travel
Wales Coast Path, day 33: Angle to Pembroke
Today C., H. and I open up a new walking front. We take the service bus to Pembroke and then the Coastal Cruiser to Angle. It’s a cloudier day, with a strong south-east wind to walk into. At the bus stop in Pembroke we meet a young student from Finland. She’s about to start a […]
Wales Coast Path, day 29: Tenby from Manorbier
After breakfast I visit Manorbier Church, high on a hill opposite the castle. It doesn’t open officially until 9:30, but a woman comes to the door as I try its door handle and invites me in. She’ll leave me alone now, she says, and departs. Perhaps I’m looking spiritually needy. Like all churches in this […]
Wales Coast Path, day 30: Manorbier from Bosherston
Today we’re joined by M. and his binoculars. Again we start from the Bosherston car park, though this time, thanks to M., we escape having to pay the National Trust’s hefty parking fee. Down through the lily ponds again, but by the northern route and across two low bridges. From Broad Haven we turn east […]
Wales Coast Path, day 15: Oxwich from Rhossili
Rhossili on a Wednesday morning in early September. The car park’s mostly empty. At the National Trust canopy no one’s around to give the hard sell on membership. A cool wind’s blowing from an unfamiliar angle, north-west, but there’s no rain in the forecast. We deviate slightly from the coast path to admire the Worm, […]
Wales Coast Path, day 17: Llangennith from Llanrhidian
In Llanrhidian we park the car and poke our noses into the Welcome to Town. It’s been overhauled and reopened since we were last here and presents itself as a ‘pub and dining rooms’. The brand advice must have consisted of one word, ‘purple!’ Electric urban purple storms its way across the facade and marches […]
Wales Coast Path, day 16: Rhossili to Llangennith
In summer the Worm, the Bay and its end-of-the-earth aura draw hundreds down Gower’s narrow roads to Rhossili – us included today. In the crowded car park we avoid eye contact with the National Trust’s recruitment agents and head north towards the Down, on one of our rare circular walks. The steep climb quickly separates […]
Iain Sinclair goes home
Urban is his element, and London his patch. But now, in his early seventies, Iain Sinclair has come home to his native Wales for his latest book, Black apples of Gower. For someone who’s followed the path of his wanderings and writings for years – I joined the trip late, with White Chappell, scarlet tracings […]
Ar y Mynydd Du
Golygfa ddu yw hi, o bob cyfeiriad, does dim dwywaith. O’r A48, er engraifft, wrth ichi yrru o Gaerfyrddin tua Cross Hands, mae’n anodd osgoi edrych draw, am eiliad o leiaf, i’r wal dywyll, fygythiol o fryniau sy’n ymestyn ar y gorwel yn y dwyrain – ymyl gorllewinol y Mynydd Du. ‘Du’ mewn ffordd arall […]
Rambling women
Hay-on-Wye on a sleepy summer Monday outside Festival time is a fine place to be. True, you have an acute feeling of being one of a dwindling number of ageing middle class readers as you wander from second-hand bookshop to second-hand bookshop. But serendipity, so painfully missing from an Amazon search, is a subtle and […]
Wales Coast Path, day 27: Pendine to Amroth
10:50am. A bus stop on the coast road in Amroth. The Silcox Coaches bus, ten minutes late, trundles round the corner from the hill into the village. Its driver, a middle-aged woman whose accent doesn’t sound local, brakes reluctantly for us. Our first crime is to stand on the wrong side of the road. Which […]