Tag: walking
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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,…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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Nightwalking
The literature of walking is large. It’s grown quickly in recent years, in part as an offshoot of the ‘new nature writing’. Most of it, though, is concerned with walking in the light of day. Nightwalking has received much less treatment. Frédéric Gros, in his recent A philosophy of walking (2014) fails to mention it.…
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Wales Coast Path, day 51: Aberaeron to Llanrhystud
Another Aberaeron start, but this time we’re walking to the north. 10 September, and it’s another perfect day. Neither of us can remember such a summer’s end: warm, still and sunlit. Aberaeron, so careful of its landward appearance, turns its back on the sea. Admittedly the shore is shingle, but the monotonous concrete wall and…
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Wales Coast Path, day 52: Llanrhystud to Aberaeron
In the early morning sun the T1 bus bowls down from Aberystwyth to Llanrhystud. We thank the National Assembly twice over: for our free bus passes, and for the campaign by Elin Jones AM to replace the bus routes suddenly abandoned by the wicked Arriva. The coast road has ruined the centre of Llanrhystud, but…
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Wales Coast Path, day 50: New Quay from Aberaeron
Mid-September and the last of the summer is holding its breath. It brings blue skies, a fine breeze, a languid sea, and a kindly sun that warms the skin without burning it. I’m back with C. for three more days of gentle coastwalking in mid-Ceredigion. For no good reason we start walking from north to…
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Wales Coast Path, day 12: Port Talbot to Swansea
It’s a warm midsummer morning and we’re back, the same quartet, in the centre of Port Talbot. By coincidence Radio 4 is broadcasting a programme called Playing the skyline in which the musicians Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock are taken on a boat to study the profile of Port Talbot from the sea and then…
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Wales Coast Path, day 1: Chepstow from Caldicot
A day of dogs and bridges. Dogs first. We start from the railway station at Caldicot, three of us this time. The path to the motorway and across to the coastline is studded with notices, official and handwritten, about the absolute unacceptability of dog shit. We try to construct a history that accounts for this…