Walk 357 -- Pwllheli to Criccieth

Ages:  Colin was 72 years and 69 days.  Rosemary was 69 years and 211 days.

Weather:  Wet and windy until 3pm.  Then it suddenly turned hot and sunny.  Breezy.

Location:  Pwllheli to Criccieth.

Distance:  12 miles.

Total distance:  3684 miles.

Terrain:  A lot of beach, then cliff paths.  A main road with a wide pavement.  Across fields and marsh at the end.  Mostly flat.

Tide:  In, going out.

Rivers: No.431, Afon Rhid-hir in Pwllheli.  No.432, Afon Dwyfach on the road.  No.433, Afon Dwyfor at Llanystumdwy.

Ferries:  None.

Piers:  None.

Kissing gates:  Nos.748 & 749 on Pen-ychain headland.  Nos.750, 751, 752 & 753 as we approached Criccieth.

Pubs:  None.

‘Cadw’ properties:  No.8, Penarth Fawr.  No.9, Criccieth Castle.
Ferris wheels:  None.
Diversions:  None.
How we got there and back:  We were staying in our caravan in Snowdonia.  This morning we drove to Criccieth where we parked by the waterfront.  We walked to the village centre and caught a bus to Pwllheli.
At the end we came upon our car parked in Criccieth.  We had our tea and biscuits, then returned to our caravan.

Today is our 48^th Wedding Anniversary!  Gosh, how time flies by — it’s only two years to our Golden!  It’s not the first time we’ve been walking the coast on our anniversary, so we’d better get on with it.

We started today’s Walk at the War Memorial in Pwllheli.  As we walked round the harbour we were appalled to discover that it would have cost £7.50 to park on the north side of the harbour last Monday whereas it was free to park on the west side where we did!  We thought the rain had stopped, but it soon started again.  We sat in a shelter to eat our pie/croissant and put on our wet-weather gear.

The marina down the east side of the harbour was mostly a construction site, so we had to stick to the road.
We came to the end and thought we had boobed because the tide was in, but the path did continue along the top of the beach.  At the beginning the path was overgrown with bushes, but we did manage to walk round them.  We were protected from the wind at first, but photography was restricted because of the poor visibility.

There were some unusual and very pretty flowers on that part of the beach, we didn’t know what they were.  They looked more like garden flowers than wild ones.

We walked for miles along the sandy beach with rolling surf to our right and dunes to our left.

We quite enjoyed it at first despite the rain because the wind was on our backs.  But as the rain intensified and we walked round the crescent with the wind more to our right, it became a bit of a slog.  We came to a “Road Works” notice on the beach!  It was surrounded by dire warnings that this was a “hard hat” area and we must not enter the “site”, etc, etc.  We ignored them all and carried on.  There was nothing on the beach itself, except sand.  Some diggers were up on the dunes trying to hold them together and planting, we thought.  But nobody was working there in this weather.
We saw a holiday chalet overhanging the edge of the soft sandy cliff, and it reminded us of the erosion we saw on the east coast, particularly around Mundesley in Norfolk.  We came to some rocks under a bit of overhanging cliff where it was less wet and windy.  So I sat down to eat my sarnies (perhaps a bit foolish, in retrospect).  Colin marched off “to look for a better place”, but having tried three different spots he came back and grumpily sat down beside me.  It reminded me of that hilarious play “East of Ipswich” – I think Michael Palin wrote it – which was on television yonks ago.  (I do wish they would repeat it.)

We marched on doggedly as the wind and rain intensified.  (It’s on days like this that we wonder why we’re doing this.)  It was hard going, really miserable now.  We saw some cormorants on the beach ahead — even they didn’t look as if they were enjoying themselves!

Towards the end of the beach it turned stony, but it wasn’t too bad to walk on.  We stayed next to the dunes because an occasional path looped through the edge of them away from the shingle.
Colin started walking up a ghost of a path leading to the top of the dunes.  Three times I asked him if it was a decent path, because it didn’t look as if it was, but he wouldn’t answer me — wet and windy weather always puts him in a bad mood.  He was determined to follow it, so I followed him.  I shouldn’t have.  The ‘path’ deteriorated at the top, I caught my foot in a loopy root and fell headlong!  I wasn’t hurt, but I was a bit shocked.  I fell downhill so my feet ended up higher than my head.  I had great difficulty getting up, I even had dirt on my face.  A man came rushing up from the beach — the first person we had seen since Pwllheli — because he had seen me fall but I assured him I was OK.  He asked, “Is that a better path?” and Colin answered, “Don’t know, we’ve not been here before!”  He said, “I’m going the beach way!” and disappeared downhill, later joining his friends at the gate leading on to the headland.  I wanted to return to the beach, but Colin was still determined to carry on even though the ‘path’ had completely disappeared.  Sometimes the ferns were over our heads!  We got to the gate eventually.

By then the rain had stopped — just — but it was still pretty windy.  We were both soaked — our wet-weather gear is not as waterproof as it once was.  There was a good path over the headland.  We came across a gun emplacement at the end, a legacy of the Second World War.  The sea was rough with the wind which hadn’t yet died down, waves were breaking against the cliffs.  We should have been able to see Criccieth from the top, but the visibility was too poor.

The path improved the other side of the headland, it was more gravel-based there.  As we approached a holiday village and descended to a beach area, we lost it.  We came to an “exercise area” which seem to be springing up all over the country in a bid to encourage people to change their lifestyles and stop being such couch potatoes.  We sat on some wooden steps to eat our apples.  I was all in and would happily have given up there and then.  But then a small miracle happened — the wind died, the clouds cleared, and suddenly it was a hot sunny day.  Such a contrast!  I got my second wind and was OK to carry on.  Visibility improved, and we could see across the water to Snowdonia very clearly now.

We met lots of people now, mostly holiday-makers who were emerging from their static caravans and chalets as the sun came out.  The holiday village stretched all the way to the sewage works!  And we passed the first Wales Coast Path sign of the day — we have only walked five miles.  We could have gone down on to the beach there, where we could see an obese woman playing with her kids, but we didn’t because we didn’t want to miss the place where the path turned inland.  It was a nice path along the top anyway.

Just before a swamp, the path turned away from the shore — the place was clearly marked with a wooden signpost.  We had to do this because there was a river ahead with no footbridge over it, only a road bridge.  We went under the railway, then up a quiet road to a main road.  After that it was a slog for two and a half miles alongside the main road.  But we did have a nice wide cycletrack to walk on, so there was no traffic-dodging involved.  About halfway we passed a caravan sales outlet that sold ICE CREAMS!  Fortified by a choc-ice each, we slogged on.  At last we crossed the river, and immediately we were able to turn off the main road leaving all that noisy smelly traffic behind.
We crossed fields and the railway, which was rusty because it hasn’t been used since the bridge at Penrhyndeudraeth was washed away last February.  We came to the river again — we hadn’t followed its meanders — where it runs parallel to the coast.  We met a number of other walkers going the other way on this stretch.

It was a bit boggy, but boardwalks had been put down over the worst bits.  We sat on a wall to eat our chocolate.  After half a mile we came to the river mouth, so it would have been possible to get down on to the beach.  But it was too stony to walk, so we stayed on the good path along the top.  Now we could see Criccieth Castle ahead.  Nearly there!

We passed a bird-watching couple — then they caught up with us when we stopped to take photographs.  They asked, “Are you from Malvern?  You’re the couple walking the Wales Coast Path, aren’t you?”  They were Stuart and Pat, members of the Malvern U3A Welsh Culture Group!  They had recognised us, but we hadn’t recognised them. (I am notoriously bad at face-recognition).  We had been trying, but failing, to take an anniversary picture of us using the 10 second delay timer on my camera, so we asked Stuart to take one of us, which he did.

They wished us luck with our venture — Pat said they were only walking as far as their car which was parked nearby.

We didn’t have far to go — we walked into Criccieth where we had to climb a bit of a hill to pass the castle on the inland side because the tide was too far in and waves were bashing against the castle mound on the shore side.  Then it was downhill to East Beach where our car was parked.

That ended Walk no.357, we shall pick up Walk no.358 next time on East Beach in Criccieth.  It was twenty-five to seven, so the Walk had taken us eight hours forty minutes.  We had our tea and biscuits, then returned to our caravan. 

Criccieth  Castle 

An imposing gatehouse!  And that is more or less all that is left of Criccieth Castle.  It was built in 1230, long before the reign of Edward I, by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.  When Edward I came rampaging across Wales in 1283, he captured this castle for the English.  It was then remodelled, but it was never very big. 

It was built on a small knoll overlooking Cardigan Bay, and there is only a certain amount of room up there.  It may be a small hill, but it is very steep and commands sweeping views in all directions.  In 1294, Madoc ap Llywelyn, a relative of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd who originally owned Criccieth Castle, began an uprising against English rule.  Criccieth was besieged that winter. Its residents survived until spring when the castle was resupplied.  The castle was used as a prison until 1404 when Welsh forces captured the castle during the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr.  The Welsh then tore down its walls and set the castle alight. Some stonework still show the scorch marks.  It has been a ruin ever since.

Penarth  Fawr 

Penarth Fawr is was built in the mid 15th century and has 18th century renovations. It was built by Madoc of Penarth in 1416, to a design known as an aisled truss hall house.  Most of the original 15th century features still remain.  The core of the house is an open hall, heated only by a central hearth on the floor, with private quarters at one end and service rooms at the other. Smoke from the central hearth escaped through a vent, or louver, in the roof. The position of the louver is marked a small louver truss. The fireplace is dated to 1615, when a first floor was inserted into the high-roofed open hall.  The most striking feature of Penarth Fawr is the elaborate truss system that braces the structure. The trusses are showing signs of age and have required recent repairs, but show in beautiful detail how a house of this period was built.

Walk 356 -- Abersoch to Pwllheli

Ages:  Colin was 72 years and 67 days.  Rosemary was 69 years and 209 days.

Weather:  Misty rain coming across in waves.  Breezy, but not cold.  Less rain pm.
Location:  Abersoch to Pwllheli.
Distance:  9 miles.
Total distance:  3672 miles.
Terrain:  Lots of beach which was mostly firm sand, though some was a bit stony.  Steep ascent up a headland, moorland path on top, then a steep descent with steps through trees.  Some concrete at start and end of Walk.
Tide:  In, going out.
Rivers: No.430, Afon Soch in Abersoch.
Ferries:  None.
Piers:  None.
Kissing gates:  None.
Pubs:  None.
‘Cadw’ properties:  None.
Ferris wheels:  None.
Diversions:  None.
How we got there and back:  Yesterday we towed our caravan from home to Snowdonia.  This morning we drove to Pwllheli where we parked by the harbour.  We walked to the bus station and caught a bus to Abersoch.
At the end we came upon our car parked in Pwllheli.  We had our tea and biscuits, then returned to our caravan. 

The good news is that Colin has at last had his operation — to replace his faulty artificial sphincter.  It took a lot of persistence and determination to get the treatment he so badly needed.  First of all he wouldn’t take “No” for an answer when he was told he couldn’t have a replacement sphincter on the National Health.  He asked for a referral, then he was subject to numerous cancelled and delayed appointments until he made a list of them and complained about it.  Eventually he was given a date, but neither of us could believe it would really happen until he was wheeled back to the ward from the operating theatre, all done and sewn up!  He ended up at one of Britain’s top hospitals (Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham) where he was treated royally, and the operation was carried out by one of Britain’s top urologists.  Well done the NHS!
He made a quick and complete recovery.  Six weeks later the device was switched on — and it worked!  From day one he was more comfortable with this sphincter than he ever was with the last one.  He is not a hundred per cent dry, but he is a hundred times more comfortable than he was before.  Now we won’t have to anxiously look for the public loos every time we enter a town on our Walks, or be afraid that he is going to embarrass himself — we can be much more relaxed. 
The bad news is that the very week Colin’s sphincter was switched on and he was in the clear, my left knee started to give me trouble.  It has become very painful, especially when I walk downhill.  The diagnosis?  Wear-and-tear arthritis.  The treatment I have received so far?  I have been prescribed codeine tablets to take when I find the pain too much.  They have no effect whatsoever.  I can see this is going to have to go a lot further — it is severely hampering my walking.

Now to the Walk.  I took two codeine tablets before we started because my knee was painful, but I was fooling myself that they were doing me any good.  We sat on a bench above the jetty in Abersoch and huddled against the wall in an effort to get out of the rain.  There we ate the pasties we had just bought in a local butcher’s.  Most of the photos I took today I had to take from under Colin’s umbrella, which was a bit of a nuisance.  We saw a man swim across the harbour. When he got out on the jetty I asked him if it was cold in the water.  He answered, “Not really!”

We walked through the town to the bridge where we crossed the river.  Then we had a short section on the road, but there was a pavement all along so it was okay.  We passed a house with plants growing over its roof, we wondered if it was one of those eco-houses that are being built all over the place.

We turned off down a sandy path to the beach where beautiful bright yellow flowers were growing.  A group of youths were down there. They had lit a fire, they were arguing and fighting each other and generally being oafs.

We turned our backs on them and walked away.  Later they passed us on the beach, still acting oafishly.  We had thought they were backpackers, but they were awkwardly carrying bags in their hands as well as rucksacks on their backs.
It was a nuisance having to pack the camera away in a polythene bag in the rucksack in between each shot I took, but I didn’t want it to get wet.  As a result of the rain, I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I wanted to.

We enjoyed walking on the beach despite the weather.  And we met a number of other people out walking in the rain, which was a bit surprising.  There were a lot of those shed-type houses on top of the sandy cliffs — we didn’t know if they were permanent homes or holiday cottages.  We sincerely hoped they were the latter because the soft cliffs were heavily eroded — the wooden steps down from the estate were skewed or partly washed away.  A dumper truck followed us along the beach, then it turned up to one of the shed-type houses which by now were practically level with the beach.  The dumper truck was obviously working on said house, but it got stuck in the soft sand as it turned up towards it.  I wouldn’t have liked to be living in such a house, or in any type of house in that uncertain location.
There was no Wales Coast Path sign directing us off the beach so we just had to guess.  We took a not-very-obvious path through the dunes, and it was only when we were well up the hill that we came across a sign.  We sat on some rocks that were there and ate our sarnies.  We followed the road gently uphill as the view was gradually revealed to our left.  We were amazed at the extent of the shed-type houses which were still being constructed.

The path we needed to take off the road was signposted, but it was obscured by ferns which had grown very tall.  We found it because we were looking for it.  This path led almost vertically uphill — we were climbing Mynydd Tir-y-cwmwd — and it started with huge steps made from natural rocks.  I found it difficult to pull myself up, particularly as my left knee was so painful.  Colin often had to help me.  I was pleased how well my gammy leg stood up to it.
We reached the top at last.  The ferns were still deep and obscuring the path, but we could always find our way and it opened out as we walked towards the end of the headland.  The views were wonderful — back along the beach we had just walked, Abersoch, the headland we walked round last April and some of the islands beyond.

It was a moorland-type path along the top of the headland, and well signposted at junctions.  We met a family distributing gooey cake amongst their members, and walked on discussing the possibility of adding a gooey cake stop to our list of pasty, sarnie, apple and chocolate stops.  We decided in the end that gooey cake would not wear well stuffed in our rucksacks along with the kitchen sink!  Further on, a girl aged about nine passed us going the other way.  We fully expected some adults to be following close behind her, but none did.  She seemed to be on her own.  We were just discussing the dangers of a young child being in such a wild place on her own (was she a local and knew her way around?) when Colin said, “She’s coming back!”  She looked a little distressed, so I asked, “Are you lost?”  She didn’t answer, but looked even more distressed.  I asked again, but she didn’t answer.  At the third time of asking she blurted out, “Germany!”  Ah!  So she was German and didn’t understand.  I only know about half a dozen words of German, but I managed to ask her where her mutter und vater were.  “There!” she answered, pointing behind us as a boy a little younger than her appeared over the hill.  She ran to him and seemed relieved to see him, but the rest of the family were way way behind.  We explained to the parents our concern for the girl, and they thanked us.  The mother spoke good English, and when I said I didn’t think her daughter understood us and was probably frightened, she laughed — because she said the child only understood English when it was spoken with a German accent!

We came to a metal statue which seemed to be made of a mess of wires.  We didn’t think much of it.  A notice told us that the original statue placed on this site was an old ship’s figurehead.  This was burned by vandals in the late 1970s, so a local artist was commissioned to replace it with a metal one in 1981.  This ‘tin’ man rusted away over the years, so the Community Council commissioned the present statue which was placed on the site in 2002.  I think the money could have been better spent!  There was a magnificent view of the beach ahead from that spot with a row of coloured beach huts.

I was rather dreading the path down because my knee is extra painful when downhill pressure is put on it.  But there were well-constructed steps down through a wood, and it was not as bad as I had feared.  We came to a log with coins stuck into it — why do people do this?  It was very pretty going down through the wood, and near the bottom we came across scenes of little stick men made from natural wood.  It was like a fairy glen!

We came to a junction by a notice board which told us about the granite quarries which used to be prominent features of the landscape around here until the 1950s.  We sat on a seat to eat our apples, and decide which path to follow.  The Coast Path was signposted straight on, not downhill as we expected.  We only later realised that the downhill path was the one marked on our OS map and would have taken us straight to the beach.  We decided to carry on the official coast path, which gently zigzagged down through woods, because of the state of my knee.

We met two women who asked how far it was to the statue.  They looked ready to give up the climb, and they had hardly started!  One of them admitted that she lived in Pwllheli but she had never been up to the statue before.  We assured them the climb was worth it for the view, but we did wonder if they ever got there.

Much to our surprise, we came out in a car park well away from the sea.  There was a small open-air theatre there which was less than two years old.  We passed a big house with a conservatory tea room, and “rude” statues in the grounds!

A tree was being cut down up on the cliff.  We were directed out through the main gate of this mansion on a road through a housing estate, all the way on tarmac going even further from the sea.

Eventually we came to a Wales Coast Path signpost which pointed back on ourselves, but downhill and directed to the sea.  (We were relieved to pass a public convenience block part way down — though Colin is not so desperate to find such facilities now that he’s had his operation.)  This road was very narrow and alongside a stream in a gully.  Cars are warned not to drive down it because there are no turning points, and there is a danger of dropping over the edge into the stream.  At the bottom was a car doing a thirteen-point-turn because the driver had chosen to ignore this notice!
My left knee began to pain quite excruciatingly — I think it was all the downhill I had just walked that had set it off.  I didn’t take any more codeine, I just tried to ignore the discomfort and carried on.

We were out on the beach at last, at a place called Llanbedrog.  We turned left and marched towards Pwllheli which we could barely see in the distance because it was beginning to get misty.  There were quite a few people walking along the beach as well as us, but they all turned round before the next headland and headed back.  We were glad the tide was now well out because it allowed us to walk round the ‘knob’ of this headland on a firm sandy beach.  The official Wales Coastal Path led us round there, but if the tide had been in it would have meant quite a bit of rock-scrambling.

On the other side of the ‘knob’ we cut a corner, paddling through water in some places.  But it was very shallow so that was no problem.  We sat on some rocks to eat our chocolate.  There we noticed that another couple had rounded the ‘knob’ behind us, and were fast catching us up.  They passed us before we were ready to move on, and we followed them into Pwllheli.  The official Wales Coastal Path went up to the top of the bank, but we decided to stick to the beach for as long as possible.  The beach got stonier and stonier as we progressed, but it only got bad enough for us to seek out the real Wales Coastal Track when we were almost in Pwllheli.

We passed the Golf Club and on to the end of a brand new prom.  The wild roses smelled wonderful, but Colin couldn’t enjoy their scent because he has lost his sense of smell.  There was loads of free parking along the waterfront in Pwllheli, we were very impressed.  It made us feel welcome.  Pwllheli was proudly displaying a blue flag for 2014 — a clean and healthy beach for watersports.  The visibility got very poor, it was almost a mist though it didn’t rain.
When we got to the end of the road where our car was parked, we decided that the spit of land leading to the harbour entrance on our side of the river was a dead end we didn’t have to walk if we didn’t want to.  It would have been a two-mile round trip, and we were already tired and fed up.  Later we were pleased we’d made that decision because it wasn’t long before the rain started in earnest.  The public conveniences were locked, so I used my RADAR key for the second time today — I’d used it this morning before we caught the bus because the ‘Ladies’ was locked.  (Good job we have these keys, they have saved us a lot of discomfort and embarrassment.)  We walked up to the car which was parked by the harbour — which was just a mudflat with the tide out.

That ended Walk no.356, we shall pick up Walk no.357 next time by the harbour in Pwllheli.  It was half past five, so the Walk had taken us six hours exactly.  We had our tea and biscuits, then returned to our caravan.