Day 12: Aber Bach to Goodwick

Weather: Partly cloudy and viciously windy

Distance covered today: 21.7km (13.5mi)

Last night's B&B: The Ferryboat Guesthouse

% Complete: Cum distance: 85.7%: 251.9km (156.5mi)

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 12 (click!)

Today was wild and windy and tomorrow promises to be very wet, and even stormier.  Being sensible, a condition I have never fully understood, Veronica is concerned for my safety. There is a yellow warning out for high winds in the west of the British Isles, and Pembrokeshire looks like being right in the heart of it.

She seems to feel that teetering on the edge of high cliffs in these conditions lacks common sense. “Nonsense!”, I say, “ I am most experienced in these things. I am the Gordon Gekko of high cliffs. I only take risks that win!”  She is not impressed. She has devised an escape route, complete with taxi access (and a wine bar to entice me into acceptance), plus the face-saver that I can do the bit I missed in the dry the following day.  The wine-bar does the trick and I hesitate. “Let me have a look at the map!”, I demand. “Hold on, I can’t find the map! I’ll ring you back!”

“Hullo, my love! The map’s disappeared! I can’t believe it! I’ve lost my OS map! How could I lose my map? I have it strung around my neck in a plastic sack! The only way I could have lost it is if my head fell off!  Where is it?”  At home, when these crises arise, as they often do, she somehow always knows the answer, but out here, it is perhaps a little too much to ask.  Still I have learned her preliminary response to these quandaries, as in “Where did you last have it?”  I fail to understand why this always seems to me more revolutionary than, for instance, my head falling off.

“Ah yes! I was buying supplies in Tesco, just as I completed the walk. I put them in my backpack. I must have removed the map to access my backpack. Yikes, I better high-tail it back to Tesco’s! Bye”

The girl at the till almost did a back-flip when I appeared. “Yes!”, she squealed in a lovely Welsh lilt, “it’s you! I have it here! I thought you weren’t going to come back! I wanted to do something!  I didn’t know what to do!” I thought of my post last night, criticising attitudes to work in Pembrokeshire.  I wondered whether a Tesco employee in Surrey would have cared as much? He or she would probably have taken it home and commented, “See what I scored tonight!”

Now that I have recovered my savoir-faire, and informed the missus that I will proceed as planned, hurricane or no hurricane, it is time to declare that despite the weather, today has been a day about people.

It started this morning at breakfast, as I observed a delightful couple of young German walkers encountering the mysteries of the English Breakfast, where all they wanted was a Continental. In difficult conversation, because their English was limited, I argued that we would be walking in opposite directions and we would meet half-way. This, I have to say, confused Horst considerably, and I could see that his mathematical (and dare I say it, slightly pedantic) mind suggested to him that if we both set off from the same point in opposite directions, the only time we would meet would be on the opposite side of the world. I gently introduced the idea of a taxi to him, which would take me south so that I could proceed north, and there was a very relieved “Ach Zo!”

We did meet half way, right at the Strumble Head lighthouse, and I had the opportunity to discuss technology with him. Horst was disappointed that it hadn’t rained, because he and Andrea were wearing the latest high-tech German anti-rain kit and he wanted to know whether it worked! He also had a fantastic Canon SLR and he was the first person I have ever met using a better satnav than I, a Garmin Montana (with full 1:25,000 OS mapping)!  I bowed deeply, suggested to Andrea that she had made the right choice, and despite her confusion, went on my way.

As I made town, who should I meet but Nita and Dick! We first met on the Coastal Cruiser (as opposed to the Strumble Shuttle, the Poppit Rocket and the Celtic Coaster) an age ago in St David’s. Dick and Nita hale from Texas, somewhere north of Dallas, out in the country, and though they know London, Pembrokeshire is for them a revelation, and a very pleasant one at that. They had no idea that this kind of place existed in Britain, despite their origins being substantially British.

They have also been doing a much better job than I of deciding which bits of the coast they are actually going to walk, rather than stupidly, like me, doing the whole lot!  That’s why we keep bumping into each other.  They have that easy, Texan friendliness about them, which makes them such good company and so appreciative of new experiences.  I did however press a button. I talked of my frequent visits to Houston. “Houston?!  That place been corrupted by the oil industry and humidity! Anyway. It’s too busy – too much traffic. That place ain’t Texas!”

And as I wound my weary way home, I met Richard, yet again. We have passed each other at least four times on my journey. He is a young man, carrying his own backpack including all his camping gear, a heavy and unbalanced load in today’s wind. He is a geologist, and he told me that his best friend is also called Richard and that he is also a geologist.

Given that our resident Geologist on this site is also called Richard, I have determined that all geologists are called Richard!  And on that bombshell, I bid you goodnight!

The contrast from yesterday! Strong surf from gale force westerleys

More of the same

Looking back along the coast with contrasting colour

Surprisingly, given the weather over the last summers, much of the field had been burned, with new green strips along the sides of the path

The wind was so severe at the top, that I had to seek refuge in a suitable construct. From there I could see the Strumble Point lighthouse winking in the distance

The rocks magnificently illuminated in a shard of sunlight

Strumble Point lighthouse looms closer

A patchwork of Welsh fields to leeward

Then at the top of this huge cliff, a very des-looking res. Turned out it was a Youth Hostel"

This picture takes some looking at. I was lying face down, stretching my camera hand in front of me, pointing downwards. This is a view vertically downwards, about 100 metres to the sea, The flowers at the bottom of the picture are close. the sea is straight underneath. There is no angle. It is vertical!

A picture of the Irish ferry captured at the moment that the Strumble lighthouse flashed. My masterpiece!

At times the bog made me think nostalgically of North Yorkshire. Only just!

Bluebells and gorse for Bridget

A very strange, fungus sort of thing with a flower growing in it

Yours truly, at the Strunble lighthouse

Horst and Andrea, looking dapper

Heading for Goodwick on the North coast of the Strumble peninsula

A bunch of young French invaders!  See below!

This stone commemorates the site of the last invasion of Britain, in 1879 by the French. An invading force of 1,400 French troops arrived under the command of an American, Colonel Tate.They occupied Strumble Head for two days and got so drunk on stolen beer that the locals easily overpowered them. The heroine of the affair was one Jemima Nicholas, who rounded up a troop of twelve Frenchmen with her pitchfork and now has a beer named after her. I could have told them to beware of Englishwomen!

A peaceful interlude in a wooded creek

Strangely peaceful sea after all the wind on the other side

With a strange crack in the rock!

This seal was resting peacefully on a rock,

while in a pond nearby, this Oystercatcher was trying to seduce this Oystercatchess, by making waves in the water. She was having none of it, and kept flying off to another pond, He would repeat the process. Plainly, waves didn't turn her on....

Meanwhile, this seagull just turned his back on the whole grubby spectacle!

Looking back to Strumble Head

The environment now was more heathland than gorseland, Again itr reminded me of the moors

Civilisation ahoy! Very talented graffiti on some sort of concrete ruin

And, at last, Goodwick on the horizon