A View from the Bridget: Little Haven to Marloes Sands

The next section of the path was going to initially take us south and then around the Marloes Peninsula. After that section we would be running east, past Marloes Sands itself, through the town of Milford Haven and ultimately across the Cleddau Bridge and into Pembroke where we would end the week's walking. This was going to be a real mix of stunning unspoilt coastline and industrial development. We had three days to walk 42 miles from Little Haven to Pembroke where Rhian had promised me a nice (there's that bloody word again!) cake and a cup of tea (I think she was trying to make up for not having tipped me off about Short's intentions). By this stage in the holiday I was aching as soon as we started to walk each day, my feet were still in bits and the miles were starting to blend each other. We were now very familiar with the one way system in Haverfordwest and we soon arrived in Marloes Sands, parked one car and drove to Little Haven where the day's walk was set to start.

We had arrived in Little Haven fairly early and so we had no problem in parking.

'Excellent' I said, 'Our plan is working, we are here early enough to park the car close to the start of the path.'

'Disaster', said Rhian.

'Oh no, what have I done now?'. This is my default setting, I always assume I have ballsed something up. Some people might think this is due to deep seated anxiety but in my case it is just a simple fact. I have normally ballsed something up.

'We are too bloody early for a coffee and a bun in the lovely café and it is too close to breakfast to have a bacon roll.'

Damn, she was right. Its all well and good getting your walking kit sorted and having the right guidebooks and maps and everything but cocking up a snack break is a newbie error.

Missing our caffeine, we walked through the village, up some steps and picked up the path heading towards Borough Head. It was a beautiful day.

We dipped down steeply to the sands of Musselwick Bay and then had a hard climb back up - it was tough but glorious. This area is, again, familiar to me from my childhood, when my parents and I would visit my auntie and uncle who lived in Milford Haven and my dad, I suspect in an effort to get away from said auntie and uncle and the inevitable day-long shopping trip to the heady shopping delights of Haverfordwest my mother and her sister would embark on, would suggest that he and I explore.

Setting off in the car, we would follow wooden signposts down hair-raisingly narrow country lanes until they brought us to cliff edges or paths leading down to beaches. Musselwick was one of those, I recall now, and the little village of Talbenny nearby. We usually had the dog with us and she would be slobbering with excitement to get out and have a run. The back window of the car was covered in dried slobber, the seat covered in muddy, sandy pawprints and dried salt water marks after she got back in. That wet-dog smell was hard to erase, too. My mother always complained and my father just sort of chuckled and ignored the mess.

My dad. Chortling.

Such a wonderful man, I will always remember him laughing.

My dog. Slobbering.

Crazy, crazy dog. But lovely

Borough Head is the second headland you can see. Views like this just make the whole walking thing worth the effort. We were puffing and panting and I was cursing my feet at the top of some steps and suddenly you see a view like this. The sun was shining and it was hot enough for us to enjoy the relief of the onshore breeze.

Consulting our guide book as we walked, we saw Goultrop Roads on the map, which in my view is another great name. This area abounds in interesting, but certainly not Welsh, names. I think we mentioned the Landsker Line in an earlier blog. Well, this is the area that is demarcated by said Line. There are numerous theories as to why the names in the area are clearly not Welsh, and why the local accent is rather more West Country than West Walian. Mostly it is put down to the Normans, who, after 1066 (and all that) made incursions into Wales, though after about 100 years gave up trying to maintain control and buggered off back to England. A sensible plan. Strangely, there was also a Flemish settlement established by King Henry as part of his anti-Welsh campaign ( the English, Dutch and Flemish languages of the time being very closely linked) and this might explain names like Wiston, Clarbeston, Picton and Upton. Apparently, 500 years before this, an Irish tribe had turned up and settled in the area as well. It's a popular place, Pembrokeshire. Whatever the truth, strange to think that a thousand years later the modern linguistic landscape is still influenced by times so long past. Sorry to be somewhat pedantic, by the way, but the history of language is a topic that I could bore on about all day, though when I try as we walk I fear Helen drifts off and dreams of sand-dune formation. Can I butt in (you usually do) and point out that there are still genetic differences in the people on either side of the Landsker Line? No? Tough, I just did. There are still genetic differences on either side of the Line. Isn't that fascinating?

I would recommend Bill Bryson's fabulous "Mother Tongue" if you fancy an entertaining gallop through the history of English and he also mentions Welsh:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/mother-tongue/bill-bryson/9780141040080

Keeping to the right at any forks in the path, it was an easy walk. This section of the path is the oldest and it is very well walked in. Even we couldn't get lost on this section. The path around Borough Head dipped down and passed though a wonderful wooded area of oak and beech trees (two of the few trees I can reliably identify, I'm not that sort of biologist. Good on sand dune formation, rubbish with tree identification.) It was hot enough that we enjoyed the shade but with the shade came insects and I was soon a flailing mass of windmill arms in spite of having plastered myself with insect repellent and Avon 'Skin So Soft'.

'People swear by it Rhi,' I said and she nodded sagely, flicking away a particularly annoying fly .'I mostly swear at it. Bloody useless stuff.''

We passed a few more coves and missed a few more hill forts, as is our habit, and eventually the path dropped us down into Mill Haven. The map shows points called Ticklas Point (love it!) and Howney Stone (there are two of these, one nearer St Martin's Haven further along the Path) and some inlets called Brandy Bay, Dutch Gin (recalling the days of smugglers and wreckers, perhaps?) and Foxes' Holes ( not sure about the origins of that one. There may have been some surprised looking foxes around in the old days). (Fnarr)

The two of us at Mill Haven with Stack Rocks out at sea. I hate photos of myself but I feel the need to post the occasionally to prove that we have actually done these walks and the blog isn't solely the product of two deranged imaginations. At least I have stopped wearing a bloody stupid pearl necklace at this point. And as ever I am squinting into the sun.

The walk along the clifftops was wonderful. The sun was shining and the views were marvellous and we eventually came to a statue. It is called the Walking Eye and was created by Alain Ayers in the 1980s. I've searched for more information about this bit of art, which is part of a series, but couldn't find much about and an found an awful lot of computer games and zombie films with similar names. It was very striking. And you could see the Stack Rocks though it in the distance.

The path continued to be good and we were making excellent time. After another 40 minutes or so we started to drop down into St Bride's Haven. It was lunch time, we were both feeling peckish and I could do with having a sit down out of the sun and rest my feet for a while.

'Is there a church in St Brides, Rhi?'

'Not sure? Why? Are you thinking of confessing your sins because if you are I have to tell you we don't have enough hours of sunlight left today.'

'Cheeky mare! I only meant that if there is, we might be able to sit in the porch and eat our lunch.'

'Isn't that sacrilege?'

'No, the Ramblers do it all the time and anyway we are wearing rubber soled shoes so we are probably safe'.

The church was delightful and was dedicated to St Bridget who had a busy time of it building religious communities in Ireland and popped over to Pembroke with St David. Maybe she was looking for a suitable place for a holiday convent. She might have founded a community in St Brides that later became part of the castle. She must have been one of those Celtic Irish tribes-people in the 500s. I have looked her up, She was the daughter of a slave and was sold, along side her mother, to a druid who converted to Christianity. She went into the nunning business and founded several communities. She once restored the sight of a nun who decided that she was distracted by vision and wanted to go back to being blind, which strikes me as a little ungrateful. She is also said to have miraculously changed water into beer for a leper colony and provided enough beer for 18 churches from a single barrel. This must have made her very popular. We enjoyed the cool and the shade while we ate our sandwiches and mentally thanked Bridget. Places to sit are often at a premium on the path and it was fantastic to find one at just the right moment.

St Brides Haven is a small, pretty bay with a large stately home dominating the view. This is now, apparently, a rather swish collection of timeshare apartments, beautifully renovated and with fantastic facilities. I discovered this by googling it as we sat in the church porch at St Brides, sheltering from the hot sun. I was particularly interested as I remember visiting my Great Uncle Tom here, back in the 1960s. At that time it was a residential home for the elderly, called, rather aristocratically, "Kensington". My mother adored her Uncle Tom, and even as a small child I could understand why. I didn't know him very well at all - he was in his 90s when I knew him, a very old man whose English was very, very limited (though not as limited as my Welsh!) - but there was a warmth about him and a twinkle in his startlingly bright blue eyes that told me he was a lovely chap.

I recall driving through the grounds of the house where daffodils were blooming in abundance. If William Wordsworth had visited he would have written a poem about it. An opportunity missed, in my view.

The castle housed children with tuberculosis at one time and their coughing might have put him off.

Rested, after lunch we took the path out of the bay and climbed up and out towards The Nab Head. For a little while we could still see fleeting glimpses of the castle and we came to Musselwick Sands (these are different from Musselwick Bay, mentioned earlier). (You would think that they would put some more effort into naming places.) This is a beautiful beach that is only accessible by foot from the path and is wonderfully remote. The beautiful sands are only visible at low tide and the tide was in as we walked past. So my aching feet had some respite and we didn't climb down the steep steps to the beach.

We carried on past Howney Stone (the second one!) and High Point and came at last to Martins Haven. We looked back across the expanse of St Brides Bay, delighted by our achievements, we also knew that once we walked round this head land we would no longer be able to point into the far distance and chant the mantra ' We have walked all that way.'

It was quite an emotional moment. We had had some great fun over the last few days and had, in spite of my cock ups, covered a considerable distance. I looked up at Rhian.

'The ferry goes from here to Skomer, Rhi', and paused for dramatic effect.

'Yes?' She said, looking quizzical.

'So this means...'

'Yes?' I'd got her attention now.

'It means..'

'What???' he was looking excited.

'That this is going to be the closest you will get to bloody puffins all holiday.'

Ha bloody ha!

Puffins nest in burrows. Everybody knows this. Puffins nest in burrows on sea cliffs in the North Atlantic. Lots of us know this. There are lots of puffins on Skomer. Tourists and twitchers know this, and get the bloody boat out to Skomer with a view to seeing puffins. However, I dispute the fact that puffins only nest on islands, which is what Helen persists in thinking. (I stand by my view that Rhian was being over optimistic thinking that she was going to find puffins in burrows when the Path went through the estuaries in Carmarthen,)

Like some sort of package holiday to the Balearics, or the whole population of a Rhondda street going en masse to Barry Island, she believes that puffins can only be found on Skomer in the summer months. Because it is an island. And now, every time we pass anything that might be construed as a burrow on the Path, Helen quips "See any puffins, Rhi?". She is so funny.

So puffins have become symbolic of our walking. Emma designed the picture right for our t-shirts, we send each other puffin-themed gifts and cards, and we argue about their habitat whenever there is a lull in the conversation.

Whereas I will be happy to agree that Puffins are not only found on islands, they are not found along the Pembrokeshire coastal path. If they were ,we would have been knee deep in twitchers. She has to try and have the last word. Always. Yes, I do.

Oh no you don’t.

Bickering lightly, we rounded the headland and walked through a gate into a flat area called the Deer Park, which is odd as there is no evidence of there ever having been deer here. It was a lovely end to a lovely day's hike. We walked along, chatting happily with an springy, grassy turf under out feet. Its amazing what a difference the ground can make to your experience of walking. A nice bit of grassy sward puts a real and not metaphorical spring into your step. It was also pleasant to be able to walk two abreast. It made the bickering easier. It would be an exaggeration to say that the miles few by but they passed quickly enough, we reached Marloes Sands and then headed back inland to to the small village where the car was parked. We had around a 40 minute walk back up to the village of Marloes and it was very hot as we walked along the small B road back up the hill.

Marloes is a small place with around 500 inhabitants. It has a strong ties to the sea and many of the locals make their living from crab and lobster fishing but not puffin wrangling. The village square has a very striking clock tower and there was a pub with a nautical theme. We collapsed onto some chars outside and Rhian went and ordered some pints of lime and soda and two packet of crisps. The village was a very suitable end of the day for two teachers as in1772 a local woman called Margaret Allen gave £100 to be invested in the new Turnpike roads in order to raise £5 a year to pay a schoolmaster for teaching twelve poor boys of this parish. The pay might have been crap but at least his class size was smaller than ours.

We chinked our pints and took a long drink. It had been a beautiful day but a long one and we were both tired.

'That was a good day, Sam'.

'It was indeed. Master Frodo. No Ring Wraiths.'

'None. And you didn't bugger up your key which was good.'

'True. But tomorrow might be harder.'

'Why is that?'

'Because tomorrow we have to cross the Gann at Dale, and if that doesn't sound like a chapter that features Orcs, I don't know what would'.

There was a long pause.

'Fancy a crisp?'

'Don't mind if I do.'