Freshwater East to Tenby, the closing of the gap

The walk from the Green Bridge to Freshwater East had been wonderful. In fact, if someone were to ask for a recommendation for a single walk from the entire Wales Coastal Path, that might well be the stretch I would suggest as it was stunningly beautiful, the path was easy to follow and much of the walking was along the cliff tops with springy grass underfoot. Plus it had a few places to stop for a coffee which is always much appreciated. But I was looking forward to the next stretch even more. It was through more amazing countryside, with places to stop for a coffee but it meant that we were joining together two stretches of the path that we had already walked. We were going to close the gap! I woke up like a child on Christmas Day, excited at the joys to come.

And this was what the weather was doing, outside our chalet. Low, wet, miserable cloud ahead of us. And because we had a limited amount of time, we had to get booted and suited and set off.

'Waterproofs today, Rhi?'. I asked over coffee and croissants.

'Yes, I think so. It looks as if it is going to be a bit of a slog.'

'And there was me, all excited about closing the gap.'

'Me too but at least we aren't going to start the day with a drive in the car.'

'A drive in your haunted car', I pointed out.

'Quite. And we have a celebratory meal booked at the end.'

'With cocktails. It's no wonder we never lose any weight.'

Which was true. We never do lose any weight but we do enjoy ourselves, which is more important.

The first part of the walk was across the sand at Freshwater East and then up out of the bay and back onto the cliffs. The rain was soft but persistent and the 'Swish swish' of our waterproofs was almost as loud as the crashing of the waves. Rhian's glasses were misting up and we were walking across sand dunes. I hate walking across sand dunes. Yes, yes, I know they seem a nice idea. You are raised up a bit, you sometimes have a good view of the beach and I can bore the arse off Rhian telling her all about how they form but the soft sand is a bit of a bugger to walk on. Your feet often rock and twist with each step and and it is hard to get into a good stride. In spite of having good waterproofs the rain was insinuating itself under of my hood. It was cold, I was getting wet and this was beginning to feel like a rather damp squib of a last walk rather than an exciting culmination of three years of toil.

Bugger.

'So what sort of cocktail are you going to have Hel?'

'Dunno. Maybe a mojito? I'm not sure. What goes with a burger? I really fancy a burger.'

'Anything. Do you think they do locally sourced cocktails with locally sourced names?'

I laughed. There we were, two middle aged women, getting soaking wet on a miserable day, walking for 12 miles and Rhian was still making me laugh. She's a good egg.

'What like, Sex on the Path? do you mean? '

She laughed, 'Or a Whitesandsbay Lady.'

'A Dai Collins'. This was good, this is what helps us keep going some times.

There was a bit of a pause. I could tell she was running though possibilities in her head.

'A Bllody Mary. With two ls'. Now that was impressive. We walked on a bit further. I was wracking my brains to try to keep up with her. She was on fire.

'A Barry Wallbanger?'

'Nice one.' We walked on.

Here is the list of a few others we came up with:

Blister-poppin' Bellini

Uppy downy Daquiri

Puffin Surprise (contains no puffin)

Ralgex on the Beach

Get Plastered

Our trousers swished and the rain decided to rain a little more. The cloud was heavier, the path muddier and the walk just that little bit more demanding as we passed the sometimes nudist beach of Swanslake Bay. No nudists out today, they would have frozen their proverbials off. Ahead of me I heard Rhian snort with laughter and she turned round to face me, triumph written on her face.

'A Caldey Island Iced Tea!'

Un-bloody-beatable! We'd be walking past there later in the day. She turned back and continued down the track towards East Moor Cliff. And it is fair to say that we laughed all the way to Manorbier where we planned to stop for lunch.

The weather began to improve, and by the time Manorbier Castle hove into view it had stopped raining, and there was a convenient bench overlooking the beach where we could rest and eat our rather good cheese and pickle sandwiches.

Manorbier Castle is, of course, Norman, and though privately owned is open to the public. It turns out that the celebrated Welsh scholar of the 12th century, Gerald of Wales (also known as Geraldus Cambrensis) was born there and said of the place: "In all the broad lands of Wales, Manorbier is the most pleasant place by far." Well, It certainly is an imposing castle on a lovely bay, and the village itself is an attractive one that I have visited many times over the years.

Thankfully it had stopped raining by this point and the cheese and pickle sandwiches and a coffee from the flask were restorative. The bench was soaking wet but, three years into our adventure we now have small foam mats to sit on, which keep your backside dry as well as insulating you. Marvellous things. I wonder if Gerald of Wales had a folding mat? We dithered about exploring the village of Manorbier but decided against it as we still had a lot of miles left to walk. The castle itself was closed as it only opens to visitors in the summer.

We climbed up the steps out of the village and back onto the cliff tops, following the narrow and slightly precarious path. It wasn't long before we came to the Neolithic burial site known as the King's Quoit. To give you an idea of the size, the capstone is 4m by 2.5m by 0.5m and it is right beside the path. Goodness knows the efforts it took to place it. We had moaned enough climbing up the path with daysacks.

The Kings Quoit. We are better at spotting burial sites than hill forts

Almost immediately after the burial chamber we arrived at this cleft in the rock. Its a little hard to tell but this photograph is looking straight down and the distance to the cliff edge isn't that great. This is a very narrow cut, unlike the Huntsman's Leap on the previous day's walk. There is a very old, small iron fence on the side of the path to stop you falling to your death. We were standing there, musing on the dangers of the path when another walker arrived at the spot.

'Thank heavens its stopped raining' he said and went on to tell us that he had left Tenby earlier that day and was planning to end his walk in Freshwater East. He was doing the same walk as us but in reverse. From his accent it was obvious that he was from Liverpool and we asked him why he had chosen to walk this section of the path. He told us that he was walking it for a friend of his. They had been walking companions for decades but his friend had developed early onset dementia and could no longer walk any distance with safety. So he was walking for his friend. It was obvious, from the way that he spoke of him, that they had meant a terrific amount to each other. I found this an unexpectedly moving conversation. For all we laugh and joke about the people we have met along the way they are always interesting, often remarkable and in this case, profoundly inspiring. This was a reminder that time is not for wasting.

I think it is fair to say that we were both thoughtful as we left him to continue our walks and we passed the Priest's Nose headland and the danger area of the Old Castle Head with its MOD warnings about possible explosions lost in thought. We decided not to drop down onto Skrinkle Haven beach but instead kept on the path, missed another hill fort and eventually dropped down the steep path to Lydstep Haven.

This part of the path has lots of extreme uppy-downy as evidenced in the picture, and lots of people walking from Lydstep stop at this point because of it, explore the headland and then turn around. I, in fact, had done this myself, but we had to face it this time. There were steps in the hillside in some places and in others just a narrow track that seemed, as I dragged my large carcase upwards, almost vertical. (Rhian is much better going down hill than I am. I am always terrified that I will fall and break something. I'm a little better going up hill, so it all averages out in the end. The picture is a good example of the 'uppy-downy' of the path. Its not mountaineering but you do get a significant amount of cardio on most parts of the Pembroke and Ceredigion sections of the path.)

Having scaled these we reached the flat expanse of the headland and saw a woman with a dog that appeared to be on springs. I've never seen anything quite like it. It was, probably, a springer spaniel and it was living up to its name, bounding and leaping and seemingly totally out of control. It was also springing alarmingly close to the edge of the cliff and its owner kept calling to it helplessly.

"Good god, that dog's on springs!" Helen exclaimed.

The dog came hurtling towards us, leaping and bounding with its owner still calling after it. The dog almost reached us and without pause did a u turn and hurtled back to her, leaping with unbounded enthusiasm and great height and acceleration so that it practically leapt over her head. We couldn't help but laugh. "Kind of your dog to take you for a walk," Helen joked as we passed, and the woman laughed and said, "He's a nightmare!".

Once out of earshot Helen said "Remind me not to get a dog when I retire, Rhi. Well not one of those, anyhow." (The energy that dog had was astonishing. It would run through the long stems in the field and disappear and then suddenly leap out above the heads of the grass only to vanish and dash off somewhere else. What amused me was that the owner told us the dog was like this every time they had a walk.)

Steps. Lots of them.

Heading downhill alongside some fields and a wooded track we came to a proper tarmacked road that led down and through Lydstep Haven. Lydstep, a favoured holiday spot of my husband Nick's family, for many years, is a holiday park with some of the most luxurious mobile homes known to humankind. The bay is curved, the water good for swimming in, and is nowadays used for watersports like jetskiing. Nick's family have visited there since Nick and his brothers were small and the wider family for many years before. A favourite story from Nick's childhood involves the four boys and their dad going for a walk on the beach together. Ian, brother number 3, was being particularly irritating that morning, and Derek (Nick's dad) was driven to threaten to throw him in the sea if he carried on. Ian, smartypants, said "You wouldn't do that because I'm wearing my new shoes." Oh dear. Derek was ever a man of his word and Ian still tells this tale rather ruefully to this day, while the other brothers still laugh gleefully about the time Ian was sent soaring into the waves, new shoes and all.

Again, as on the previous day, the weather had begun to brighten up. Stopping for a while on a bench overlooking the sea, Helen adjusted her plasters, socks and boots before we headed up hill again out of Lydstep towards Giltar Point. The path here is narrow in parts but you walk along a ridge so there are good views in all directions, inland to rolling countryside and out to sea Caldey Island came into sight. This lovely little island is home to a Cistercian Abbey, and monks have inhabited the place for a thousand years. The land became an island after the last Ice age when sea levels rose and cut it off from the mainland. Today you can take a boat over to the island and spend the day there. There is a shop selling produce such as honey from the Abbey apiary and the place has an real air of peace and retreat about it.

https://caldeyislandwales.com/

Caldey is beautiful and I visited it, by boat, when I was a child. It sits around 2 miles offshore so it has to be visited by boat. Obviously, it has to be visited by boat. But one time two American tourists tried to drive there, following their TomTom, and got stuck in the sand and had to be towed out. They didn't actually get as far as the sea but you had to wonder how they thought they were going to get to their destination.

Red-faced American couple rescued after trying to drive to an island - Lonely Planet

It was now a beautiful Spring day, the clifftops covered in what I think is thrift, a pink-flowering, low-growing shrub (but I am probably wrong!) (Don't ask me, wrong kind of Biologist) and it was perfect. We stopped and looked around - Caldey just out to sea, Penally and a long sweep of beach and Tenby, our destination, at the end of it. We were overwhelmed, and I must confess to having a little cry at it all. In fact, I lay down on the mattress of pink and green and just revelled in it. I think passers-by may have thought I was slightly eccentric but hey, do I care? I felt a huge sense of achievement because we were just about to complete the Pembrokeshire path and I was also emotional for lots of other reasons. It felt like a significant moment and I was glad that Helen and I could share it.

It really was a fabulous moment. In some ways starting the day in rain and gloom made this moment all the better. It had become a perfect spring day. The air was fresh and clean and we were surrounded by such astonishing beauty. It was a perfect reminder that things change, that disappointment and discomfort end and that sunshine really is just a short distance away. Looking to our right, we had walked as far as the eye could see, and much further, following the path round St Davids, past St Dogmaels and as far as Aberystwyth. Looking to our right was a wide beach leading to the beautiful seaside resort of Tenby and beyond that, the inlets and cliffs of Carmarthen and once we had walked into town, all of this would be ours.

I cry at the drop of a hat. I cry at music, in films, at passages in books. I cried seeing the original model of DNA in the Science Museum and I wept when I sat in the NASA Mission Controllers seat at Huston. Rhian is a little less farcically emotional (don't bet on it. I just cry at different things!) than me but I completely understood why she was crying. We had started this walk as a bit of fun but it had become a transformative experience for both of us. While it wasn't the same as climbing Everest or walking the Great Wall of China it was significant. And the success was all ours.

After a little while we got up and set off down towards the beach which seemed to stretch on forever. Even with the elation of closing the gap, the last few miles of a walk are always the longest. Passing through some trees we wound our way down to the long stretch of sand and eventually we came into the town itself and walked past St Catherine's island with its Palmerston fort. We sat in the garden, overlooking the sea and treated ourselves to an ice-cream. As we sat we swapped memories of moments on the path. We had been lapped by fell runners, overtaken by 70 year olds, lost keys, lost the path, lost toenails and fallen over but we had never fallen out with each other. This was a fantastic feeling.

St Catherine's Fort - Wikipedia

I visited this as a child when it was a zoo. It is currently closed to the public but was used as a location for the TV program Sherlock

We spent the rest of the afternoon pottering around the shops and being tourists for a change, not walkers. Tenby is the perfect seaside town and has lots of shops and places to eat. Many of the buildings have been painted bright, seaside colours, it really is a beautiful place. It was founded by the Normans and it mostly sits within an old town wall and it has some wonderful old buildings to explore like the Tudor Merchant's House which is owned by the National Trust and is well worth a visit. Tenby was developed as a seaside resort in the early 19th centaury. There are beautiful beaches, in fact Castle Beach was rated to be the best beach in the UK in 2019. Barafundle may well be more wild and untouched but to my mind the beaches in Tenby have it all, stunning stretches of sand and within easy distance of a cup of tea or shops selling buckets and spades. Some of the best holidays I spent as a child were in Tenby and it was wonderful to finish this walk in a place with so many fond memories.

We bought mugs with Tenby inscribed on them as mementos and a few other knick-knacks in the lovely shop on the square and then felt that it was time to celebrate with some food and a cocktail or two. We had scouted around during the course of the afternoon and spotted an establishment that looked suitable called The Cove, on the High Street. We entered and were lucky to get a table (it was a sunny Bank Holiday Sunday and so very busy). Sitting down we picked up the cocktail menu first. And there it was, at the top of the list, a Caldey Island Iced Tea! Crowing with delight we ordered one each, and then another, just to make sure. Burgers and chips, the meal of choice, went down very swiftly as well. It was a seriously good end to a fantastic leg of the walk. We treated ourselves to a taxi back to the chalet, satisfied with the weekend's walking and already planning our next walk.

https://www.thecovetenby.co.uk/

Cheers!