Category: travel
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Wales Coast Path, day 7: Barry from Rhoose
It’s a dry and sunny morning after torrential rain in Swansea. C and I are drawn back irresistibly to the famous ‘Rhoose Point Transport Interchange Car Park’, this time with H as our companion, for a gentle amble east to Barry. Suburbia is the theme of the first section of this stretch of the coastal…
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Wales Coast Path, day 8: Rhoose from St Donats
I’m back with C and J in the King George V Field, St Donats. The morning’s not as bright as the weather forecast promised, but there’s no wind, and it’s not cold. So off we march down the field to join the coast path, and turn east for Rhoose. We’re high above crumbly sandstone cliffs,…
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Wales Coast Path, day 9: St Donats from Dunraven
We could be accused, C. and I, of cherry-picking the best sections of the south Glamorgan coastline. I have a hunch, though, that the least promising looking sections of the Wales Coast Path may turn out to be the most interesting. Anyway, here we are in the car park at Dunraven, below Southerndown, with our…
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Walking poets
In 2012 the Huddersfield poet Simon Armitage published a book called Walking home, about a trip he made on foot two years earlier from north to south along the length of the Pennine Way. He started without a penny in his pocket, paying for his accommodation and meals through poetry readings he gave at various…
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A brief note on bedside books
Back in the days when Glyn Tegai Hughes and R. Gerallt Jones were Wardens there was a custom that most overnight visitors to Gregynog appreciated as an unusual but delightful practice. Somewhere in your bedroom – usually on the mantlepiece if you were placed in the old house – you’d find a small collection of…
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Zennor in light
Penwith is as far west as you can go in England. At the toe of Cornwall, it’s a region that looks and feels Atlantic. Its place-names are mostly Celtic. Prehistoric remains lie scattered across its open granite landscape. Three nights we spent recently in Penwith give me the chance to taste the South West Coastal…
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Wales Coast Path: day 42: Whitesands to Portgain
Friday is hotter still. There’s almost no breeze. We decide to head south-north for a change, starting from Whitesands Bay and repeating a little of our mini-walk in May. It’s so oppressive that Ca. turns back at St David’s Head to join us later. The rest of us sweat onwards, through the rough gorse and…
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Wales Coast Path: day 43: Porthgain from Aber Mawr
We’re back in north Pembrokeshire, with H. and Ca., to fill in the ‘gap’ in the coast path left when we were rained off in May. This time there’s no complaint about being damp: we’re half way through the hottest and driest spell for seven years. We resume at Aber Mawr, almost immediately accompanied by…
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Rhedwr Sul
Bob bore Sul, rhwng saith ac wyth o’r gloch, bydda i’n codi o’r gwely, gwisgo (siorts, crys-T, hen sgidiau), gadael y tŷ, a rhedeg. Yn 1964 dechreuais i redeg yn wythnosol, cyn gadael yr ysgol gynradd yn ein pentref ni, Hoylandswaine, yn yr hen ‘West Riding’. Erbyn hyn, hanner canrif yn ddiweddarach, mae’n rhy hwyr…