Walk 349 -- Caernarfon to Clynnog Fawr

Ages:  Colin was 71 years and 308 days.  Rosemary was 69 years and 85 days.

Weather:  Sunny.  Calm.  Wall-to-wall blue sky.  Slight breeze by the coast.  Fog appeared mid-afternoon turning it considerably colder.
Location:  Caernarfon to Clynnog Fawr.
Distance:  14 miles.
Total distance:  3606 miles.
Terrain:  Mostly roads and cycleways.  One footpath across farmland which ended with me being rescued by tractor from ankle-deep slurry!  (Pooh!!)
Tide:  Out.
Rivers: No.428, Afon Gwyrfai.  No.429, Afon Carrog.
Ferries:  None.
Piers:  None.
Kissing gates:  Nos.674 (it was bust!) and 675 at each end of a marsh.
Pubs:  None.
‘Cadw’ properties:  None.
Ferris wheels:  None.
Diversions:  None.
How we got there and back:  We were staying in a holiday cottage near Criccieth.  This morning we drove to Clynnog Fawr and parked in a residential street.  We walked down to the village bus stop and caught a bus to Caernarfon.
At the end we walked into the village and turned up the road where our car was parked.  We had our tea and chocolate biscuits, then returned to our cottage.

It was beautiful weather as we started today’s Walk, wall-to-wall blue sky and no wind.  The water on Afon Seiont was like a millpond with lovely reflections.  It was so peaceful and quiet.  We had originally planned to come and do these Walks next week, but we hadn’t booked the cottage and when we heard there was likely to be high pressure hanging over the British Isles all this week we decided to come a week early.  Luckily the cottage was available.  It was not only the weather that was in our favour — this morning there was a notice on the footbridge we had crossed over from Caernarfon saying that they plan to close it next Monday “to allow major maintenance work on the bridge”.  So if we had come next week we would have had difficulty getting across.

We had a lovely lazy walk alongside the Menai Strait.  There was hardly any traffic and few people — just the occasional dog-walker.  There was no sound of traffic when one of the dog-walkers stopped for a chat.  He asked, “Are you enjoying the tranquillity?”  We laughed and answered, “Yes, except for that wretched microlight which keeps buzzing around!”

We stopped at a picnic site to eat our pasties.  There was evidence that the sea had recently been up over the road — seaweed was draped on the hedge on the far side!  We could see Snowdonia in the distance, and spied some herons by a pond in a field.

A little further on we had to turn away from the coast in order to cross a river.  We came out on to a slightly mainer road and crossed the bridge.  The Wales Coast Path went straight on from there, and we thought it then turned inland because, frustratingly, the route of it was not marked on our fairly new OS map.  We turned directly on to a public footpath which ran back to the coast alongside the river.  (We were to regret that decision later.) 

It was a good track as far as a house, then it got a bit muddy — but we coped.  It was OK across some fields but tended to be very muddy around gateways where the animals like to congregate.  We felt a bit sorry for some horses in a field we passed where they had no grass, only mud.

We got to the last gate before the farm, and on the other side of it the track was ankle-deep in farm slurry!  It was wall-to-wall, and horrible!  It looked solid, but it was very liquid.  There was no getting away from it, so we started paddling through.  Colin was ahead of me.  He tried tiptoe and yelled back, “It’s deeper at this end!”  He’d got it inside his boots by then, but I hadn’t quite.  I saw a narrow bank next to the opposite wall, so I paddled across and hauled myself up on to it.  But it was soft and started giving way — and it petered out a few yards ahead anyway.  I still had about fifty yards to go, and I was stuck!

By then the farmer had come out, though I could see neither him nor Colin from my position on the disintegrating bank.  Colin yelled, “The farmer’s coming for you with his tractor!”  And so he did, like a knight in shining armour, his tractor wheels making waves in the slurry!  I had to extricate myself from a persistent bramble loop before I could step on to the metal footplate and get in the tractor.  Then I was ferried to the end of the slurry.

The farmer was apologetic for leaving the track like that, but said it had been very wet these recent weeks and there was nothing he could do.  He took us into a barn where there was a hosepipe and lent us a coarse brush.  So we were able to clean off our filthy boots, but Colin had some slurry inside his which was most uncomfortable, and smelly!  I had it splashed up my trousers.

The farmer told us he was very worried about his 83year old father, with whom he ran the farm, who had just started a course of chemotherapy for bowel cancer.  Now, he shouldn’t have let the slurry run out like that, especially on to a public footpath.  And if it did so, he should have at least put up a notice at the beginning of the track informing walkers of the situation.  But we got the impression that here was a very worried man who couldn’t cope anymore.  Sad!

We left the farm and turned on to a road.  (We would have stayed on the road if we’d known about the slurry, it was only two sides of a triangle instead of one.)  Further on we turned on to a footpath over the marshes.  We were surprised to find it was signposted “Wales Coast Path”.  So, if we’d followed the signposts at the river bridge and stayed on the road, we would have missed out the slurry and been on the Wales Coast Path all the time — hindsight is a wonderful thing!  It was a good path through trees, then over a solid footbridge.  The path across the marsh was on a high bank, so we had no problem with mud.

We turned on to a road which passed a small airport.  We were trying to think of excuses as to why we didn’t walk all round the airport to the tip of the sandspit, but we couldn’t think of any except that we felt too lazy!  There were small planes landing and taking off as we walked past, and a couple of helicopters sat on the tarmac.  The fence alongside the garden of a house on the opposite side of the road was down.  That was due to high winds which we all experienced last week — this is a very exposed spot.  No wind today though, the weather was perfect!

At the end of the road we came to a car park with a picnic table, so we sat there and ate our sarnies.  We had walked 3600 miles along the coast since leaving Bognor back in 1998, so we took a photo of ourselves using the delayed shutter.

We could see a lighthouse on Anglesey from there.

The Wales Coast Path continued due south, but there was a sandy beach which we couldn’t resist.  It was absolute bliss to walk on — we both agreed that this was the best part of today’s Walk!  Eventually rocks forced us up on to the prom which ended at Dinas Dinlle.  There we sat at a picnic table to eat our apples.

There were no Wales Coast Path signs to be seen.  There was no path continuing along the coast and the beach was impossible.  So we had to follow the road which led inland.  When the pavement ran out, which it did pretty soon, we donned our high-viz waistcoats.  We really needed them on this twisting narrow road even though there wasn’t much traffic.  We passed a field with brown sheep — are they a rare breed? — and a tree bent right over with the wind.

When we reached the main road, we saw a Wales Coast Path sign opposite — we had been on it all the time!  It was a bit of a route-march from then on.  We were relieved we didn’t have to traffic-dodge because there was a cycleway alongside the main road.  Much of the cycleway was “old road”, separated from the noise of traffic by a row of trees.  We liked this, and we got mildly annoyed when we came to a stretch of this “old road” which was blocked by tree branches, forcing us to walk on the new cycleway right next to the noisy and speeding traffic.

It started to get foggy, and COLD.  A sea mist must have come in making a big change to the weather.

After about two miles we came to a place where a path marked on our OS map turned off towards the beach.  But the Wales Coast Path was signed to go straight on.  However we ignored this and turned off.  We walked down a bumpy road, and it was quite exciting because we couldn’t see where we were going due to the fog which had thickened.  We reached the beach, and it was not clear where our way-marked path continued.  So we carried on along the stony beach with rolling boulders and stones.  It was not easy, but we persevered and the situation eased.

Eventually it turned into a much sandier beach.  There was evidence of erosion on the sandy cliffs — is that why the Wales Coast Path no longer comes this way?  We could just make out cormorants on a foggy rock just off the beach.  Some of the rocks were interesting too, with intriguing stripes in the stones.

In the end we came to a picnic site, so we stopped to eat our chocolate.  It was too cold to linger in the fog, so we didn’t hang about.  We went back out to the main road and route-marched for one more mile through the fog along the cycleway.  This brought us to the village of Clynnog Fawr where our car was parked.

That ended Walk no.349, we shall pick up Walk no.350 next time in Clynnog Fawr.  It was five o’clock, so the Walk had taken us eight hours five minutes.  We had our tea and chocolate biscuits, then returned to our cottage.