Around the Edge of Wales (9)....Cardiff to Llantwit Major

Around the Edge of Wales (9)....Cardiff to Llantwit Major

Back in Cardiff, having swapped my bike for a dog and a rucksack, I amble through Bute Park amidst early morning joggers and dog-walkers, wondering whether I should  catch a train to Penarth to avoid the slog along city pavements. The shallow water of the river Taf was beautifully clear, rippling over the bed of pebbles – so different from my childhood days when a walk along this riverbank would never have been at the top of anyone’s ‘to do’ list.  

I eventually decide to cross the barrage on foot.  Not an experience I’d rush to repeat. From this distance the city appears to be a disappointing, chaotic mass of architectural flotsam punctuated by ugly blocks of flats . Only the coppery dome of millennium centre seemed to echo and complement the undulating hills behind the city. It heaved upwards, like a huge sigh, above the cluster of hurried and uninspiring buildings that have accumulated around the bay . It was a walk tinged with a sense of sadness – at the loss of the bird-rich habitat that once fringed this bay, and also at the lost opportunity, having  made such a sacrifice, to create a truly magnificent and beautiful seafront to a lovely city.

The walk from Penarth to Barry was enjoyable – not the most exciting section of coast perhaps but the geology is striking and it was good to hear the sound of waves for the first time in days. Volunteers were busy working on the Lavernock nature reserve owned by the Glamorganshire Wildlife Trust and a couple of visiting botanists from Oxfordshire were avidly scanning the steep cliffs for the rare whitebeam Sorbus domesticus. A keen birder, armed with a telescope as long as his leg was looking for ‘anything that moved’ but had only managed to spot a few warblers by 11.30am. Not one of his best days perhaps. Negotiating Barry was difficult and the diversion around the docks seemed to take forever. Was I meant to have been traipsing along the tedious Millenium Way? The waymarkers seemed to have petered out by then.  I was glad of the drifts of flowering kidney vetch  along the verges that provided a little relief from the constant drone and fumes of traffic.

The path at Rhoose point, the most southerly point in Wales, passes a fascinating habitat that has developed on abandoned quarry floors – pools, heathland, reed beds, willow carr and open gravelly grassland. I was tempted to stop and explore but needed to move on. 

Energy levels dipped at dusk as I walked past acres of static clifftop caravans on neatly mown grassland. I resorted to allocating each one a score out of ten to while away the time. By nightfall I had reached what had to be the worst part of the journey to date – the path around Aberthaw power station.  At 8pm, on a greying day, this is not the place to be. The  footpath is hemmed between a chain link fence, topped by an overhanging double row of barbed wire , and a high  soot-blackened sea wall  that rises like a solid concave wave, obliterating the horizon. Chilling.