Tag: Wales coast path
Wales Coast Path, day 36: Herbranston to Dale
After a coffee in the Yacht Club we catch the rackety mid-morning minibus from Dale to Hebranston, two villages and two long creeks away. The few other passengers seem to be fellow-walkers. Our driver’s an abstracted, taciturn man with a flat silver earring and an ability to negotiate the one-track lanes at speed with one […]
Wales Coast Path, day 38: Dale from Marloes
We’re back at Musselwick Sands, this time exposed by the lower tide, and we’re joined by J for the day, on a tour of the Marloes peninsula. Still the cold wind blows, ostensibly from the west, though it’s actually turned a corner on its way here, and comes from the Arctic. The path pushes westwards […]
Wales Coast Path, day 40: Broad Haven from Solva
Lower Solva. A bright, cloudless morning, but with a cold, insistent northerly wind. This is where we left off two years ago, and seems the right point to resume our Pembrokeshire journey. The path leads up the Gribin, a long narrow ridge that nudges the river down on its passage from village to sea. On […]
Wales Coast Path, day 37: Dale to Dale
We’re in Dale for another week on the Pembrokeshire path, almost exactly two years after our first coastal campaign further north. Our cottage overlooks the Gann inlet, with a distant view of the Rhoscrowther oil refinery on the other side of Milford Haven. Its semiglobes, pipes and towers shine like the Emerald City at night; […]
Wales Coast Path, day 25: St Clears to Laugharne
A cloudless, still mid-April morning in a miraculous week of constant sun. We’re in St Clears, four of us, for a short and gentle stroll down afon Tâf to the sea at Laugharne, castle to castle. The castle at the southern end of St Clears is a toy one just off the road – a […]
Wales Coast Path, day 22: Ferryside to Carmarthen
We join J. at Swansea station, on the two-carriage train to Carmarthen. A British Transport Police officer paces our carriage. Maybe coastal walkers, with their clumpy boots and aggressive waterproofs, rank only just below Cardiff City fans on the BTP Travelling Troublemakers Index. But we reach Ferryside, a request stop, without challenge. It’s a cool, […]
Wales Coast Path, day 18: Llanrhidian to Loughor
Llanrhidian: a cold, clear, sunny morning. We park the car opposite the church and the ‘Welcome to Gower Inn’. Both are closed, but C. and I can welcome J. to Gower without the help of beer or devotion, and the three of us set off eastwards along the lane at the bottom of the village, […]
Wales Coast Path, day 21: Kidwelly to Ferryside
Early February, a glum cold morning. Like three dormice at the mouth of their hole, twitching their whiskers and sniffing the winter air, we emerge from our car on the edge of Kidwelly for a modest early year ramble. C. wears industrial strength gloves, J. a woolly hat advertising an Irish stout. It’s not half […]
Wales Coast Path, day 20: Burry Port to Kidwelly
A cold, still morning in Burry Port. The sun, they say, will shine all day. The four of us are the only people in the car park without dogs to share our walk. Feeling inadequate, we hurry on to the path, joining it at the point where the huge Carmarthen Bay Power Station once stood. […]
Wales Coast Path, day 19: Loughor to Burry Port
Loughor is a frontier town. Now just an extension of ‘greater Gorseinon’, it was once a place of more importance. The Romans planted an auxiliary fort on its headland, commanding the mouth of the river. The Normans built a small castle on the same spot, with the same intention – securing the invaders and depressing […]