St Dogs in a Manger: St Dogmaels to Newport

Two years into the idiotic 'Grand Walk Round Wales Plan' we realised that it was about time to take on the Pembroke Path. We had finished the Carmarthenshire section and had done all but the last part of the Ceredigion Path; walking Pembroke would join together the two sections nicely and give us more bragging rights. The Pembroke section is considered to be one of the most beautiful, and one of the best, long distance paths in the world but we were strangely reluctant. It is 186 miles long and we had walked the last six miles from Tenby to Amroth, a tiny cheese paring of the whole distance. It also involves 35,000 foot of uppy downie which does not sound like a lot but Everest is 29029 feet tall and Sherpas we ain't. We do much of our walking in the summer holiday, setting aside a week, but this wouldn't work for Pembroke. We were going to have to take it in chunks.

'So, I have got some good news and some bad news for you Oram'

'Tell me the good news first.'

'We can do the first section of the walk staying in my caravan' I love my caravan, it is my happy place.

'Excellent! and the bad news?'

I thought I would say it quickly

'St Dogmaels to Newport is the hardest part of the whole Wales Coastal Path.'

There was a long pause, damn, she had heard me.

'Look, St Dogs to Newport is 15.5 miles. We will do it in two sections, break it part way in Moylgrove and it will be FINE.'

'Hmmmm' Rhian's reluctance was understandable. This section is described in the guide books as 'A brute of a day.' Even taken over two days it was going to be tough. At one point it looked as if the gods were against us walking it as they sent us Storm Brian and a warning not to walk the coastal path from the Coast Guard. Eventually the weather calmed down and we knew that we had to do it.

Poppet Sands Beach and Cemaes Head, which would be the start of the next section of walk.

Part One, St Dogmaels to Moylegrove

St Dogmaels is a small town, just across the Teifi river from Cardigan and is in Pembrokeshire and marks the start of the Pembrokeshire section of the Coastal Path. It's a very pretty place, with brightly coloured houses and some great places to eat and drink. I'm particularly fond of The Ferry https://www.theferryinn.co.uk/ and the Webley Inn, https://teifiwatersidehotel.co.uk/ which is just outside the town, closer to the coast. St Dogmaels has a very long history and it is thought that a 'Blessing Stone', close to the river, was originally part of a prehistoric burial mound.

The town formed around an abbey church founded by the Tironensian order. It grew over many years and became an Abbey in 1115. These days it is a ruin and is next to a Victorian church houses an Ogham inscribed stone.

We headed out of the town, walking alongside the estuary down to where it reaches the sea at Poppet Sands. The first part of the walk is along a country road until you reach the Webley Inn. Shortly after that, there is a path alongside the sand dunes, which Rhian still wouldn't let me talk about.

I will admit that I didn't take this photo on this particular walk but I want to share it as it is so beautiful. Across the estuary you can see Gwbert and around the headland towards Cardigan Island. Lovely, isn't it? Sigh. Anyway were were about to have a 'Brute of a Day.'

Arriving in Poppet Sands, we stopped at the café http://www.poppitsandscafe.co.uk/ and fortified ourselves before starting to walk up the hill and away from the estuary. We chatted to a family with three young children who were going to walk part of the way. We sucked our teeth and worried for them, given the guide book's baleful warning. However, the start was extremely pleasant. As we climbed upwards we could see the sweeping sands. It's a beautiful place for a walk and I have visited it many times, the first time as a teenager.

Imagine a swooping glissando on a harp, we are about to have a flashback.

I once stayed in St Dogmaels with my family. We were sharing the house with some family friends and they had a son a year older than me. This was in the 70s, back in the days when mismatched crockery wasn't trendy, it was naff and holiday accommodation was more 1950s than trendy Habitat. The house, grandly called Rose Cottage, was just a terraced house, less comfortable than our own houses and was blessed with a cracked plastic loo seat that nipped the arses of the unwary. We were frequently unwary and somewhat let down by the holiday. To cheer us all up we headed down to the beach at Poppet. Flasks were filled and sandwiches made and we went off to see the sea.

It was a lovely day and we settled on towels on the soft sand and whiled away some time. Mothers in sundresses, Fathers in rolled up trousers, kids in bathing costumes, we were typical families on holiday. A little way down the beach from us, was another family. Nice. Families on the beach. Traditional. Just what you'd expect. Until the father stood up. He was stark bollock naked. For a few seconds everyone was too shocked to say anything.

'Don't look, Helen!' my mother said, in a forceful whisper. What was amusing was that, while she was horrified at the man's nakedness, she didn't want to embarrass him but letting him know that she was horrified. Too late, I had already copped an eyeful of his meat and two veg before he sat back down. No-one said anything and there was an unspoken consensus that we should be very British about this and pretend that NOTHING HAD HAPPENED. The stunned silence continued for a while and eventually Dad suggested that they play some cricket on the hard sand and the men all wandered off. This was a male bonding event and there was a tacit acceptance the presence of the distaff side was not expected.

We women sat on the beach towels and watched the from a distance as they bowled and batted. There was a scent of testosterone in the air and it was clear that it was important that they all put up a good show. They were busy concentrating on the game, being suitably manly and hadn't noticed that one of the naturist family, a teenage girl, had gone into the sea. My father was bowling to the friend's son when she ran right past them, all Health and Efficiency like. She had long blonde hair which whipped in the wind and it could only have been more of a cliché if she had been running in slow motion. The son, 15 and a volcano of hormones and sexual frustration, thought that all his dreams had come true. He couldn't take his eyes off her and was bowled out as well as bowled over. With that, he stomped up the sand.

'Why are you back?'

'It's not fair, I was bowled out. I heard a noise and I thought she was clapping me, but it was her boobs bouncing together. It was an unfair distraction.' It was probably unfair to laugh but we did. Manhood laid low; that would teach them. We packed up out stuff and returned to the 'cottage' where we were treated to more arse nipping, which took our minds off naturist families nicely.

Imagine a swooping glissando on a harp, we are about to go back to walking the path - Hang on, hang on! I too have memories of a childhood holiday, in a caravan at Poppet Sands. As I have mentioned before, my mother had family in the Cardigan area (and in fact had spent much of her childhood living with her grandmother on her farm nearby, becoming a fluent Welsh speaker and not really wanting to return to the Rhondda after finishing school in 1945) and so we often visited the elderly relatives in the area before having a break on our own.

So this year's holiday of choice, when I was 5, was in this caravan. I call it a caravan quite deliberately. Nowadays we often refer to them as "luxury mobile homes". Luxury this wasn't. It was painted half green and half cream on the outside, and inside you could not swing the proverbial cat, let alone our very boisterous boxer dog, Cindy. It smelled inside of wet dog, even before she got into it. We also went on caravan holidays. I always wanted to stay in one of the big, oblong caravans but we would always end up with one that looked like this. I remember one time I was so happy that we were in a caravan that I leapt on my bed with excitement and was brought up short by the singular lack of bounce. My mattress was thinner than the average duvet.

I LOVED it. It was my dream holiday! We were practically on the beach, there were very few other people around (surprise surprise) and the dog and I were FREEEEEE!

Of course, there is a drawback to Welsh summer holidays and we all know what that is: rain.

We settled in for the first night. I couldn't sleep for excitement. My bed was about 12 inches in width, which didn't help; the dog snored in the living room (2 feet away) and my parents snored in their room (2 feet in the other direction). The weather deteriorated from fine drizzle on our arrival, to a full blown thunderstorm by about 2am, and we were woken by the torrential rain lashing the caravan, the booming of thunder, wild flashings of lightning and the caravan rocking to and fro in the high winds. Strangely, I wasn't scared (I was only 5. What did I know?). My parents, having checked on me and Cindy, who by this time had crawled into the space under my bed for greater safety, went back to sleep.

The day dawned, quiet and calm. I leapt out of bed in anticipation, put on my shorts and t-shirt and said "Mam, I'm going outside!"

My mother groaned "Put your wellies on!" and turned over in bed.

Oh the excitement! My new wellies! They were red, with blue soles. I was ready for anything. I reached for the caravan door. I hadn't looked outside, because all the curtains were closed. Cindy stood, waiting behind me to get out there with me, her front paws going up and down in doggy anticipation, back end wagging to and fro. She was a lovely dog, bonkers but lovely.

I opened the door, looked up at the sky to see if there was any chance of blue (there wasn't), stepped down and my legs and wellies disappeared into water that was six inches deep. Cindy had pushed past me and was now splashing about, swimming around the caravan. The land surrounding the caravan was flooded. Luckily our car was parked on slightly higher ground.

"Maaaaaammmmmmm!" I yelled.

"OH WHAT NOW?! KEN, DO SOMETHING!" my mother's attempt at a lie-in thwarted, she fell back on blaming me and/or my father and refused to get out of bed until someone brought her a cup of tea. Sensible woman.

Now imagine a swooping glissando on a harp as we return to our tale of walking the path out of St Dogmael's...

We wound our way upwards, past a campsite, eventually the path became a grassy track with low gorse bushes, and as we headed towards Cemaes Head the views in both directions opened out. We looked back towards Mwnt, pointed with our walking poles and said "We've walked all of that!". It always makes us feel proud. We could see Cardigan Island out in the bay, and when we dared to look down we could even see seals lying on the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs. "They look like mouse droppings - same size and colour," I mused.

This section of the walk always makes me think of Gloucester in King Lear:

There is a cliff, whose high and bending head

Looks fearfully in the confined deep:

The 'Mouse Droppings' and some stunning geology of layers of sandstone sandwiched with mudstone. 440 million years or so old, moved upwards by the collision of continental plates around 50 millions years ago.

Geology=Physics + a shit load of time

You see, she'd doing that now, being all well read and stuff. On the day what did we get? Mouse droppings. Frankly I expected better of her. After rounding Cemaes Head there is a cliff top section of over a mile and eventually you get to Pen-Yr-Afr, which is the highest point on the Pembrokeshire section of the path at 175m above sea level. It was a terrifying drop and neither if us is good with heights. We were not made any calmer by the warning sign.

Its not just the distance, the comments about the steepness of the hills and the sheerness of the cliffs that is the scary bit. It is the use of the term 'escape route'; not designed to fill you with confidence. At least we were only walking to Ceibwr Bay.

"Avoid the cliff edge" my arse - you couldn't at several points!

It wasn't the cliff that looked fearfully in the confined deep - it was me! Our technique when near a cliff edge is to lean inland and look straight ahead, and this was one of those moments. Not just a moment, an aeon of time, as we laboured upwards. The family we had chatted to were catching up with us, the children skipping along happily and the mum in a hippy sort of skirt. If she trips over the hem of that she's a goner, I thought.

At this point we were walking uphill on a path that was right at the edge of the cliff which had eroded quite badly. On our left, very close by, was a barbed wire fence to stop hapless sheep from tumbling over the edge. We had no more than a few inches between us and certain death. Helen went first, as she is better uphill, and it was very steep. We both leaned to the left, looking ahead though of course my view was of Helen's posterior. I would like to take offence at this but I couldn't. I was utterly terrified that I was going to fall and knock Rhian off the path so that she could be a jaunty coloured mouse dropping with the seals below. This was the scariest part of the path we had done. This was pushing the edge of what we were capable of doing; we are walking along a path and having a cuppa tea types, not scrambling up hills types. Even looking at her backside was preferable to what was on our right hand side. I clutched the fence posts when I could, and even tufts of grass to try to guard against wobbling to the right. The fear was very real! The family behind us had stopped at the bottom of this hill and had clearly decided to take the way of greater safety and head back to the cafe.

It was almost worth the pain for the exceptional view which was tempered with the knowledge that we still had all the coastline to walk.

(We've now walked all that way, Helen!)

After some stunning views along the cliff top we had to descend almost to sea level to cross a tiny stream at Pwllgranant, climbed up again. This was one of a set up climbs that would happen before we got to Newport. The Stairs of Cirith Ungol on repeat. Thankfully, for today, we just had a slow decent into the beach at Ceibwr Bay and cut in land to Moylegrove where we had left the car. I don't know about Rhian but I had found the section hard and exhilarating and I was excited and dreading the next section in equal measure.

My feelings were of a huge sense of achievement. We really had had to push ourselves physically and also mentally with this one and I felt more confident about the challenges of the next day as a result. So euphoria tempered with sore feet and Voltarol. And fuelled by entirely medicinal gin and tonic and some fizz that evening, I felt triumphant.

Part Two Moylegrove to Newport

We got back to my caravan in Ceredigion and celebrated completing the first part of the walk and not having killed each other. This is why we never lose any weight. We slept the sleep of the exhausted and lightly sozzled and woke the next morning somewhat jaded and aching from the previous day's walk.

We picked up the path at Ceibwr Bay, walked up the hill along a small road for a short distance and were soon back on the cliff and heading towards Pwll y Wrach or the Witches' Cauldron. This was caused by the collapse of the roof of a sea cave which then was flooded and we stopped to have a selfie even if we were one short of the Shakespearean quorum.

My stomach was double-bubbling as a result of the cava drunk the previous evening, which added to the ambience while Helen's impression of a crone was coming along nicely. Bitch.

I'm not going to lie to you, and neither does the guide book: this was another hard walk, with many ups and downs. We spent some time 'discussing' which one of us was Sam, and which was Frodo. "I am Frodo!"

"No! I am Frodo!"

It was like Lord of the Rings meets Spartacus. I prefer Sam anyway, he's much less moany, but for argument's sake I had to keep insisting I wanted to be Frodo because he is ostensibly the hero. It kept our minds off the vertical nature of some of those uppies, where mud and rocks underfoot made the going tough, annoyingly wet water ran down the hillside and we slid and scrambled our way to top after top. And then slipped and slid our way down again. I don't recall seeing anybody on the path that day, though that might be because I was so focussed on the scrambling aspect of the whole thing.

There was no denying the absolute beauty that we were looking at when we reached a cliff top though. It was very special, and the weather was clear so we could see far down the coast.

We were tired and after a while we were happy to see the town of Newport in the distance but it was a long slog and we were exhausted. One thing that helped to distract us were the gorse flowers in bloom. in the sunshine they were releasing their perfume which was soft and subtle, almost like baby powder. The hills above us were full of iron and bronze age settlements and there are some remarkable examples of burial chambers, one of the finest being at Pentre Ifan, over 5000 year old, further inland on a windswept hill. The bluestones of Stonehenge might have from these hills and there is much argument about how they transported them.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentre_Ifan#:~:text=Pentre%20Ifan%20is%20the%20name%20of%20an%20ancient,largest%20and%20best%20preserved%20neolithic%20dolmen%20in%20Wales.) Eventually we walked down a steep, rocky slope that left me terrified I would slip but we arrived safe at the car park near Newport sands and treated ourselves to a very posh ice cream and soft drink, looking out across the bay and the estuary of the Afon Nyfer.

Well earned.

Other soft drinks are available.

The ice cream was utterly delish and I am proud to say made in the Rhondda!

https://iamsubzero.com/

Newport, Pembs. It's a lovely place. The only place in the UK where it rained for a whole week in the famously drought-stricken summer of 1976. How do I know? Was I there? No. I was on holiday in sunny Weymouth, but my husband (age 16), his 3 brothers and their parents were staying in a caravan in Newport at the time. But did they have wellies?