Agincourt 2: WALKING IN THE UK

WALKING ON THE CARDIGAN COASTAL PATH

May saw us in the UK. There were essentially two parts to the trip. The first was centered around a small reunion of King's College friends who have been meeting on a regular basis for quite a while. Robin attended part of one a few years ago when our visit to the UK coincided with that reunion. This time we made special effort to get to the whole event that lasted over a weekend in Stratford upon Avon. We also did some relative and friends visiting and that is all covered in a separate blog, which you can access from this one. This blog covers our time walking on the Cardigan Coast and also in the Lake District. You may have read about our time walking on the Cornish Coastal Path in 2009 and our walking holiday in Greece in 2010. We had really enjoyed those travels and decided to tackle the path along the Cardigan Coast. This is a newly finished path running from Cardigan to just North of Aberystwyth. We had planned four days on the path which meant we couldn't complete it all but we did cover the more interesting Southern section.

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We had started our trip in the Midlands and took the train from Birmingham International Station to Aberystwyth. By buying all of our railway tickets well in advance we were able to roughly halve the cost. The train companies of the UK have changed a lot from days past. There are now a series of separate companies that purchase running time from another company Network Rail which maintains the track. It seems to work. One result is that there seem to be many more routes. In the old days trains were centered largely on radial routes out of the main centres. Now there are any more cross country routes allowing direct journeys that used to involve changes en route. The company that ran our train was Arriva Wales that covers the whole of Wales with routes into England.

Our train began at the station close by Birmingham International Airport and ran right through to the Welsh Coast with no changes required. We had started out fairly early dropping off the rental car at the airport. The train got us directly to Aberystwyth around 1330, just in time to not be able to connect with the bus to Cardigan where we were going to stay for the night before getting onto the path the next morning. We didn't think the coordination between train and bus was that clever as we had about two and a half hours to wait for the next bus. We put this to good use by having lunch and walking down to the sea front to see where we were going to stay after we had finished our walking. The bus took us outside the front door our our bed and breakfast. We knew exactly where we were going as we had used Google Earth and Streetview to study Cardigan. The whole trip was booked and researched using the internet, a really powerful tool. So, sure enough, the bus stopped outside a bicycle shop and over the road was the Lleyn Teifi Guest House. This was a pleasant place to spend the night. In fact, we were always pleased with our choice of bed and breakfast stays.

Walking Day 1- Cardigan to Aberporth

We had arranged for a local taxi company to collect our luggage each morning and deliver it to our next port of call. This worked out very well and it meant we only needed to carry our essentials in our back packs. Not sure about our endurance on the first leg of the walk we got the same taxi to take us a short distance down the route.

We started the walk at the little village of Ferwig. The path from Cardigan didn't look very interesting on the map so we probably missed very little. There is currently a dispute over this part of the route as a local caravan park owner is being difficult so the revised route comes to Ferwig anyway. After a short walk along little lanes we reached the country and set out to get onto the coast passing by a few farms. Once on the coast we could see the route ahead to the little settlement of Mwnt.

On the right path which was always well signposted

The bay at Mwnt

The little church at Mwnt on a pilgrim route from St. Davids.

Inside the church at Mwnt - an HDR image for the photographer

Welsh is spoken here

Along the cliff edge

A word of warning

There were many lovely wild flowers to enjoy

Not in deepest Africa - on the Cardigan Coastal Path

We climbed up and down many staircases like this one

and crossed many bridges across streams

Lots of sheep along the path

and a few snails as well

Our day ended at Aberporth where there is a missile research station. As we approached the town we heard a couple of whooshes but nothing to see. We guessed these were missiles being tested. A little later a helicopter carrying a net took off and disappeared over the horizon to return later with a yellow object in the net. This was clearly one of the test missiles we had heard earlier. Not a great photo because of the distance.

We walked down into the town and found our B and B for the night - the Highcliffe Hotel.

Walking Day 2 - Aberporth to Celyn Parc near Llangranog

Aberporth was a pretty little town with a pleasant beach but no harbour. In fact it wasn't until we finished at the end of our third day did we find a harbour, at New Quay.

This part of the Cardigan Coast is very popular for holiday makers. As a result there are many trailer parks and mobile homes along the way. Most were discretely hidden. There were a few converted railway carriages. This one was particularly well finished and bore the colours of the old Great Western Railway - brown and cream.

Our path continued North to the little beach at Tresaith.

Continuing on we reached the settlement of Penbryn and there we made a short detour to the Church of St. Micheal's, said to be one of the oldest churches in Wales.

Inside the Church of St. Micheal's - more HDR

The beach at Carreg-y-ty

A typical section of the path - up and down a lot

The village of Llangranog

A rocky stack known as the Devils' Tooth off the beach at Llangranog

The story goes that one day the devil had a raging toothache and in desperation to rid himself of the pain he plucked the offending fang from his mouth and hurled it into the air whereupon it fell to Earth and landed at Llangranog Beach where it remains to this day.

As we left Llangranog we rounded a headland to a little bay known for its dolphin population, but not this day. We met a couple who had driven all the way from Newport to see dolphins but they reported no success as we passed by.

The no dolphin bay

We passed by the Urdd Centre. This is a well-appointed camp for young people to stay. As we came through the camp there was a whole crowd of youngsters who had just arrived. They can take part in a range of activities from horse riding to skiing on an artificial slope.

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Our B and B was a little inland off the path. It was in the little village of Blaencelyn and in the local post office and small store. It was run by a pleasant couple, the man was very talkative! They had two rooms and ours had a four poster bed, which was different. On the map the village of Blaencelyn is near Pontgarreg.

Day 3 - Celyn Parc to New Quay

Our weather had been quite pleasant up to this point. Day 3 saw it change and we were soon walking in a slight drizzle. Not too bad but a bit of a nuisance. We backtracked to the coast and picked up the path again. We had a long climb up the sloping side of the cliff. You can see the mist in the photo.

We reached a little settlement at Cwmtudu where a cafe was open and we stopped for a cup of tea. By the time we started out again the weather had improved, or so we thought. It wasn't bad enough to put on rain gear but we should have done because we were soon in light rain. We persevered and reached our destination, New Quay.

We found the B and B - the Dol-A-Wel guest house and unfortunately the lady running it was less than helpful to two rather wet hikers. She didn't offer any drying help. The room was fine and the breakfast was excellent, as they all were. The lady seemed to be in better humour the next morning, fortunately.

Day 4 - New Quay to Aberaeron

New Quay had a harbour and on the harbour wall we found a dolphin spotter. A local group has been spotting dolphins as a research project for many years. Although the man said there were dolphins out at sea we couldn't see them. Not our day perhaps.

We walked along the beach in slightly misty weather but it improved as the day progressed.

We finally could see our end point for the day, the town of Aberaeron. This was the largest town we had seen and it turned out to be very pleasant.

We found a nice little cafe by the harbour and, having collected our backpacks which we had arranged to be dropped off at a nearby B and B, we found the bus stop where we caught the local bus to Aberystwyth where we were going to spend our last night on the Cardigan Coast.

We stayed at the Glengower Hotel on the sea front in glorious sunshine, such a change from the previous day. We had a room overlooking the sea and enjoyed a magnificent sunset. The hotel was very lively as it was the time of the year that students at the University were leaving for the Summer. As the hotel had a patio area out front it was very popular. We had a good meal and then got ready to leave on the bus the next morning to Carnarvon where we were due to see one of our nephews and family. That is all covered in the second blog.

WALKING IN THE LAKE DISTRICT

Our second series of walks were in the Lake District which we had driven to from the Midlands. Our route took us from Derby up M1 and A1(M) to Leyburn and up Wensleydale. The town of Hawes up the dale houses the Wensleydale cheese factory and we stopped there for the tour of the cheese works. This is a relatively small operation that had survived two potential bankruptcies over the last few years but it appeared to be on sound footing now and there were plenty of visitors including two coach tours. We saw cheese in production and visited the cheese shop on site. There you could try over a dozen cheeses that they make, in fact you could have a nice lunch from all the choices available.

We continued on through Windermere and Keswick to Gosforth on the coast near Calder Hall where we were going to stay with our friends Angela and Alan. They made us very welcome and we were able to walk on the next two days.

The first walk we took from the Cumbria magazine that we receive on a regular basis. The walk took us to the top of Blake Fell. We started out from the little village of Lamplugh and passed by a small lake, Cogra Moss.

The target lay ahead of us but up a long climb. The weather wasn't that good so we had our rain gear on from the start. This was wise because as we climbed it began to drizzle and it was blowing hard and was quite unpleasant. We didn't stay long at the top and made our way on and down to the lake again, by which time the sun decided to come out, a bit late.

Blake Fell

On the second day out we drove down to Ravenglass, the terminus of the Ravenglass and Eskdale narrow gauge railway, also known as "The Ratty". This is a popular tourist spot but the railway also serves little villages up the Eskdale valley. As we arrived a train was getting ready to leave.

We didn't go for a ride as our target that day was Muncaster Castle, a pleasant walk across fields and through woodlands.

The next day we left Gosforth to begin our journey back South but had another nice hike near Kendal. Another walk from the Cumbria Magazine. The weather hadn't been any great shakes on any of our days in the Lake District but we persevered and this time we walked to Beacon Tarn and Beacon Fell. This was a relatively easy walk although there were some very rocky sections and some wet areas. On the way we met up with a group of mountain bikers who were going to have an exciting time on the rocky terrain.