Day 2: Manobier to Bosherston

Weather: Mostly sunny with chilly North Wester

Distance covered today: 18.3km (11.4mi)

Last night's B&B: Castlemead Hotel

% Complete: 14.3%, Cumulative distance: 41.2km

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 2 (click!)

It’s as if they’ve been washing the coast and countryside and shining it up especially for my visit. OK, they were a day late, but all is forgiven!  I left the hotel in shirtsleeves and bright sunshine and hardly recognised the place. It was positively glowing!  I didn’t encounter a single puddle of mud all day long. I could see all the way to the Gower Peninsula (Swansea) and possibly also to the coast of Devon, so spectacular was the clarity of the air. And the birds!  They’ve obviously been a bit quiet in the cold and the wet, and they were concerned that they were running out of spring and had better get stuck in. First step: find a mate. To do this one has to holler louder than the next guy and they did this with all the pent up energy of six months of snow and rain. They were all at it; seabirds, skylarks, blackbirds and various unidentified species that could only be heard and not seen.

That said, I’m surprised I could hear them at all. My breath was rushing in and out of my lungs and my blood pumping through my ears with such an internal cacophony that perceptions of external stimuli were fleeting at best.  This is not the first time that I’ve had a rant against the national trail path finders, but it is quite clear that they have no idea at all of the concept of a contour path.  Here I am walking along this beautiful coastline, wanting to watch it in calm serenity, but no, the manic path makers insist on marching me up to the top of the hill only to send me crashing back to sea level minutes later.  They could be exonerated if these gyrations were caused only by rivers eating away at cliffs to reach the sea, but this is only part of it. As soon as they see a hill, they have to get to the top of it!  In their defence, this does afford the walker the most kaleidoscopic of views.
 
On the other hand, I was under the impression that this part of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path was a little tame by comparison to the northern bit. If this is the case, bring it on! Today wasn’t only scenically beautiful, it was also geologically fascinating. In the space of a less than a kilometre, I passed from the hugely undulating geology of ancient sedimentary sandstones, laid down when Wales was part of Gondwanaland in the Southern Hemisphere, to the much younger carboniferous limestone, laid down as Wales travelled northwards under the sea to its present location. I passed an information board that told me that Wales has travelled 6,000km through geological time, which makes it rather nimble on its toes!

For me, selfishly, the interesting bit was also the change in the surface.  This is pure speculation, but I’m guessing that although they are both sedimentary, the far older sandstone has been worn down by the elements over huge periods of time, so that the harder bits become hills and the softer bits get worn away. The much younger limestone is flatter at its surface and hasn’t yet been worn away. The result is a magnificently grassed top surface on which it is a pleasure to walk, combined with sheer cliffs as the sea water underneath dissolves and undermines the limestone resulting in vertical cliffs and huge caves and arches. There is a real feel of the southern end of the South Downs about it. Truly a spectacular environment and I’m sure there will be more of this tomorrow. No doubt, my good friend Richard, a proper geologist, will set me straight on all this in his comments!

Today I was also fascinated by the behaviour of the people I met along the way. I have come to the conclusion that people take their cues from each other as they walk, and that lends a certain uniformity to their reactions. In really busy walks, everyone studiously ignores the oncoming walker, for the logical reason that it gets boring beyond mercy to have endlessly to repeat greeting after greeting. This results in a psychological isolation. People don’t just ignore each other; they hardly even see each other. They just travel in their own cocoon. 

As the interactions become less numerous, so the intensity of each interaction increases, until, as I experienced on the Pennine Way, the mere sight of another soul involves an invitation to drinks and dinner at the next available location!

There is also another more disturbing phenomenon. Passing single women in urban areas is a fascinating experience.  Their understandable vulnerability leads to a determination not to have any contact at all with their unknown male counterpart. Even eye contact is extremely rare, for fear of this being construed by him as some sort of defencelessness, or even worse, a come-on.  Yet as the terrain changes, so do their reactions. True, it is unusual to find women walking alone in the wilder parts, and those that do may be made of sterner stuff, but I choose to believe that they do indeed feel less vulnerable.

I met a woman today; indeed she passed me by, walking somewhat faster than I, over the turbulent sandstone, and after a moment’s doubt, she decided to talk. We exchanged war stories of Offa’s Dyke and other far flung exotica. She reminded me of Kelly, an intrepid American my good friend John and I met on the Black Mountains above Longtown, and who turned out to be an economic adviser to Barack Obama.  She too is an intrepid woman, but I bet she too avoids eye contact on the road in Washington DC.

Talking of girls, here’s a HUGE happy birthday to my elder daughter, Anna!!!  She, crazy girl, has decided to go to New York for the weekend to share her own birthday with her sister, Marion, who is on assignment there! As I write this, Anna is on the plane to NY, NY! Darling daughters, have a wounderful time together and have lots of fun! Your long-suffering Mum and I would never, amidst the adolescent mayhem, ever have believed that this would ever happen!

Manobier Castle: a proper castle in every respect and the site of the 1989 version of the "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"

Above the castle, resplendant in the sunshine, a 12th century Norman church, of which more later

Hullo Shadow!  I haven't seen you for some time...

The resplendant coast in the sunshine!

Rant: This is the path; straight up the middle of the hill!

Swanlake Bay, the first of a succession of deserted beaches

The far point out there is Stackpole Point, my southerly objective for the day. Note the contrast between its flat limestone surface and the crushed sandstone of the nearer Trewent Point

After our brief and illuminating conversation, she speeded onwards, never to be seen again!

Rising up from the beach at Freshwater East

Not too many flowers around this spring, but the lovely primrose is ubiquitous

A last view of the sedimentary sandstone, magnificently covered in multi-coloured lichens

Self-portrait of your exhausted correspondent, enjoying a sarnie (cheese & ham) and a bottle of water, on a heaven-sent bench out of the wind in Stackpole Quay

The sandstone is behind and here lies the magnificent grass-strewn limestone, complete with slurry-spreading tractor!

The crenelated entrance to the gorgeous Barafundle Bay

And this at last is Stacpole Head, for all the world like the prow of a great earthly aircraft carrier!

Stackpole Head from the side, with the caves eaten out by the sea right through it

Unearthly shapes in the limestone

And huge caves at Raming Hole

Sadly, not a single lily on the Bosherston Lily Ponds. The cold weather and early spring militated against it

Happily, these two Cormorants made up for it! They were unfussed at the cacophany of their land-based ilk. Presumably they exist in long-married bliss and look down on their boistrous avian brethren