not cost effective. The decision was made to close them.

Within a week of the closures, within a short distance of one of the abandoned stations, a small boat, one without a radio, was lost and two people drowned.

This was not enough to reverse the decision, as in any large enterprise every financial decision carries risks including fatal ones. But as a response a voluntary organisation was set up, the National Coastwatch Institute, who man the old coastguard stations, some on a 24/7 basis.

They watch for dangerous situations and keep logs of small craft passing. The logs are particularly useful if a boat is subsequently reported missing as its last location and course can be determined. Jo tells me of a recent case when a man in a sea kayak was late returning and his wife reported this to the Coastguard. They contacted the NCI lookout, who was able to see a kayak matching the description. An inshore craft was then able to go out to verify that this was the man, and that he was simply delayed, not in trouble.

They can also keep an eye on the large tankers that anchor in St Brides Bay in case they drag their anchor or in case an unscrupulous captain decides to clean out his tanks in the bay.  As this rich and sensitive marine environment is right next to a large oil and gas refinery, it is especially important to watch out for any potential pollution risks.

The NCI has no direct powers; for example, they cannot call out a lifeboat. However, they are in constant touch with the Coastguard and are able to report dangerous situations to them, or, as in the case of the kayak, may be asked to look out for something, or keep a watch on any developing situation.

As this station, and I’m sure most others, is in a remote and wildlife-rich location, many of the volunteers are also interested in wildlife, and this station, Wooltack Point, is particularly popular with birdwatchers. Jo, however, is a botanist, and indeed considered an academic career, but decided that, while she enjoyed the actual botany, the academic writing was not for her.

Having visited the Coastguard Lookout, I felt I might as well walk around the rest of the point, even though the Coast Path bypasses it. I was fascinated by the high bank that runs along the narrow neck of land that separates the headland from the mainland and guess it is an old earthwork. Looking later on the map I can see it is indeed marked ‘fort’. It is clearly an excellent location, a small wall allowing a large area to be secure. Although it is now remote it was once an important centre of population.

It has been a morning, and indeed early afternoon, of interesting conversations, but my first four hours of walking has taken half the day and there are ten more miles to go before I get to the van at Dale.

After a mile or so of sea cliffs, you see Marloes sands, a mile or more of beach spread into the face of the south-west gales. It is possible to get down in one or two places, but mostly the cliffs are high above the beach, so unfortunately no beach walking today. However, the tracks here are well trodden and usually broad, so easy walking.

After Marloes Beach you skirt an abandoned wartime airfield, its concrete runways and foundations of buildings feathered at the edges where grass is gradually encroaching and sprouting along the original join lines between its sections, so that it looks like a giant game of dominoes left to grey and fade in the rain and sun.

Then you see Dale, tantalisingly less than a mile away, but across the neck of Dale Head; I have more than five miles to go around the end. My feet hurt, it is starting to rain, and I am already tired. I am so tempted to go straight across now, but that would break my schedule for coming days and so, exhausted and wet, I continue.

Happily the rain does not continue for long, but the feet do not cure so easily. The track is surprisingly untrodden as this would seem an ideal circular walk, starting in Dale, going round the headland and back across the isthmus. Indeed, the next day over breakfast in Dale, I find a guidebook for exactly this walk.

Although I was tired and it was late in the day, still it was clear that this area is full of interesting things: the lighthouse on the end, old fortifications from Napoleonic times and the Second World War.

It is the lighthouse I come to first, a small automatic light now; the larger lighthouse has become a self-catering holiday let. The path cuts just short of the lighthouse itself, passing an old walled garden and then back along the clifftop. In one small bay, half buried in the sand, is something that could be the superstructure of a small wreck, or might be the rusted remains of a large water tank that has tumbled down the cliffs.

On the next two large headlands after the lighthouse are navigation guides for approaching ships. One has two diamond markers with a black and white rectangle between them, the other a single diamond marker. I assume you align these in some way according to nautical rules.  Evidently the safe approach to Milford Haven is narrow and has a sharp dog-leg, so the navigation aids are essential for safe entry.

In this section I see the first of the concrete foundations of WWII guns, and then, below, what I at first took to be another WWII structure. Two couples are unpacking their cars, evidently staying at the lower fort. Chatting to one of them, it turns out to be 18th century, one of a string of fortifications built in the wake of the Napoleonic wars and the failed French invasion at Fishguard.

On the last headland before Dale, there is a larger fort, now an outdoor pursuit centre.  According to the guidebook it was the location of a revolutionary gun that fired explosive shells. At this point it was impossible to fire the shells using gunpowder or other explosives, as this ignited the shell’s charge as well. The gun sited here was essentially a giant popgun, using compressed gas to fire the shell. However improved explosives were created that did not explode on the barrel of more conventional guns, so the popgun became redundant and was scrapped.

The final turn into Dale was so, so welcome, following along a lane for the last quarter of a mile, past the Griffin Inn, with many people outside leaning on the sea wall drinking beers. However, it was late and so I went on my way back to St Davids and takeaway curry.

satsumas and soldiers, a fragmented nation and fracturing cliff edge, and a friend well met

27th June 2013

miles completed: 786
miles to go: 282

I will be having a full breakfast at Newgale, but that won’t be for another two hours and I remember that there is a last satsuma in the cupboard.

When in B&Bs I try to have grapefruit or whatever fruit is available if possible; sometimes there are just cereals in which case I sometimes opt for the childhood delights of Frosties, although never yet have they had the ultimate cereal, sugar Ricicles. These are still for sale, although I don’t think the ‘S’ word would appear in any advertising nowadays, maybe ‘frosted’ or even ‘coated in non-sugar sweetener’ for the more ersatz versions. Somehow cocoa took over from sugar coating in the cereal of choice for children; I doubt whether this is due to children’s own recognition of the dangers of infantile obesity, so maybe a gradual shift in the gene pool, or the effects of climate change on the childhood brain.

Well, climate change has clearly not affected my brain, and, despite losing my sweet tooth in the mid-1990s, I still enjoy the odd bowl of Frosties or even (shh, don’t tell the dentist) the odd sprinkle of sugar on Rice Krispies … and don’t get me started on marmalade.

Or maybe I just never grew up?

At the hotel at Menai Bridge, on the breakfast menu there were all the usual suspects, and also ‘boiled egg with soldiers’. So when the waitress came to take my breakfast order:

"Can I have the full breakfast, but have the egg as boiled egg with soldiers?"

She did a slight double take, "you want the full breakfast *and* the boiled egg with soldiers"?

"Yes, but instead of the egg in the breakfast. Is that OK?"

"It is like I had when I was little," I explain.

This seems to satisfy her, and she goes away only to return a little while later.

"Do you want toast or bread soldiers?" she asks.

I experience a moment of confusion, as I normally don’t have untoasted bread at breakfast, but then remember it is for boiled egg. "Um, oh yes, bread; it’s got to be brum-butter for soldiers."

"Definitely," she says, "it is only right."

I wonder if she is just humouring me, but it is with clear pleasure, albeit a hint of amusement, that she brings me my egg with soldiers.

I am prompted to think about the satsuma, rather than simply eat it, because I notice the label, ‘Satsuma 3029 Peru’.  What happened to the other 3028 satsumas from Peru, I wondered.  Did the satsumas I had eaten on previous days say, ‘Satsuma 3027 Peru’, ‘Satsuma 3028 Peru’?

The satsuma comes from the St Davids Nisa, and it is a satsuma the dimensions of which I have never previously encountered; instead of the usual diminutive billiard-ball-sized fruit, it is a positive cricket ball of juice. Nisa is the ‘big’ supermarket in St Davids and as well as giant satsumas has one of the best hot cross buns I have tasted. This was not your luxury, all the finest ingredients type, but the standard, we’ll sell at any time of the year not just Easter, for the undiscerning who don’t know about fruits in season, sort of hot cross bun.

Just so you know, I am not usually the ‘undiscerning who don’t know about fruits in season’ person; I wouldn’t normally buy hot cross buns at this time of year, but, well (1) they did look good, and (2) I am on a long walk and need to keep my energy up, and (3) I am in St Davids, a cathedral city, so it is sort of Easter-ish. There, my reputation saved.

It was this very Nisa which I visited about a year ago, in the early days of thinking about the walk. I recall going in and trying to pay by credit card. It repeatedly failed, not my card, but the machines.

"Oh, the machines are new this week, they use the internet now instead of the phone, but the internet keeps going down."

I got my first indication that rural connectivity in West Wales, even in a relative hub like St Davids, was not going to be any better than back in Tiree.

And then I have to rush for the bus as I realise I’ve been spending the morning writing about satsumas and bread-and-butter soldiers.

While waiting at the bus stop I can see preparations for market day in St Davids.  Another bus arrives and as I ask the driver to double-check I am waiting in the right place, a gentleman gets out dressed in green tweeds and carrying a sack barrow. As I turn to go back to wait I half see him get back on, and then a moment later see why. He obviously went back to retrieve three basketwork hampers, which he piled on the sack barrow before heading down towards the market. I couldn’t follow to see, but I feel he must be about to set up an antique stall, or maybe a bookstall.

On the bus to Newgale I talk to Fay, who has lived in St Davids for more than twenty years. We initially start talking because of a glorious multicoloured sweeping brush strapped to a bar in the bus. I assume it’s there to sweep away sand, but Fay tells me of a time when a farmer got on the bus with a hay bale, which the children on the bus sat on for the rest of the journey.

This leads on to exchanging stories about health and safety regulations and other bureaucracy that makes so little sense in the rural environment and for which the relevant planning and enforcement officers have little if any room to apply discretion, or plain common sense.

She also tells me about problems for locals, with housing prices driving locals inland so that the coast is incomers-only territory.

Employment is also a problem. In the past, there were busy summers but fallow winters. However, now even the summer season is slowing. With employment tight, there are growing numbers of people trying to make businesses in a shrinking market.

Fay is a complementary therapist, but there are more people being trained in this, setting up businesses and competing. She needs to work doing Saturday ‘changeovers’ to make ends meet.

Her partner, Chris Tancock, was one of the first photographers in the area, who managed, against some resistance, to get photography recognised as respectable art in local galleries.  He also runs photography courses. Now some of the people he taught, and others coming into the area, are selling to the same galleries, undercutting.

I have visited the Sands Café in Newgale before. It was the same visit last year when I was at Nisa. I had just stayed with Alan Chamberlain in Aberystwyth, and came down to St Davids for a night before meeting Parisa in Swansea the next day.

It was that time I found the Glan-y-Mor campsite where I have been staying for the past few days. Glan-y-Mor appears to be the closest campsite to the centre of St Davids, just a quarter of a mile down the road from the Oriel y Parc, but doesn’t seem to be listed anywhere. Maybe it is new or maybe too ‘basic’, certainly few frills, but clean and quite cheap, especially travelling alone as it is priced per person. Some of my days using B&Bs have been quite expensive, so cheaper camping days are very welcome. It is not just the price of the night, but most B&Bs do not allow takeaways, so you end up eating out.

I should note that full breakfast in a café does not count as ‘eating out’; it is bare necessity … albeit mixed with hedony.

I recall I originally intended to eat breakfast at Solva, but it was the day of the sea rowing competition, so, worried that I would get boxed in in the car park, I moved on and instead ate at The Sands. As I sat I overheard snatches of a conversation at the next table, which mainly consisted of who had been put away for GBH, and rivalry with another family that inevitably ended with someone getting a boot in the head.

The Celtic nations have always had a problem with internal division, one of the reasons why first the Romans and later the Saxons and Normans could invade. Even today there is a lot of distrust between North and South, let alone the borderlands.Celtic legends are full of rivalries that inevitably end up not with someone getting simply booted, but normally speared or axed to boot. So maybe the next table were simply part of an ancient tradition.

Today there is no sign of GBH, simply a sign across the road proclaiming, ‘This is a HomeWatch Area‘.  The word ‘Area’ is randomly underlined.

Unfortunately the tide is high, so I cannot walk along the sands at Newgale, but make fast progress along the roadside behind the beach. At the far end of the beach is Pebbles Café, which had confused me when I’d seen the bus timetables, as it came before the Duke of Edinburgh and I’d not realised there were two cafés. Then beyond Pebbles the route rises once more onto sea cliffs.

The rock clearly has soft patches around here as the cliffs are frequently cut by small valleys with the path dropping steeply down one side and then climbing equally steeply up the other. The steeper portions have been improved by the addition of wooden steps, but evidently some years ago, as the earth behind them has often eroded away, making them more like hurdles.

Another sign of the soft rock, an ice-deposited conglomerate that lies over harder rocks, is that areas of the cliff edge have ‘dropped’. One huge area, a semicircle a hundred yards in diameter, lies a full twenty feet below the level of the cliff, with torn raw earth edges all around. It has obviously slipped recently as the earthy tear has not greened over, but there’s no way to tell whether it moved gradually or in one cataclysmic slide. Further on a smaller semicircle is cut from the cliff face, this time a mere ten yards diameter, but somehow more worrying. The larger bite is so cataclysmic one cannot plan for it, like a meteorite strike, an act of God, but the smaller bite is more the scale of the path itself: you stand on the path, a full six feet from the edge, still the ground may slide away beneath you.

Not far from the end of Newgale Beach is a small valley with a chimney in it, the remains of the coalmines that shaped the landscape. I wonder about the valley itself, the flow of water down a little stream seems hardly sufficient to form it, so perhaps it was excavated in search of the black gold.

Coming into Nolton Haven I meet a man who was on the bus that morning. Given I’d stopped some time to talk on the phone, I’d guess he’d taken the bus on to Broad Haven and walked from there. It turned out that he was an experienced walker and had walked the complete Pembrokeshire Coast Path three times, including the bits around Milford Haven that most people miss: "they skip it and go on to Angle", he says.

Nolton Haven itself has a small beach, the Mariners Arms (families welcome; groups and coach parties by arrangement) and a small United Reformed chapel. The chapel is closed and doesn’t look so different from the very many chapels I saw along the North Wales coast, except it is still a chapel. However, looks belie, and on the notice board is an article by Chris Coe, the ‘rural officer’ for the URC in Wales; it tells of his first visit here one Easter, the church that was empty at 29 minutes past the hour, for a half past service, but in that last minute filled to bursting point and was filled with a deep sense of fellowship and worship. Given he must see a lot of churches, this was an impressive account and made me want to visit here sometime at 9:30 on a Sunday morning.

Coming up the path, on a stile I see a small plastic-covered notice advertising photography courses by Chris Tancock!

A little further from Nolton Haven is Druidston. Turning into the valley, with its beach below, the first sight is a building, which turns out to be the Druidstone Villa café, restaurant and hotel, and also something slightly space-age built into the hillside, a sort of hobbit house with green panels and portholes, which turns out to be an eco-house, one of two eco-houses in the area.

I am about to pass a couple with their dog coming up the path when the man says, "it’s Alan, isn’t it?".

It is Steve who walked with me the first miles of the Coast Path at Chester.  He and his partner are staying at Nolton Haven for a few days before he starts to teach an intensive summer course. They tell me that I should visit the Druidstone even if for just a cup of tea.

So I do, and it is a wonderful place, a combination of deep armchairs in the sitting rooms that could have been there since it was built (maybe they have) and bright wall hangings and paintings that feel more beach hut. It is also a good break while the sky decides whether the drops are going to turn into proper rain or pass away.

I have tea and Welsh cakes in the bar; not like my Mum‘s Welsh cakes, but that is another story. Becky is serving at the bar and is interested in the walk; she tells me about the hotel and the way Andy (I think that is the name), the owner, is trying to make it eco-friendly, with a wood chip stove and other measures. This is hard to do on an existing house, but attached to the house is the other eco-house in the valley, a small octagonal hut that has its own power and reed bed soakaway. Washing is in a tin bath served by the solar heating. I leave my phone number as well as a few leaflets, it would be good to meet Andy on my reprise journey.

Coming over the cliff path I meet two runners; this part is easier going than for the runner I met at Newgale yesterday, first going down the cliff path and then a few moments later back up it again. Indeed, it becomes easier still when a tarmaced path comes down from the road and passes along the clifftop for a while before ending at a viewing point. A couple of cyclists have ridden down off the road to enjoy sea views with sandwiches.

A while later I catch my first glimpse of Broad Haven beach, with something that looks like either arranged stones, a veritable Avebury of the sea, or maybe a crowd of people. And I also catch my first glimpse of Milford Haven. In fact from the campsite you can just make out two towers in the distance, but only because I first saw the lights at night, but here the whole oil terminal rises, ethereal in the hazy air, as if it were from a different world, towers and domes rising beyond, or above, the fields and cliffs.

It reminded me of the story in the Mabinogion when the protagonists, out riding, suddenly find all signs of human habitation gone, just hill, stream and mountain top. The landscape the same, but the trappings of civilisation all vanished. For a year and a day they seek for the land they knew, but while they do they make the most of this bare, but not barren land. It is only when they capture a pregnant mouse who was stealing their corn, the transformed wife of the magician who had bewitched them for an earlier slight (the Celtic curse), that all is restored.

I always say you can tell a land by its fairies: Scottish folk tales are dark, with selkies and creatures poised to pull you down in every pool or marsh; in Ireland they are troublesome, but more naughty, revelling in trickery and mischief; the English fairy is solid and earthy, the mill boggart clogging up machinery; but in Wales it seems the veil between fairy and solid land is thin, the fair folk’s world superimposed, often glimpsed briefly through the corner of your eye, but never there when stared at in full view.

It turns out that Avebury of the sea is in fact a party of schoolchildren digging tunnels, building castles and scraping messages and hearts in the sand. I’m sure the official school reports talk about the educational aims and outcomes, the learning objectives and key skills gained, as it would be unacceptable just to play.

I pop into the supermarket to ask about cafés in Little Haven; it seemed a little awkward to do so in the Broad Haven cafés.

"Yes, there is a cafcafé and three pubs," I am told, "it is a lovely place to spend some time."

So I press on to Little Haven, as its name suggests a smaller beach than Broad Haven, with a small harbour.

I go to Ceri’s Café, but there is no food until six. Happily there are sausage rolls, so I have that for my lunch. The café has pictures of New York and I wonder if this is intended to give it a ‘diner’ feel, but Ceri says she simply puts up the pictures she likes.

As well as the New York theme, there are numerous paintings of horses. Each year she buys a horse painting from a different local artist, most of them painting as a spare time activity amongst other jobs. One is from a professional, Shirley Norman, who has a gallery up the road; she normally paints seascapes, but painted a horse (riding through sea) especially for Ceri. I was amazed at the quality of the pictures, and more so given the majority came from local artists. I especially liked an image simply of hooves with sand/earth flying beneath them.

As we talk, Ian, the husband of the seascape artist, comes in, and we begin to discuss the season so far. Ceri says the trade has been slow in recent years, but doubly so this year, recession/austerity cutting yet more deeply.  This has been a recurrent, but not unexpected, story along the way, even though we are being told things are looking up in the economy. It seems the only part of the economy heading up is London house prices.

I briefly pop up the road to look at the Norman gallery. As well as her own seascape paintings there is a variety of work by other local artists, but it was the colour in a corner that caught my eye. At first I thought I was seeing pottery with metallic glaze, but then I realised it was turned wooden bowls and pots. They have been cut from the wood edge, leaving rough edges where the bark has been, and in places jagged holes. But this turning in the rough is not unusual. It is the colours: iridescent rainbow dyes, creating shifting patterns moving across the grain. It is the work of Kim Gowney, and Shirley tells me she has only had it in a few days ago, a week earlier and I would have missed it. I at first referred to Kim Gowney as ‘she’, since I’ve always known female ‘Kims’. Shirley corrects me, Kim is a man, like Kim in The Jungle Book. While on gender, I realise that I don’t think I’ve ever come across a female wood turner. While crafts often have biases, for example there are more female textile artists, I usually know exceptions, but not for woodturning; maybe you know one?

As I look out from the gallery, the sky has eventually found the strength to rain properly. Not the torrential, hose pipe from on high, bouncing off the ground kind, but more the bathroom shower, persistent kind. But I’m too late to chicken out and get the midday bus back, so I head on to St Brides. A path that leads through a rare wooded section of cliffside, welcome during the heaviest rain, a mixture of birch, beech and, I think, sycamore.

Out in the bay there are ships, waiting I assume to go in to Milford Haven, but avoiding the costs of spending extra time there. At night from the campsite their lights shine, Christmas-like, across the waters, but on this side of the bay, closer, I can sometimes hear their sea-softened machinery hum.

As the rain slackens the slugs come out, black, leech-like, covering the ground so I have to watch each step to avoid committing slugicide. Although, I wonder, am I as worried about dead slugs as messy feet? It is interesting how pretty kitten pictures abound on the Internet, but not slug lovers; and as I write I realise I too did not photograph a single slithering slug.

The approach to St Brides Haven is heralded by the appearance of St Brides Castle dating back to the nineteenth century, and now a timeshare.  It looks every inch an expression of Victorian control and tidiness.  As if to challenge this, the rocks of St Brides Haven have an almost volcanic, slag-like appearance, blistered and rough topped, covered with phosphorescent green and cadaverous white algae.

I ask where the bus stops, and find you have to go up the road slightly from the beach car park. Well, strictly it stops ‘anywhere’, you can just hail it down, but of course anywhere means along its route. Although it is ‘obvious’ what route it will take between things on the map, it is reassuring when I get to the road and find a bus timetable. I have nearly half an hour to wait, so I shelter near the entrance to the castle and find I can type pretty well one-handed on an iPad while standing under a dripping tree.

On the bus back is a lady, Sindy, whom I’ve met several times on the bus and then as we pass the Druidstone, Becky gets on. She tells me a bit about her own story, reinforcing the tales of struggling businesses and difficulties with employment across Wales. She used to work at the Sounds Café, which, like the beach café in Goodwick, was working on a principle of good value food using best quality ingredients. This would seem like a winning formula, but in difficult times it is now closed with a sign looking for new management. Happily, at just the time it was closing she found the job at Druidstone, where the proprietor takes the same care over his staff as he does over the internal decor and its external impact on the environment.  So she is very happy, but tells me how fortunate this is, given the difficulties of finding employment, especially out of season.