Around the Edge of Wales (17)....Pembroke to Cardigan

Around the edge of Wales (17)…. Pembroke to Cardigan

After the combined trek and cycle ride between Biwmares and Holyhead I travel straight back down to Pembrokeshire to pick up where I finished some days previously. Still worried by the lack of time to finish this journey I decide to cycle the north Pembrokeshire section. I’ve walked the path often in the past and know the landscape very well, but have never cycled it in one go. It’s a long trip – about 80-90 miles if you follow the smallest lanes closest to the coast but the weather was fine and it was worth a go.

It was a day of beautiful peninsulas, arduous climbs and steep descents – and an utterly memorable sunset.

A quick ride through Milford – and I’m heading towards Dale. In St. Ishmaels I stop to chat to a local resident who tells me about the names they have for people from local villages – mice of St. Ishmaels, long-necks of Haverfordwest, fish-heads of Milford Haven, lice of Herbrandston and girls of Marloes (for men that were born in the village).  The top end of the Gann estuary was a Swallows and Amazon landscape  of islets and channels. Dale village, on a June Monday, was practically deserted but looked smarter than I remembered it from 15 years ago. I stopped at the seaside café to ask someone for advice about the route and ended up talking about highly protected marine zones (HPMZ) – a meeting was due to be held that evening with Welsh government officials to discuss the current consultation over a proposal to designate HPMZ in Wales – Dale being one of the 10 proposed sites. They were obviously in for a heated exchange .

St.Brides was beautiful and busy.  I stopped for the first time ever to visit the pump house that had been restored some time ago by the Friends of the National Park. The tiny building at the edge of the car park houses some fascinating interpretation panels that explain some of the history of the area, which includes the story of the Kensington estate that once owned many of the Pembrokeshire islands such as Skomer and Skokholm (and where shooting parties were once encouraged to hunt seals).  Kensington House, after the break-up of the estate, became a children’s TB hospital for a period (it closed in 1957) and is now a luxury timeshare apartment building. Many of the smaller estate features are still present –  such as the pump, the ice house and fish ponds. I searched for exposed prehistoric stone coffins in the cliffs but failed to find them. From here, St David’s Head looked as if it was very, very far away and the sweep of St Bride’s Bay was huge. It was already 11.45am and I began to have doubts about my ability to complete this section of the journey in a day. I cycled on, through Talbenny and the quaint Little Haven. I decided not to stop at Broad Haven for a coffee, as I’d originally planned. The setting is lovely, but I’d forgotten just how ugly and overdeveloped the place is. The original village has been totally swamped by soulless housing  development leaving the settlement with no sense of place whatsoever. In the distance a huge swathe of woodland could be seen clothing the cliffs on the southern side of the bay – well worth a visit in autumn perhaps.

On past Druidston, with its fascinating semi-buried house built into the cliff, to Nolton Haven which was full of sheepdogs chasing balls on the beach. Then a huge freewheel ride into Newgale which was totally exhilarating – marred only by the prospect of having to climb up the other side. And I knew just how steep that hill was going to be.

From the top of Newgale I decided to detour to visit some old haunts that were favourite places of mine when I worked in Pembrokeshire for the National Trust many years ago. Gwar y Coed valley was now far more wooded, Caerfarchell common still appeared to be undergrazed, Caerfarchell village was just as beautiful and the tiny road across Dowrog common  was peaceful, as ever. Back into St Davids and out again, keeping close to the coast. I love this flat expansive landscape but it is so difficult to photograph and it’s impossible to capture the feeling it evokes. By now, clouds were settling on the summit of Carn Llidi and Penberi and seemed to herald a dull or even rainy end to a glorious day.

Trefin is a much smarter village than it was in the 1990s. I stopped for a late afternoon ginger beer and a couple of slices of bara brith to keep me going. Sugar levels were definitely dipping by now.  By the time I reached the top of Garn Fawr, my favourite tiny mountain in the whole of Wales, the entire landscape was bathed in a soft grey dusky haze.  Not quite sea mist – it seemed as if patches of cloud had dropped to envelop parts of the landscape in a thin veil. The sun picked its way through the haze here and there, creating sweeps of sunlit fields.

By the time I’d reached Pontiago the clouds were a browny grey, like the colour of dirty Brasso on a cloth, and the sun was a bright white disk behind them. It was moody and atmospheric. A mile or two further on, Fishguard was sunny under a blue sky but the long, steep climb to Dinas was rewarded by more mist and poor visibility. In Newport, the sun was once again slicing through the mist creating a shining low-tide sea in the Nevern estuary. One solitary heron perched, hunched on a dead branch, at the edge of the reedbed on the inland side of the estuary bridge. Towards the sea, the landscape was a study in brown and silver. Up the road, towards the open coast, the smell of honeysuckle at 9pm was strong and heady. Goldfinches and chaffinches flitted noisily between hedgerows.

 

Suddenly the sky changed. A dark, dirty grey mass of cloud rolled in across the cliffs and coastal fields. The air became completely still and grew colder. Sounds ebbed away into complete silence. Hundreds of tiny black, brown and mottled slugs emerged from nowhere and crept onto the tarmac. It was eerie and uncomfortable.

But by the time I reached Ceibwr and Moylegrove the sky was a dramatic salmon pink again and the air was warmer. The climb up Penrhiwceibwr hill was steep and seemed to go on forever. Bats fluttered along the lane with me, tiny and black like airborne tadpoles. A single barn owl hunted low across a roadside field and I was glad to stop and watch it for a while. The rapid descent into St Dogmaels and 10.45 was not as much fun as it could have been if I’d had lights on the bike. It was impossible by now to see the road properly and I arrived in the village in complete darkness. I  stopped at the White Hart for a packet of crisps and sat outside to wait for a lift back to a warm bed, listening to the open mic night through the window.