Around the Edge of Wales (14)...Holyhead to Cemaes

Around the Edge of Wales (14)....Holyhead to  Cemaes

At the insistence of my employers, I’ve had to break the journey and return to work for a week but I decide to complete Anglesey whilst at home, making use of weekends, bank holidays and long evenings. I begin walking eastwards from Holyhead.

Penrhyn Bay was horribly busy, full of luxury caravans, BMW’s and Audis, jet skis and jubilee flags and I was glad to leave it behind.  At Porth Swtan I came across the best patch of sea kale I’d ever seen and tore some tiny shreds to add to my cheese sandwiches. The carpet of sheep’s bit flowers on Clegir Mawr headland was superb -  and in places the purple pincushion heads were mixed with the salmon pink of pimpernel. I cursed myself for not mastering the new camera before starting this journey – I was finding it impossible to avoid washed out pinks and purples in photos. I wasted about half an hour fiddling with settings but got nowhere.

I chatted for a while to the owners of a Bedlington Terrier pup – I’d forgotten the breed, popular in the 70s, ever existed but apparently it’s making a comeback. I wondered if we’d start to see other retro-breeds growing in popularity – Afghan hounds and  Salukis perhaps. From my experience of this walk though it would be difficult to nudge Labradors from the top spot in the popularity stakes. Choughs were a constant presence between Swtan and Carmel Head – every bay seemed to have one or two sweeping around the cliffs or feeding on slopes, but not the more sizeable groups of birds that I’d encountered in Pembrokeshire a few days previously.

Mynachdy Bay is an unusual place. I approached the cove around a headland darkened by a carpet of low tightly clipped heather, where I thought I’d spotted a hermit cell perched low on the cliff edge, facing Holy Island. I failed to locate the structure as I got closer, and the cliff edge looked just too precipitous for my liking so I carried on walking and was surprised to come across a stony bay, backed by a large freshwater pond which was enclosed at its far end by a conifer plantation. A heron moved slowly through the raft of bright green vegetation, around which cushions of white crowfoot flowers sat like large gobs of spit. A crowd of sea kayakers had landed for on the beach for lunch and shared the cove with a couple of other families. The place had a strangely Scottish feel  to it.

I moved on to Carmel Head and the weather changed. The haze became a gloom and the air became completely silent, save for the piping of one or two panicking pairs of oystercatchers.

Much of the land east of Carmel head is agriculturally improved. Lush pasture of clover, ryegrass, buttercups and daisies shimmered  like a huge expanse of prairie, right up to the cliff edge. The occasional pocket of primroses and bluebells on the low ciff slopes offered some relief from the vast green monotone. In the distance, Wylfa power station loomed. The shrill shrieking of terns at Cemlyn Bay was a welcome relief from the silence of Carmel Head. A  crowd of people were exploring the shore at Cemlyn as part of a National Trust event whilst others were stood in a line along the kale-topped shingle bank, mesmerised by the to-ing and fro-ing of terns between the open sea and breeding island.

I plodded on past Wylfa, poor signage causing me to double track but I enjoyed the walk along the site’s wooded nature trail. Out to the coast again, past decayed angel wings on metal palisade at the entrance to an old estate entrance ,and the day became even more threatening. I sensed I had about half an hour before the rain arrived. I moved on through vast fields where even the rocky outcrops had not managed to escape the effect of fertiliser. The odd clump of thrift held on in one or two places and patches of sea buckthorn were managing to outcompete agricultural grasses where salt spray had scorched the turf.

Cemaes, at 7pm that evening, was a strange place in the grey, cold rain and quickening wind. I stopped amidst the pebbledash houses and union jack flags and waited for a lift home.  An interesting interpretation panel helped to pass the time; it described the old industries of the area – bricks, china clay, marble, ochre. It was difficult to imagine how busy this place would have been in the past. Annoyingly the panel didn’t explain the hatching on the map which depicted this part of the Anglesey coast as ‘Scotland Bach’ (‘Little Scotland’). How did it get this name – and was there a connection with the sense I got at Mynachdy of being in a little piece of a Scottish landscape? Was Carmel Head, with its vast fields and conifer plantations  once owned by Scottish gentry, or did a local landowner bring back to Anglesey some land management practices as a result of a Scottish connection? Something to research after returning home.

My lift arrived. One of the sliding car doors fell back on my hand, slicing through one of my fingers and the day ended with a long wait in Ysbyty Gwynedd’s A&E department. I was glad of the last cheese and sea kale sandwich at 11.00pm in the hospital waiting room.