Llandecwyn to Barmouth...A Boot Thrown in Anger?

Some of our days' walking are memorable, often because we show, yet again, that we are not very good at this walking lark. Keygate springs to mind. Some are singular due to clothing choices. Some stand out because of the people we have met or the stunning countryside we have walked through. Other days are less memorable but still terrifically rewarding and the next two sections Llandecwyn to Llanbedr and Llanbedr to Barmouth, covering 23 miles would prove to be the latter with one notable exception.

Day One Llandecwyn to Llanbedr

I had slept particularly well in my monastic cell and woke, excited at the thought of the first full day's walking. It is always like this at the start of the holiday, all keen and excited, without the aches and pains and horrific blisters that come as part and parcel of a week's long(ish) distance walking. We breakfasted, packed a lunch and flask, make sure that Mrs Oram's finest tea cups were safely wrapped, folded up the spotted tablecloth and set off up the coast. This time the layby near Llandecwyn seemed very familiar, almost welcoming and we back tracked past the train station, crossed the tracks at the appointed place and walked along the top of an embankment. To our right was the river and to our left the railway track, which was going to be our companion for the next few days. The river was bordered by wetland , called in welsh Glastraeth (green beach). We walked past the small island of Ynys Gifftan (Ann's Gift island) which was given by Ann, Queen Ann, not to some lucky Ann. It occurred to me that this was an odd choice of a gift and that maybe Lord Harlech (the lucky recipient) might have preferred socks or a jumper. Queen Ann did the classic 'Aunties Trick' of preventing the gift being returned to the shop by stipulating that it could never be sold. So poor old Lord Harlech was stuck with it. After we passed the island we could see Portmeirion on the other side of the river. It was an amazing view, across the somewhat eerie salt mashes.

We walked on, enjoying the views and the day, crossing the Afon Glyn by a foot bridge and eventually arrived at Ynys. St Michael's church in the village had an inviting bench in its churchyard and we stopped for tea and a slice of malt loaf. The church was built on what had been a tidal island and while it is a Victorian building it is thought that it was built on an older structure dating back to Norman times. One of its quirkier parishioners was Mary Evans who was known locally as Mari y fantell wen (Mary of the white robe). She told everyone that she was marrying Jesus and had a large wedding feast in Ffestiniog where she wore a red robe, white was for best, on a Sunday. Jesus didn't show up but she did get to keep the wedding presents. She had around 70 followers as the Bride of Christ but over reached herself a bit when she told them that she would never die, which she did at the age of 54. Her followers were so convinced of her immortality that they didn't bury her for quite a long time in case she got better. Eventually they were forced to bury her for 'hygienic reasons' and she lies in the graveyard, peacefully warning all of us about the inadvisability of over promising an outcome.

Walking along with the salt marshes and the estuary on one side and low hills on the other we were interested to round a small hill and come upon farmhouse with a few outbuildings and an old-fashioned "gypsy" caravan in the yard. A dog barked and as we were about to pass by, its owner appeared from a doorway. He was a man of a similar sort of age to us and he returned our greetings in a friendly manner. We stopped to pass the time of day, this kind of conversation starting in the usual way with a question about how far we were walking. We explained, and also commented on the slightly eerie beauty and isolated feel of this place, wondering how he, clearly a chap originating from the Home Counties given his accent, came to be here. He explained that he used to work in the city but felt that he needed to get away and live a very different kind of life. so here he was, keeping bees and goats, and planning to rent out the caravan to people who wanted, genuinely, to get away from it all. He clearly loved this spot and personally, I half-envied his "Good Life" spirit. Though of course envy is not quite same thing as actually having the nerve to depart the rat race and "live off the fatta the lan'". It might be this gentleman's dream, as it was George and Lennie's, but too much like hard work for me, accustomed as I am to having a reasonably well-stocked supermarket situated at the end of my street. I would have loved a pot of his honey, though.

The walk into Harlech was uneventful , past saltmarsh and forest and the castle seemed tantalising close for a very long time. It is hard to miss, on top of its rocky hill and would have been even harder to miss when it was first completed and painted white. (Caernarfon castle was never finished). It is massively impressive and is an UNESCO world heritage site because it is one the 'Finest example of late 13th and early 14th centaury military architecture in Europe'. All that, and it is on the steepest street as well. It was the latter that made us plough on to the beach, rather than explore, where we treated ourselves to an ice cream and enjoyed some of the smaller castles on display. It was fun to walk on the beach, this was the first time we had done so this holiday. For all it is a coastal path, you don't often walk on sand. Eventually we left the beach, crossed the railway line again, heading inland this time and kissed the side of Llanfair and carried on to Llandanwg.

Llandanwg has a few facilities on offer to the walker, an excellent café where we refreshed ourselves and a loo where we did the needful before walking to the church of St Tanwg. St Tanwg is the highly localised patron Saint of Llandanwg and is thought to have lived in the 6th Century. He is said to have been the son of Ithel the Generous of Armorica and the cousin of St Cadfan. Is that just great, they always get a cool nickname? Ithel the Generous. Just marvellous. They are never Ithel the Slightly Peevish or Cadfan the Slow to Get the First Round In, are they? Sainting was obviously the family business as Tanwg had 8 brothers and they all became saints too. Like Tanwg they were all low key saints and were just patron saints of their own parish although one did a good line in being able to carry fire in his clothing.

The inside of the lovely 13th century church which is somewhat at risk of being buried by the sand dunes which have already absorbed most of the graveyard around it. 'Do you want me to explain sand dune formation, Rhi?' I asked hopefully.

Ignoring the offer, I was really taken by this little church in its curious setting, and had a moment of unusual spirituality and emotion at the thought of the dedication and devotion of those who built and worshipped here so long ago. I was genuinely and unaccountably moved by it. ( I know exactly what she means, it was sanctified by the faith of hundreds of years of belief and was rather wonderful).

We left a small pebble at the entrance, as in the local custom, enjoyed the cool air inside, scented with sea salt and the traces of incense and left, refreshed and rejuvenated.

We crossed the aptly named 'y maes' (The field) which was, in fact, a field, and headed towards Pensarn harbour. We could see the boats bobbing up and down but the path became less than obvious at this point. We meandered, we navigated and leapt across mud and water with determination if not much luck because it seemed to take forever to reach paved, or even dry soil path. The harbour, boats, and young people doing exciting things with kayaks remained resolutely in the distance for what seemed like hours. Please bear in mind, here, that my patience wears very thin very quickly with treacherous tussocks and boggy pools and that I am prone to hyperbole when my temper is tried. Helen walking behind me saying as she slipped about, "Ooooh shit!" every few moments or trying to tell me which way she thought we should go wasn't helping either (I confess here and now that am very bad at people telling me what they think I should do. It is a most ungracious and unattractive aspect of my make-up and I apologise if you have ever tried to give me unsolicited advice because I may have responded inappropriately, making you wonder what on earth you said to upset me, and for this I also apologise. Though I still wouldn't take your advice because I am decidedly pig-headed - a typical Oram, my mother would say, casting aspersions on my dad and his father, Fred). Poor Helen. She (and I hate to say this) is actually a very patient woman. (Ha!) Anyhow, the timescale for this whole bog thing couldn't have been more than 20 minutes maximum, but just be prepared for it if you are walking this way.

Thankfully neither of us got that muddy but I was starting to get tired and was happy to get back on the right track, passing the Christian Mountain Centre and Pensarn railway station ,heading towards Llanbedr where we had parked the car. I was happy to see the black and white bridge across the Afon Artro which marked the end of that day's walk.

Day Two Llanbedr to Barmouth

The walk from Llanbedr to Barmouth was going to be exciting for several reasons. It was going to involve us catching the train to Llanbedr and would finish with us literally following to path to the section outside our front door. This was novel. After breakfast, we walked down into the seaside town of Barmouth and went to the station. It had a fantastic café with some very tempting items on sale, such as black pudding scotch eggs and I nudged Rhian, 'Shall we get some of those for lunch tomorrow?' She nodded her response with excited anticipation and we bought our tickets.

The smiling woman at the kiosk sold us the tickets and said,

'You will have to let the guard know that you want to get off in Llanbedr, it is a request only stop'. Now this really was exciting. I had visions of small children flagging down trains by waving red flannel petticoats and I spent the journey checking the names of the stations we passed in a state of happy anxiety until we arrived at the station. The train stopped without the ministrations of the Railway children and we got off, happy that we cut a 'serious walker' dash with our daysacks, boots and walking poles.

It wasn't the brightest of days and the first part of the walk took us alongside an airfield which had been home to the RAF's towed target firing range until it closed in the 1950s. They moved to Cyprus where the weather was probably far better and as we walked the clouds got heavier and darker.

We walked past this boot and we both wondered how it had got lost. Dropped from the back of someone's rucksack? Thrown in anger? Who knows.

The next stretch took us past the first cows of the holiday and Rhian was VERY BRAVE. but then, there was a wall between them and us.

Look at them. I laughed at their frustrated faces. A dry stone wall is an excellent cow deterrent when they have the urge to herd you in a menacing manner, which this lot clearly do. Ha!

The path took a turn at the entrance to the Shell Island campsite and ran across more wetlands. I stopped and picked some samphire, eating it raw and enjoying the naturally salty taste.

Samphire always reminds me of Edgar's words in King Lear when he leads his father to the edge of the imaginary cliff:

Come on, sir. Here’s the place. Stand still. How fearful

And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down

Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade!

It also reminds me of Masterchef, where it has become one of those trendy ingredients that everyone is using with their fish dishes. (It always reminds me of field trips with sixth form biologists, happy days.)

'Do you want me to explain why it has to be salty, Rhi? It's all due to osmosis'

'Not so you'd notice.' She replied. Honestly, she never lets me have any fun explaining biology. Eventually the reed beds were replaced by small trees, we walked along a track that was mostly covered with sand and we dropped down on to the expanse of Morfa Dyffryn which stretched ahead of us as far as we could see. The wind was beginning to blow quite strongly, there was a misty rain blowing in intermittently and we were both glad to be wearing our warm waterproof coats as we headed down the beach which was fringed with sand dunes.

We had been walking for about 20 minutes, the two of us lost in our own worlds when a large red and white beach ball came over the sand dunes, bounced on the hard sand and shot past us, blown by the wind.

'Shades of the Prisoner, Hel', said Rhian, turning to me and laughing. Because she had turned her head away from the dunes I saw the man first. He leapt down from the steep sand dune and landed directly in front of us, making Rhian jump with shock.

'Sorry', he said, 'But have you seen my ball?'

This statement was amusing enough coming from a man in advancing middle age. He was blessed with a shock of greying hair and a luxuriant beard (why are beards always either luxuriant or sparse? Binary things, beards) and alarming eyebrows. He looked past us, his ball now a speck in the distance.

'Bugger! That's another one gone, the second today.'

I looked at Rhian, she looked at me. We then pointedly concentrated on the man's eyebrows. He was stark bollock naked.

There was a slight pause, the sort of pause that often happens when strangers meet in Britain. Everyone knows that something has to be said but no-one knows what to say. This was somewhat exacerbated by the fact that two people in this nascent conversation were wearing fairly heavy waterproof coats and the third person was wearing nothing but an exasperated expression and a fine head of hair. The pause continued to the point that it was becoming uncomfortable. Rhian broke the silence with the standard opening gambit for a path conversation, a comment on the weather.

'Cold, isn't it?' Thank fuck she had had the tact not to ask' 'Cold aren't you?'

'Is it?' he said. 'I suppose so. You sort of get used to it when you...', he broke off, waving his hand vaguely over his body.

'Yes, ' I said, gabbling a little, 'It must get a bit, err, windy. And sandy?' I ended interrogatively.

Rhian looked at me, daggers. She had started a nice, normal conversation and there was me alluding to wind on the privates and sand in the unmentionables.

'Yes!' he said, enthusiastically, 'But it is all good stuff, terrifically good for the circulation. Wonderful for manufacturing vitamin D'.

Ah, I thought, another biologist, a fellow traveller. Rhian gave me the sort of side eye that precluded my commenting further. There was another pause.

He looked beyond us a second time, 'I don't suppose I will get that ball back now, gone too far. I had better go and keep my eye on that last one.' He nodded sagely and we nodded with him while inwardly wondering what a naked man was doing with three balls in the wind along side the two that nature had gifted him. Waving us a cheery goodbye he shot back up the sand dune and vanished into the marram grass.

Thank god, was all I could think. What was happening in my life that I find myself for a third time in my life confronted by a completely naked man while out for a walk? The previous two occasions had been on two separate trips to Barcelona, where stark-bollock naked man is a regular on the beachside promenade. The first time we met him it was 10.30am on a day between Christmas and New Year when Nick and I were there with our children to celebrate his 50th. Sam, 13, guffawed loudly while his sister, 11, glared at me as if I'd done this to her on purpose to embarrass her. The second time the two of us had had an excellent tapas lunch washed down with some Estrella so we chortled and nudged each other in a very immature manner. This encounter, however, had been even more startling.

In silence we walked on after a little while I felt I had to check on what we had just seen.

'Rhi'

'Yes'

'That man was naked.'

'Top marks for observation'

'Why was there a naked man on the beach, Rhi?'

'Dunno, maybe he was studying sand dune formation.'

'Might have been but he had no where to put his pencil.'

'True'

'He seemed very happy though.'

'Very, and oddly relaxed about the whole thing'

'Hmm'

We walked on. The wind picked up, that beachball would be in Harlech by now, and it had started to rain proper. We put up our hoods and trudged on and after a while we could see a sign in the distance. Bored now, by the lack of naked men, we wandered over. It said, 'Warning Naturist swimming and sunbathing permitted beyond this point.'

'Bit cold for it today!'

I laughed. 'How true'.

'Explains why he was so relaxed, we were the people improperly dressed.'

'I half fancy joining him'

Rhian looked horrified. 'You are joking?'

'It would be a unique experience and there is no-one on the beach to see.'

'I am on the beach to see, and I can't afford the time in therapy that I would need to get over it.'

So I resisted the temptation and we walked on, the rest of the beach being free of both naked people and beach balls.

Leaving the beach behind we headed towards the village of Tal-y-Bont, along a lane that passed by the watermill pictured below, and some old stone cottages on a lane leading to the centre of the village. It was quaint, picturesque and narrow and we were taken aback to see a somewhat anachronistic Tesco delivery van heading towards us. The driver had an equally confused expression on his face as he reached what seemed to be the end of the lane and had to execute a 15 point turn that took me back to Helen's before our walk out of Newport Pembs.

He pulled up and peered around then waved at us: 'Is there a house called The Old Mill around here somewhere do you know?'

'We are just passing through,' Helen said, 'on our way to Barmouth. We are not the most observant of walkers either, so we might have walked past The Old Mill and not noticed it,' she added.

I had a sudden brainwave. 'Hang on, there is an old mill wheel! It's got to be here somewhere!' Miss Marple eat your heart out! We looked closely and the house opposite had a sign. It read 'The Old Mill'.

'Brilliant!' Thanks, girls! You're better at this walking lark than you give yourselves credit for!' quipped Drive, as he put the van in reverse again and shot backwards to the cottage gate, tooting his horn at us.

'Good deed done for the day, Rhi. I think we deserve a pint,' Helen said, having noticed that this village was well-equipped in the hostelry department.

The mill wheel in question, that gave rise to the compliment from the van driver.

We enjoyed a pint in Tal-y-bont, which was a bit of a treat. We had not used our cars on this walk and so we were free to indulge ourselves. It was good to have a sit down and a rest. We picked up the path and continued on past Llanaber and eventually found our way back to the flat. The last part of the walk was along the side of the road and while we had a pavement it didn't make for the most interesting of ends to what had been quite an exciting day. It has been quite a long walk and we realised on checking the weather that the next day was going to be very hot. We dithered a bit about possibly taking the day off but we decided to walk but to make it a shorter day and would walk from the flat, into Barmouth, across the bridge over the Mawddach estuary and over the hills to Llwyngwril, a total of 8 miles.

The picture below shows us both at the sign for the nudist beach and as you can see it was pouring with rain. Everything we write about actually happened to us, with a little poetic licence, but the naked man was a figment of our imaginations and if you check the date of publication, you might be able to see why. All we did that day was walk down a very wet and windy beach but it would have been much more fun if a naked man and a beach ball appeared before us, so we wrote him in. I really was tempted to strip off and Rhian really was horrified at the thought. In my imagination I was brave enough to do it, walking into the distance, shedding clothes as I went. I might well go back there one day and do just that, time is not for wasting. Happy April Fools day to one and all.