Around the Edge of Wales (12)....Loughor to Amroth

Around the Edge of Wales (12....Loughor to Amroth

Crossing  the Loughor estuary won’t be amongst the highlights of the journey. The cycle track, at the end of the afternoon, seemed to be a commuter short-cut. An uncomfortable experience and I was glad to cross safely and find my way onto the surfaced path that takes you all the way, on a traffic-free route, to Cydweli. I stopped briefly on the Gowerton side to talk to the first person I’d met who was walking the whole of the coast path and whose greatest problem appeared to be finding a supply of fresh water – not a problem I’d encountered to date. The cycle track felt quite long and arduous as it passed Trostre but I was fascinated by the development and landscaping that had taken place further on in the Millenium Park and the miles flew by. It struck me though that I was now seeing just too many steel and strengthened glass balconies that seem to have become the ‘must-have’ 21^st C feature of any new building that sits within a whiff of the coast.

Even as the sun was setting, people were still walking, running and cycling along the Millenium Park trail. Starlings picked amongst the stones on the lower shore and fishermen waited patiently for their catch of sea bass. Two whooper swans rose from a nearby pond and flew low, wings creaking, over my head. I eventually managed to find a tiny, secluded rabbit-grazed patch where I pitched my bivvy in the dark, only to wake at 5am to find a birdwatcher standing outside announcing that he’d seen a chaffinch. I packed up quickly and moved on.

Through rolling mist over Pwll and Burry Port I plodded on, pleasantly surprised at the beauty and character of Carmarthenshire’s coastline. At Pembrey the path leads through conifer forest. Bird song reverberated in the echoey space that hangs between  tall trees and the astringent smell of pine resin seared the cool air.

On Cydweli marsh I met Roland who was training for the West Highland Way to the accompaniment of Dafydd Iwan tracks. The Gatehouse Café in Cydweli was one of the best places I’d stopped at for a bite to eat and I was glad of the break after a two day slog on hard surfaced roads – knowing that there was more to come. I quickly passed through Carmarthen – a grey, untidy but loveable town where I happily spent my teenage years and headed out west.

For me, Llansteffan is a place of childhood picnics and school sponsored walks, but from the other side of the estuary the place had looked more alluring and beautiful than I ever remembered. The  colours and formations in the rocks, around and beyond the castle headland, were amazing at low tide but the golden beach was a only a thin veneer over blackened slithering sand. The tide was incredibly distant and I walked out, with my sister, further than we’d ever ventured before. The stench of putrefaction hit us as we rounded headlands and the shore beneath our feet became a deep litter of  dead cockles. Boulders were steeped in pools of dark, oily waters. When we stopped to listen there were no birds, only quiet hisses from the vast dark mud around us like a million tiny gasps. We turned back and returned to the shore.

After the depressing spectacle at Llansteffan my spirits soared as I walked through a huge meadow, rich in wild flowers, on the Laugharne side of the Taf estuary. I was surrounded by orchids, yellow rattle, red clover, trefoil, burnet and lousewort as I walked down towards the silvery brown reedbed. Day-flying moths rose like clouds of confetti  around my feet. It was the first field of its kind I’d come across on the whole journey.

The path led through wet woodland where willow down cocooned  the vegetation on the ground in a gauzy shroud. The garden at Delacorse farm was inspiring – and made me want to return home for a few days! Laugharne, as ever, seemed a gentle and calming place with beautiful views towards the wooded cliffs at Llansteffan, the gleaming mouth of the estuary and the ruined castle perched above a sliver of saltmarsh.

I enjoyed walking around St John’s Hill again – it must be at least 15 years since I’d last been down this way, and it was lovely too to read Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘October Morning’ - one verse per interpretation panel - as I followed the path  around the headland until I could see the Pendine mudflats and expanse of MOD land stretching out in front of me.

A quick afternoon break  here meant I could pop back into Llanelli to take part in S4C’s afternoon magazine programme ‘Prynhawn Da’ to talk about the journey, about the coast path, the Countryside Council  for Wales and the charities I’m supporting through this project. I was so grateful for the food parcel donated by Tinnopolis which would keep me going for at least 3 days.  I was ferried back to my pick up point in Pendine at 4pm  where I resumed my journey. I was determined to cross into Pembrokeshire that night.

Marros is a bit of a hidden gem. A vast sweep of vegetated cliff above a long, quiet beach. At sunset it is a stunning place. It was good to see that grazing had been  reintroduced on part of the cliff. A warm smell of fresh pony dung mixed with bracken wafted across the slopes and tall spires of foxglove rose above clusters of bluebells and stitchwort amongst the patchy scrub.

Amroth beach was also vast and beautiful but it was the woodland cliffs that struck me as being the most notable feature of this east Carmarthenshire/Pembrokeshire border coastline. There is something mystical about woodland on cliff edges – the way the trees corkscrew out at impossible angles, the way the canopies are swept upwards, cleanly and sharply and the way the branches interlock and weave to create places of magic.  The wooded valley just west of Marros was something else though – areas of oak and elder trees stood  stark and bare, completely stripped of leaves. The place was silent, unreal and had an air of doom about it. Such a contrast to the nearby Colby woodland valley, lushly managed by the National Trust.

Amroth marks the Pembrokeshire border, but I decided to press on, not least because I needed to find a suitable place to pitch the tent. I was also keen to clock up some more miles as I’d lost a few days at a family event in Oxfordshire, where kites wheeled and soared above suburbia and where the drought ban was being flouted through surreptitious early morning watering from carefully camouflaged sprinklers in pristine gardens.  Through the old industrial cliff tunnels at Saundersfoot I walked onwards along more wooded cliffs. As it got late, and under a darkening canopy, I picked out hollowed footholds between the pale bony tree roots that interwove across the surface of the path. Soft spears of woodrush leaves helpfully fringed both sides of the path and I eventually found a suitably level patch at the edge of an adjacent field. The woodland was alive for hours with the sound of owls and the dog could not settle. A short sleep was again interrupted at 4.30am by a cacophony of hoots, cracks and shrieks. A flurry of wings, and a beat of feathers on the tent, followed by an unearthly scream felt too close for comfort. I waited a few minutes then peered out to see what was happening. I realised that I’d pitched the bivvy right next to a rabbit warren and guessed that I’d parked myself right in the middle of an owl canteen.