Category: travel
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Wales Coast Path, day 10: Dunraven from Porthcawl
By now we tend to see the Wales Coast Path as ‘our path’. We don’t expect to see many other long distance walkers, and having planned our routes we expect to execute them without hindrance. Imagine our indignation, then, when we find that the car park at Dunraven is closed because filming is taking place…
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Wales Coast Path, day 5: Rumney from Penarth
At last, a dry bright morning. C, J and I stroll down past Alexandra Park towards Penarth Pier. Bafflingly a woman with a small dog says we look like the Three Musketeers. She may be unaware that the only fences we tend to come across are ones that divide fields. After a coffee in the…
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An innocent abroad: inside Stadio San Paolo
In Sorrento the four of us walk towards the bus hired to take us to Naples for the Europa League match between Napoli and Swansea. Some of the more liquid Swansea supporters are already shouty. We’re met by a surprising number of well equipped police. They search us for potential weapons before we board. The…
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Postcard from Sorrento
Islanders, when they travel, feel a natural attraction to islands. So almost the first thing we do after getting to Sorrento is walk down the deep gorge from the town to the Marina Piccola and take the first available boat to Capri. At the port we queue for the little bus for Ana Capri, with…
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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…