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

Day 11: Abereiddy to Aber Bach

Weather: Gorgeous and shirtsleeves, clouding later

Distance covered today: 18.2km (11.3mi)

Last night's B&B: The Coach House

% Complete: Cum distance: 78.3%: 230.2km (143.0mi)

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 11 (click!)

It is significant that this is the first day of my walk in which the names of both the origin and the destination are solely in the Welsh language. Previously, the town names have been bilingual, with the English names being used predominantly; such has been the influence of the English in Pembrokeshire (and of course, the Normans before them).  This seems a good excuse for me to comment on the economic circumstances of the Welsh inhabitants of this part of Wales, using, as I have in the past on such travels, nothing more than my fleeting observations, and therefore speculating wildly with hardly a shred of evidence!

I have already commented (too much for some!) on the declining fortunes of the oil industry around Milford Haven, as well as on the significant impact this industry has had on employment, both directly and indirectly. Although imports of LNG may increase as North Sea gas declines and dependence on gas from Russia is controlled, this will have little impact on employment and incomes in Pembrokeshire. With the continuing reduction in demand for petrol and diesel in the UK and the repeating closure of the refineries, the decline of the industry, and its associated employment, seems irreversible.

Of course, as in so many parts of the UK, Pembrokeshire is no stranger to the rise and decline of industries, and I have also already commented on the importance of coal in the nineteenth century, especially in the South, as well as on all the extinct lime kilns that grace every minor inlet along the coast, in fact anywhere a reasonably sized boat could possibly gain access to transport raw materials and product.  There are other industries that have waxed and waned, and today and yesterday, I had a great insight into those sad events.

The slate industry in Abereiddy dominated the local community, and its products graced the roofs of houses for miles around. They were transported from Abereiddy up the coast to Porthgain for processing, by a small local railway or tramway, reminiscent of the coal transporting system in Saundersfoot.  Abereiddy’s slate industry was already on its last legs when a huge storm blew up just before the last war, destroying the workers homes and the ensuing typhoid epidemic was the last straw for the industry.

The resourceful little village of Porthgain is a good example of how the area somehow managed to evolve with changing economic circumstances. It changed from its initial dependence on slate in the late nineteenth century, to the establishment of a brickworks in the early part of the twentieth century.  Shortly afterwards, a crusher was installed to produce road stone, which was transported by sea from Porthgain in small ships that could make it into its attractive little harbour. All that remains of those industries are the ruins that lie evocatively all over the landscape. Those, and a substantial group of amateur artists trying to capture the spirit of the place!

Once upon a time, the port of Fishguard used to advertise itself, credibly or not, as the fastest route between New York and London, and of course the ferry to Ireland was important for both Pembroke and Fishguard. The ferry trade has gradually declined with the rise of air transport, and Fishguard and its sister town of Goodwick (pronounced “Goodick”) are shadows of their former selves.

Agriculture is still quite obviously important in the area, but without European subsidies, it would be only marginally profitable, if at all, and it shows. There is little evidence of any investment in the industry, and according to all the locals, the poor weather over the past few years has hit the farmers very hard. The businesses that depend on them are presumably also suffering. I was interested to talk to a sheep farmer who told me he now routinely moves his sheep down from the hills to the military firing range at Castlemartin, where they spend the winter months grazing at a cost of £3 per sheep. He says this is good value and that his sheep are in far better condition as a result than the ones that over-winter in the hills, which says something about the difficulties facing local sheep farmers.

So, the only hope is tourism.  The extension of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path to the whole coast of Wales, with its attendant publicity, has given a welcome fillip to the tourist industry. Many of the B&Bs I have been patronising have commented that business this year is reasonable, with more walkers on the coastal path.  I was, though a little taken aback this evening when my hostess told me I was only the third person intending to do the whole Pembrokeshire Coastal Path in one go in the eight years she has been running the business!

I have also been interested to note that almost all the B&Bs in which I’ve been staying have been owned and run by refugees from England.  As I write this, I’m having supper in a “chippie” in Goodwick, having walked some additional miles trying to find any sort of an establishment serving supper.  The staff here are South Asian, and from their accents, recently arrived. In any case, we walkers are a frugal lot, because what we eat and drink, we have to carry!

So all in all, I am having difficulty understanding how the local population supports itself. I would venture to suggest that the vast majority of capable youngsters are emigrating to England just like their brothers and sisters to the south in Cornwall and Devon. A number of their elders must be on benefits, also a declining industry under the Coalition! Times will be tough indeed…..

The ruins of the Abereiddy slate workers cottages after the great storm of 1938

The "blue lagoon" in Abereiddy. It was originally a slate mine, which was then blasted to allow ingress to the sea. It now hosts an annual cliff diving championship from the cliff on the right

Gorgeous grassy paths along the cliff. Almost good enough for cricket!

Back to the blue sea

A stone quarry above Porthgain. The quarry is on the left and the railway track ran in the depression immediately to the left. The ruined offices are on the right

The ruins of the slate, brick and road stone works in Porthgain

With half a dozen artists painting its quaint little harbour

Back up to the high cliffs as the weather starts to change

A stone circle, reminiscent of the Merry Maidens in Cornwall

Ruins of an old water-powered grain mill, with the millstones still intact

Did poor Frank wind up in the trenches in Flanders, after this 1915 act of graffiti?

The path climbs ever higher

And the cliffs are alive with colour, hardly visible in this image

More strange shapes

Including arches

The attractive, little port of Abercastle

An archipelago on the edge of the cliffs

Looking up to Strumble Head, my destination tomorrow. I could just see the lighthouse winking

An azure sea as I turned inland to complete the day

Day 10: St Justinian's to Abereiddy

Weather: Partly cloudy, then sunny, warm and still

Distance covered today: 16.3km (10.1mi)

Last night's B&B: The Coach House

% Complete: Cum distance: 72.1%: 212.0km  (131.7mi)

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 10 (click!)

Walkers of the world unite!  We demand our rights (of way)!  Forgive me, but it is May Day, or in these politically correct and bureaucratically anodyne times, Early May Bank Holiday.  The hordes are still in town, inducing me to withdraw from the scrum into the realms of thought, and specifically to thoughts about walking.

Thoreau looms ever larger in my thinking. Sensible man, he had a great love for walking, which we share. He also wrote very eruditely about it. In fact he wrote an essay which he named simply “Walking”.  I first heard about it from a young, American student, by name Joanna, who was doing a creative writing course at Washington College in the US and who randomly commented on a post in my LEJOG blog. She introduced me to his field notes, written by him in preparation for the final essay.

I have come across references to his love of walking and its philosophical underpinning in many instances since then, and earlier in this walk, Adrienne was expressing ideas with which he would have been quite at home.  Last night, I finally met up with the intrepid group of walkers from Tunbridge Wells, and amidst much ribaldry, had a half-way serious conversation with their deposed “glorious leader” George, a thoughtful, amusing and articulate member of the group and its chief organiser. His ouster as leader was the collective and boisterous result of his faulty planning of their walk the previous day, which resulted in their late arrival in St David’s (and their incidentally standing me up in The Jolly Farmer!)

They had obviously discussed me and my wanderings and were keen to interrogate me on the whys and wherefores. I fear I acquitted myself poorly, but over the general hubbub, George and I did have an interesting conversation.  He introduced me to the idea of “Ambulando solvitur”, which was new to me, and on research, rather surprisingly so. It means, literally “It is solved by walking”, and has a long and distinguished intellectual heritage.

I was trying to explain that I had found it impossible to think deeply about things in my walks, something I have been going on about in these blogs for ages. He disagrees. He says the whole point is that by exposure to all the elements of a walk and the practical exercise of it, the subconscious is processing these issues in its own time and space and that the solutions will emerge as a natural consequence. This is something with which my good friend Peter, in Pringle Bay, would no doubt agree.

Thoreau too reaches into the same idea: “In the spaces of thought are the reaches of land and water, where men go and come. The landscape lies far and fair within and the deepest thinker is the farthest travelled.”  This may have been a touch too self-serving, though he wasn’t necessarily referring to himself!  I argued with George about this, but he was insistent. He is convinced that walking is the natural condition of Homo Sapiens and it is therefore a process through which we address big issues, even if we do not consciously approach them at the time.

Thoreau, again in his essay on walking, waxes eloquent on the subject.  He may be a little politically incorrect in this post 9/11 world, in which Bush the Younger made such a fool of himself about the crusades, but allowing for the context of his own times, Thoreau says:  “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived ‘from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,’ to the Holy Land, till the children- exclaimed, ‘There goes a SainteTerrer,’ Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean….For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.”

On the same theme, my good friend, Mary sent me this quote from Rebecca Solnit, in her book ‘Wanderlust: A History of Walking’;  “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts”.  This precisely addresses my issue. I have equated being lost in my thoughts with thinking deeply, and the act of walking prevents this. Rebecca is at one with Thoreau and George that this doesn’t matter!

She goes on to say, “Moving on foot seems to make it easier to move in time; the mind wanders from plans to recollections to observations.

“The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it. A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making. And so one aspect of the history of walking is the history of thinking made concrete, for the motions of the mind cannot be traced, but those of the feet can.

“Walking can also be imagined as a visual activity, every walk a tour leisurely enough both to see and to think over the sights, to assimilate the new into the known. Perhaps this is where walking's peculiar utility for thinkers comes from. The surprises, liberations, and clarifications of travel can sometimes be garnered by going around the block as well as going around the world, and walking travels both near and far.

“Or perhaps walking should be called movement, not travel, for one can walk in circles or travel around the world immobilized in a seat, and a certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane. It is the movement as well as the sights going by that seems to make things happen in the mind, and this is what makes walking ambiguous and endlessly fertile: it is both means and end, travel and destination.”

There is for me a congruence between these ideas, and what my good friend Julian would call a synchronicity in their all coming together during this walk. How far separated Thoreau and his Walden Pond is from George and his squash-club colleagues in Tunbridge Wells!

And so this is me, your saunterer, sounding intense, but, if truth be told, actually just loving the challenge and the fun of this walk.  So maybe I am just an idler and a vagabond after all?

A fiery sunset in context for the conflicts that beset St David's Cathedral through history!

Only a parent will understand!

St David's magnificent cathedral in the smallest city in Britain

The ruined Bishop's Palace: St David himself lived humbly. The princes of the church later did not!

Setting off from St Justinian's along this magical path

An Oystercatcher admiring the patterns of lichen

Approaching Whitesands Bay

The beach at Whitesands Bay at low tide

The coast up to Carn Penberry, the first igneous outcrop on my journey so far

Violet?

I would have to walk over the shoulder of Carn Penberry

A seal lazing in the sun

Two of his brothers, standing upright in the water for some reason

A most striking butterfly! Julian, what is it?

The crown of Carn Penberry

Looking northwards from the Carn towards some really rugged coastline

Ox-eye Daisy

?

 

Looking back over the path already travelled

Abereiddy, my destination for the day in the middle at the top

A field of primrose