Day 8: Broad Haven to Solva

Weather: Thin, steely sunshine with strong southwester

Distance covered today: 18.5km (11.5mi)

Last night's B&B: Anchor Guest House

% Complete: Cumulative distance:  61.8%:  178.4km

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 8 (click!)

My alarm woke me this morning from a very deep sleep in which I was having the happiest of dreams.  I was actually laughing as I awoke! By the time I had located the pesky mobile, the dream had faded. I tried to rescue it, but it was gone.  Still, the experience put me in the best of spirits and I went in to breakfast and proceeded to bend Adrienne’s ear for about an hour before taking off once more for the cliffs.

Poor Adrienne must be getting used to this by now. I first met her on the stretch from Neyland to Sandy Haven, almost half the walk ago. She was taking a picture of something in the bushes as I approached her from behind. We swapped notes and I was interested to hear that she too was walking the whole of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path; the first person I had come across also to be doing this. She explained that she had never done a long-distance path before, but that she had trained hard in Derbyshire to prepare for it.

We found that we were booked into the same accommodation in Sandy Haven by coincidence. We walked together for a while, and though she seemed confident and resourceful, clearly she was not at ease. At a narrow stretch, she went ahead and I noticed a strange hand gesture from her trailing hand, as if she had come to a decision. She stopped, turned to me and told me that I was walking too fast for her and she would prefer to walk alone.  Of course I immediately apologised, and I went on ahead.  I was cross with myself that I hadn’t picked up on her unease earlier.

A little later, an old geezer at a gate stopped me to comment on the weather, the prospects for the Lions tour and was about to get onto the state of the nation, when I noticed Adrienne approaching out of the trees from behind. Immediately she saw the two of us, she hesitated, not wanting to catch up with me. I greeted the old man and sped off leaving him rather rudely in mid-sentence.

That evening Adrienne arrived happily at the B&B, and we shared practical stuff together. Later, our host ran us over to a pub to have supper, and I found myself alone with Adrienne having supper, with some bored Welsh youth hanging around somewhere in the background.  I don’t know if the incongruity of the situation struck her or not, but she was excellent company and we both made the best of an unusual situation. 

She explained to me that she was a Buddhist, and that she was on a sort of ‘pilgrimage’. She was using the walk as means of meditation, and that she needed time on her own. Hence her request for me to go ahead earlier in the day! She also explained that a number of friends and her partner were going to join her for different sections of the journey and the logistics of it all were a nightmare.

You may recall that I left the following morning at the crack of dawn, and I fully expected that would be the last I would see of her. Until last night!  Poor Adrienne showed up late at the B&B, exhausted and with a wonderful tale of woe. Apart from slipping up to her calves in mud, meaning that she’d had to remove shoes and socks and perform running repairs, she found herself staying in a filthy Youth Hostel with bugs under the cushions and mattresses,  and dirt everywhere.  She’d just endured a very long day’s walk. 

We exchanged war-stories over dinner and I left her this morning after breakfast, as she was preparing to meet a couple of friends who were going to walk the next section with her, but who couldn’t get to the start before as late as 10.00!

Poor intelligent, resourceful, determined Adrienne! I wish her all the best and I salute her independence, just as I regret that our paths won’t cross again.  Still, I’m sure that this walk, provided she has overcome the logistical pitfalls (!), will be of value to her. Only, will she ever get the time to meditate?
 
It is in the nature of these walks that these strange meetings occur, and I feel personally enriched by every one of them.  I’m not sure about tonight though!  I’ve met an unruly crowd of men from Tunbridge Wells and I’m off to meet them in the pub for a bender. I probably won’t remember a thing!

I’m now back from the pub and they didn’t turn up! I met them a little later while I was eating in a restaurant. They were hugely apologetic. They got their timing all wrong and had only just managed to make town. They were exhausted!  More logistical issues! I’m beginning to feel a bit smug! (Smugness comes before a fall!)

During today’s walk, at a strange and rather melancholy stretch of tarred path at the side of a cliff, specially prepared to allow disabled access, and with memorial benches every few yards looking out to sea, I found a special memorial to one Roger Dyer. Under his name, it read: “ ‘It is not a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled: but it is a calamity not to dream.’ N. Mandela”. 

Provided of course that you can remember them!

Sunset last night, and empty tankers moored in the St Bride's Bay. More of that later!

I couldn't resist asking these two if they were mother and daughter, and of course they were: on holiday together

Broad Haven recedes behind me

Druidstone Haven

A view along the coastline from on high

The melancholy memorial path with disabled access

Roger Dyer's memorial

Sheer cliffs to the sea

Two young bullocks for Richard, if ever he gets back from fishing the Zambezi

Looking back at North Haven

These two young girls were part of of a Duke of Edinburgh group. They told me "We hate our parents, because they forced us to go! They think we are on expedition, but we are running away from home forever!" They giggled and ran after their mates!

Two old fellows preparing Nolton Haven for the long weekend onslaught

Beautiful Nolton Haven beach

The beetles were all at it today!  Must be something in the air, or maybe the sunshine has done it for them!

Newgale Sands from the south

 

One of those sad and rather tasteless memorials to someone lost. Suicide or accident. Who knows?

Newgale Sands from the North. Note that the tide had come in by the time I got there!

The high cliffs rising out of Newgale Sands

A succession of challenging roller coasters from sea-level up to the top and back down

And from the top, guess what? Refineries at full zoom!

A bluebell field for Bridget!

More immense cliffs as I started to approach Solva

The picturesque harbour in Lower Solva