Pet Cemetery: Ynys Las to Tre Taliesin and Back

Staying in Helen’s caravan a few miles north of Cardigan our plan was to finally close the gap that had been bothering us for some time - the gap between Machynlleth and Aberystwyth and the final miles of Ceredigion, which we had begun five years before. Lockdown had prevented us from doing this at Easter, and lockdown fever had driven me crazy with with the compulsion to get those boots on and get on with it.

This shouldn't be too difficult for us to manage. I had done part of this route before and all we had to do was park one car in Aberystwyth and drive the other car to Ynys Las, do the walk, run away from the occasional cow and Bob would be your parent's sibling. Before we set off I thought that I would be cunning and find a car park on the north end of town, saving us a few foot steps. I entered the details of the car park into the TomTom and off we set. The Tom Tom decided to take us on a scenic tour of the town and I managed to miss the turning and went down the wonderfully named Thespian St. We stopped, had a conflab, and Rhian put the details into her phone, hoping that Google Maps would be better. It wasn't. We turned down Thespian St again, and then headed out of the town. I was sure that this was wrong but didn't feel that I was in any position to be critical. We drove round a few housing estates, back down Thespian St, out past the train station and then into Thespian St again. I was beginning to feel like a bit of a local. We had now spent 30 minutes trying to park the car and both decided that the North St car park could not exist and drove back through Thespian St one last time and parked the car on the other side of town.

The view across the Dyfi towards Aberdyfi which we had walked through the previous year. We had looked towards Ynys Las, frustrated that we had run out of time to join together the Meirionnydd and Ceredigion parts of the walk.

The drive out of Aberystwyth took us through Bow Street, where we mused about seeing an old school friend who may or may not live there. Helen said ”Wouldn’t it be funny…” and I thought she was going to say “...if we saw her walking along the street.” But no, she didn’t say that. She said “Wouldn’t it be funny if we ran her over?”

“What!” I exclaimed, swerving away from the curb as out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman standing on the edge, as if about to step off, “That’s terrible!”

“Funny though.”

“True.”

We also discussed the name of the village, Bow Street seeming incongruously English in Welsh Wales, and tending also to suggest the presence of Runners. We didn’t see any and were a tad disappointed.

Some research later showed that the origins of the very English name Bow Street are unclear, though may simply have been borrowed from the London Street of the same name. The name first appears in records in 1777 and the village was on the toll road from Aberystwyth to Machynlleth.

Turning off, we headed to Borth and at the end of the road, Ynyslas. Helen has been here before, but it was all new to me. Borth, I am sorry to say, does not appeal to me as a holiday resort. Faded. Rickety. A mish-mash of buildings that have seen better times, battered by the winds and waves. Houses of many styles and eras standing next to each other. We saw a 17th century farmhouse next to an alpine chalet next to a brutalist concrete block from the 70s. Next door stood an Art Deco 1930s house with a large bow window and a flat roof. Never the best plan in rainsoaked Wales. Some of the houses were painted bright colours and one has a mural homage to the The Great Wave by Hokisai but these things had the edge of desperation.

I navigated us through traffic and kamikaze people leaping into the road to keep a safe distance from others as per Welsh Government advice. The road was very straight and on one side, eventually, was the sea wall and on the other some shops and houses. A few miles and the sea wall stopped and sand dunes, backed by a golf-course appeared on our left, some bungalows and a caravan site on our right.

“Iesu Mawr! This road is never going to end,” I said. It stretched ahead and it felt like we were driving to the last reaches of the world. Perhaps we were about to drop off the edge...but no! Following the road we saw a visitors centre (who visited, I had to wonder?) and then, a car park, on the beach. It had taken us 2 hours to get here and I wasn’t sure it was worth it. At least there was no charge for the parking. Always a plus.

We got out of the car. There were a number of people there, and they stood, in a forlorn line, gazing across the estuary. It was as if they were torturing themselves, in some sort of cruel penitential ritual, making themselves look across at the gorgeous little seaside town of Aberdovey, with its pretty, painted houses, lovely beach and nestling hills.

“If only I hadn’t done bad things, made the wrong choices in life, I too could be somewhere nice, like that,” they seemed to be saying to themselves.

The wind whistled mournfully around them, their coats (and in one chap’s case his bobble hat) flapping. Tibetan prayer flags were much more cheery. And the view from a crag in the Himalayas with vultures picking at some bones less bleak than this blasted shore.

Helen and I reminisced about our time in Aberdovey, last summer. We had walked from Tywyn, on a hot day, rounding the curve of the wide beach to see Aberdovey ahead, crowded with happy holidaymakers. We had resolved to return to Tywyn by train. We couldn’t find the train station. We started looking an hour in advance, thought that we had found it because we saw a sign, sat down in pub for a drink, walked to where we thought the station was, and it wasn’t there - but that’s a story for another time. Aberdovey is lovely. Ynyslas? Less so.

Immediately we set off to walk through the sand dunes to the miles and miles of beach I needed a wee and there were no toilets. I resisted Helen’s invitation to find a dip in the dunes and twti down, tensed my pelvic floor muscles (ha bloody ha), gritted my teeth and resolved to hang on till Borth.

We headed off round the headland looking at the contours of the landscape we had walked the previous year and then walked down the long stretch of Borth Sands which stretched 3 miles ahead of us. Thankfully the tide was out and we had the comfort of walking on hard sand. The beach was backed by sand dunes, which Rhian still refused to be educated about and interspersed with groynes. People were making the most of the fresh air, enjoying a release from Covid isolation, some using the wind to go carting. They zipped along the sand as we walked past. The beach was studded with jellyfish. Helen took a photo because she lives a long way from the sea and these things are a novelty her.

After we had walked a few miles down the beach we saw rows upon rows of what seemed to be posts . As we got nearer, we realised that this was in fact a sunken forest. I said it was amazing. Helen said, "No, it's not amazing, Rhian. You are too easily amazed. It is interesting, not amazing." It wasn't worth arguing about, though I did argue, and considered pushing her into one of the pools surrounding these amazing formations.

Over 4000 years ago the beach had been a lush forest of trees but the area had become inundated by the sea and these eerie remains were all that was left. Some looked alarmingly as if they were pulling themselves out of the sand. The one in the picture below reminded me of a creature from The Lord of the Rings or some such, dressed in green weeds with brown and gold bladderwrack for hair. All rather spooky on a grey and overcast day and it was good to see the tired seaside town of Borth getting closer.

Some of these remains have been identified as Oak trees and archaeologists have identified rows of posts that there imbedded into the ground over 3000 years ago to create a walkway as the area became more boggy.

Once we passed the submerged forest we clambered over the few groynes and then walked across a strand of pebbles climbing up onto a walkway sea defence that took us into Borth.

Because of our inability to find a parking spot in Aberystwyth, it was getting to lunch time and we started to eye up some benches to let us sit and eat lunch (a pork pie, this is why we never lose any weight). Just before we sat down a woman walked past us and said, cheerily, 'Don't look behind you, the clouds look terrible'. We looked back. She was right, they did, but I countered with an equally cheerly, 'Oh not to worry, we are walking on the Aberystwyth along the Coastal Path'. I felt that was a winning card to play in Conversational Poker and I waited for her to be impressed.

She looked at us both and then played her Ace, 'Not today you won't. There has been a landslide and the path is closed between Borth and Wallog'. Damn, she'd won. Plus our planned walk was ruined. We sat down and ate our pork pies dejectedly. Checking the maps in the guide book, it was clear that the only way we could get round the blockage was to walk for many miles along a very busy road with no pavement which was not an attractive prospect. We had a few choices. We could walk to the blockage and then turn back or we could walk back to Ynys Las and then drive to Aberystwyth and have a walk around town. Neither seemed particularly attractive but we decided to retrace our steps to Ynys Las because walking on a section of path than had partly fallen into the sea seemed too stupid even for us.

We set off back up the walk way, seriously pissed off, when I suddenly had a thought.

'I have had a thought', I said. Rhian looked cynical. My thoughts had got us into the mess in the first place.

'We need to sit down'. So we sat and I got out the guide book. 'Look, we can divert out of Borth and walk across the marsh to Tre Taliesin. That way we can cut around 3 miles off tomorrow's walk'

'Amazing, Brace, for once that is actually a good idea.' Rhian turned round to look at the dedication plaque on the seat and laughed. 'Fantastic name' she said.

What a fabulous woman. We really felt we would have got on well with her and that she would approve of our change of plan. And with the blessing of Ms Lunablue, we walked down past the train station and picked up the path.

We turned inland and we were immediately struck by the quiet. It was good to get back to the path proper, which was what I had been looking forward to after all this time. We crossed the railway line and headed for a rocky outcrop on which stood an interesting looking church. We like a good church as they are hard to miss. Unfortunately St Martin’s Church was closed because of COVID, but our eyes were caught by something of interest outside the fence.

https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/301512/details/st-matthews-parish-church-borth

Headstones. 3 very small ones. And a little further along a granite slab, engraved in gold, and hiding in the grass a large, flat, painted pebble. Intrigued, we looked closer.

The 3 headstones were engraved, also, with sad messages from Pam. Pam had had at least 3 beloved pets buried here over a number of years. We felt for Pam, who clearly loved these creatures (it didn’t say what kind of animals they were) (They were too small to be horses) and was heartbroken at their loss.

The headstones commemorated Lucky, a faithful friend, also Lucky 2, I dream of times gone by and a love that will never die, Chilli, the best friend I ever had...life killed the dream I dreamed. There was also a cross, with Son of Lucky, and Helen remarked that she was pleased for Lucky 2 who had obviously got lucky. We laughed, for all the wrong reasons, and pressed on into a field beneath the rocky outcrop.

To our right, sunk into the rock, we saw two benches made of large stone slabs and carved with the inscription UPPINGHAM SCHOOL 1876-1877. Again, our curiosity was piqued. We had heard of Uppingham School, which we knew was in Rutland, 170 miles away from Borth, so what, we wanted to know, was the connection with Borth?

Our research revealed a story that we found really moving, despite its rather bizarre nature. By 1876 the school drainage system had practically collapsed, and things were so bad that typhoid had broken out, and the headteacher made the somewhat unexpected ecision to relocate the school with all its pupils and staff to the remote Welsh fishing village of Borth. The local hotel was commandeered and the school set up. Now this may have seemed a strange move, and you might imagine hostility between the very poor, Welsh-speaking locals and the upper-class English speaking kids and staff. However, you would be mistaken. A strong bond was formed between villagers and the school community which is still commemorated at the school to this day. It was genuinely heartwarming and both of us shed a happy, if wine-fuelled, tear as we read about it. We recommend finding out more:

https://www.uppingham.co.uk/news/2020-05-15/Uppingham-and-the-Borth-Exile

We passed though a gate and started to pass through the Cors Fochno. Before we set off I decided to put away my walking poles as the ground was totally flat. my new rucksack had made Rhian so envious that she had to get a new one too and we spent a little time fiddling with straps and attachments. It was bondage of sorts but in an outdoor, wholesome sort of way. Rhian started it fit her poles in.

'Hang on, you have to collapse them down first, else you will look like Boudica, scything away the enemy'.

'A novel way to Social Distance' she said and we laughed. This is a sodden and bleak place, all tufts and tussocks but it is an exceptionally important ecological site. It has a very wet and acid soil and so only highly adapted species can live there, including the insectivorous sundew plant.

'Do you know why insectivorous plants live in waterlogged soil' I asked.

'Yes'. This was a lie, I felt sure, a ruse to stop me telling her. For a teacher she is strangely resistant to instruction herself. (Pot. Kettle. She knows it all).

'Go on then, explain it to me' I countered.

She looked defeated, 'Go on, tell me about them'. So I did. its all about nitrates.

'Now wasn't that fascinating?' No response and she gave me the sort of look that year 9 would last thing on a Friday afternoon.

'Say yes Miss, Rhian'

'Yes Miss'. This made me happy. We carried on walking. The path had been mowed and there were small sections of boardwalk over the pools of water and mud. It wasn't a difficult walk but it was dull and because so few people had walked this section of path we had to step from tussock of grass to tussock. After a little while the inevitable happened and I fell over but the grass was soft and I didn't hurt myself.

Coming out of the marshland we could see the village of Tre Taliesin ahead of us and we decided that rather than retrace our steps back to Ynys Las (which would be 7 .5 miles) we would walk down some roads and make it a circular walk. Given that Ynys Las seemed like the end of the world, we didn't think that there would be much on the roads. We were wrong and spent around 4 miles hoping that cars wouldn't hit us. As we got closer to the main route back I saw a footpath that would take us away from the busy road and save us some time.

'We should take that if we can find it'.

'Good idea'

This was 'it'. Impossible for us to miss.

We trudged on. It really did seem as if we were reaching the end of the world and we were feeling the pain of having walked quite a long way. We got a socially distanced ice-cream to cheer ourselves up and got back to Rhian's car. For all we moaned and groaned we were proud of ourselves for getting the most out of a day which didn't go quite as planned. A bit like the Uppingham school situation I guess.