Strange things in the night: Aberporth to Llangrannog

The hotel that Helen had booked was quite an imposing building but it had clearly seen much better days. The couple who owned it met us and helped us up to our room with our rucksacks, which Nick had kindly dropped there for us before he set off home, laughing up his sleeve at the madness of his wife and her batty friend. They told us that they had just taken the place over, and were renovating while also still letting out rooms to cover costs. They and their little boy were lovely.

The room itself, up in the eaves, was “old-fashioned”. Twin beds, very comfy, with candlewick bedspreads that I recall from my childhood 47 years ago. Pine panelling, slightly dodgy-looking electrics and a bathroom with sliding door, toilet, sink, bath, and one of those pink rubber hose affairs that you shove on to the taps to create a makeshift shower. The last time I used one of those was when my mother proudly purchased one for our bathroom in the late 60s.

My memory is much the same as Rhian’s. The owner carried our rucksacks up to our room, both at the same time in a very manly and determined style. When we got to the room, he handed over the keys and apologised, which was a first for me. I’ve never known a hotel owner apologise for his hotel before. The guy was a sort of Anti Basil Fawlty.

Walking poles. These really help on the 'Uppy downies' and they are also wonderful when it is wet and muddy, which happens quite often on Wales.

The room had been sold to me as having a bath and shower. The shower was the bright pink rubber affair attached to the bath taps. A blast from the past, pure 60s. I remember using them with trepidation. They had a nasty habit of detaching from the taps mid hair wash. Depending on which one went, you were either scalded or frozen. A bath-time Russian roulette with soap suds. Alongside the candlewick bedspreads (I used to annoy my mother by pulling the threads out) there was an ancient looking television. I was too scared to put it on in case it was still showing Peter Wyngarde in an episode of Jason King, all satin shirts and massive collars and we had fallen through a warp in space time. The room was a masterpiece of time travel and neither of us thought it was wise to try their dinner options. I felt we needed something nice after our long walk and if the kitchen was stuck in the 60s too we would be dining on scampi in the basket followed by Black Forest gateaux. So we locked the door on our luxury accommodation and walked down the hill to the pub.

The pub was on the sea front and was very busy. I asked the barman if they had a table for two and he said that we would have to wait an hour. Would this be a problem? A problem? He was mistaking us for two totally different middle aged ladies. We had our formative drinking years in the Red Cow and the Prince of Wales, two pubs kept afloat by the numerous underage drinkers of the valley. ‘Not a problem,’ I said, ‘we will have a drink.’

‘White wine spritzer?’ He asked. How wrong could he be?

‘Lager’

‘Half?’

‘Pint, two of them, please’.

We were on to our second pint of the evening and our throbbing feet were beginning to ease a little when we started to chat to the people sitting next to us. They were a middle aged couple. She was all Joules cotton jumpers and Pandora bracelets and he had a beard. I imagined that their house was Kath Kidsoned to the nth degree and he spent a lot of time in his shed hiding from her. Their conversations were odd. She chatted away, chatted at him really and he nodded and grunted occasionally. They looked very happy. If I’m honest what I really wanted to do was boast it how far we had walked that day.

‘Are you staying in Aberporth?’ The women asked. The beard nodded

‘Only for the night’ said Rhian.

‘Yes, we walked in today from Cardigan’ I said, looking as self-effacing as I could manage.

‘And tomorrow we are walking to Llangrannog,’ said Rhian.

We were enjoying this, pay back for all those bloody cows.

‘All that way?’ She asked. The beard looked shocked.

‘Yup’

‘Gosh! Have you been here before?’

‘Yes, we both came here as kids, visiting family.’ Rhian explained that she used to visit her mother’s family in Pembrokeshire.

‘And I used to visit my aunty in Aberaeron’.

(At this point it is useful to know that we were about 20 miles and several days walk away from Aberaeron)

Beard looked interested so I clarified, ‘Actually she lived in a little village just outside Aberaeron, Ffos-y-ffin’.

Mrs Joules was now excited, I swear her pandora bracelets were jangling.

‘Who was your aunty in Ffos-y-ffin?’

‘Jean Griffiths’

‘Tall woman, worked as a cook in the local school?’ I looked dumbfounded, ‘Yes!’

‘How’s your cousin Hannah?’

Bloody hell, this was weird. Now I knew why the Beard didn’t say much, he didn’t need to. This woman knew everything and everyone. At this point they called us for our meal.

As we looked at the menu we mulled this over, ‘Jesus, that was weird, what sort of coincidence is that?’

‘This is a very weird place, Rhian. And I think she was some sort of mind reader. Or mystic’

‘You could have asked her how tomorrow is going to go, carrying our bags.’ ‘Oh, it’s going to be easy. Look, we did about 12 miles today, more if you count when we got lost, and we only have 5 miles to walk tomorrow. It’s going to be a piece of piss. Trust me’.

Two burgers and chips later we wandered back up the hill and slept the sleep of people who’d walked further than they ever had in their lives and then drank quite a lot of lager. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the candlewick bedspread.

We coped womanfully with the ‘shower‘ arrangements, had a delicious breakfast, the donned our rucksacks. This was to be the first day where we carried all our stuff with us. The breakfast was wonderful, a Full Welsh in as much as it was like a Full English but in Wales. Calling it a Full Welsh would stop us being painted green or being set on fire by hordes of marauding Plaid Cymru supporters. It didn't have cockles in it, or laverbread. I remember thinking ‘This will be a nice one off treat.’ I was wrong. It wasn't, a one off, that is.

We stood outside the hotel, and headed downhill towards the seafront at Aberporth. I recalled my mother’s reminiscences of happy childhood times there, and it certainly was very pretty, and conducive to putting one’s rucksack down and having a paddle.

We headed towards the path, up a few steps that made me think “Gosh this rucksack’s heavy…”and paused to take a few photos under a waymarker. I remember thinking ‘That was a tough few yards…’ as we stood there, all gung ho and up for a challenge.

The path was totally flat and wheelchair friendly as we began properly. We chatted and commented on the converted train carriages that were now trendy holiday cottages. Eventually we reached a gate, and the path stretched its way through ferns up a steep slope.

That path wasn't just steep. It was long, very long and with every step I got hotter and more uncomfortable. The bag was bloody heavy too and seemed to pull me backwards and the straps dug into my shoulders and my feet really hurt.

My memories of the day are limited to moments. Sitting on a tump at the top of that steep slope, being Sam and Frodo, telling each other that we can’t give up because Middle Earth needed us. Helen struggling with blisters, and my rucksack bearing on to my left hip so that I resembled an orc (a sweating orc – it was a warm, sunny morning). The huge sense of relief as we reached mile 3 and the Plwmp Tart hove into view through a wood and over a stile. It felt like we had been going for hours and hours. I recall shrugging my rucksack off and sinking with massive relief onto a seat under an umbrella outside this delightful little café that seemed to me to be in the middle of nowhere – an oasis for overweight, middle-aged women with ideas above their station. Forget the Prancing Pony, Aragorn and Gandalf the Grey; I recommend the Plwmp Tart. Almond polenta cake and a fabulous pot of tea set me up again. Helen got the blister plasters, the insoles, the padded specialist socks, the refreshing foot spray and the painkillers out, ministered to her suffering feet (I’m not sure what the other customers made of all this, or of the fact that my floral vest, carefully chosen that morning to go with my comfy leggings, was totally drenched with sweat, as was my hair) and away we staggered. The Plwmp Tart is a fantastic place to eat, and not far from a beautiful beach. The place was full of holiday makers but we were WALKERS. Badly prepared, sweating and blistered but walkers nonetheless.

The Plwmp Tart is a wonderful cafe near the beach at Apparently the beach was used in the James Bond film, Die Another Day. But we were more interested in the cakes. They have missed a trick and don't sell teeshirts.

Plwmp Tart

It was while we were plodding slowly along a very beautiful cliff top that we encountered a couple who were to become familiar, friendly faces over the next week. Now, when you are a walker, a proper walker, you become accustomed to the etiquette when you meet each other. You greet each other, pause, and ask each other politely how far you have come, what the terrain is like, where else you have walked, where you are staying and so on, as you exchange information you secretly hope that you have walked further than them and can show off how hard you are, how much more experienced and knowledgeable you are. Hmmm. So this couple, around about the same age as us by the looks of them, approached. They were both slim and looked physically fit and experienced walkers. The bastards. This assumption was right. They were from Chester, he had recently retired from dentistry (so, comfortably off, I said to myself) She wasn't wrong. They were walking the whole of the Coastal Path. They were trying to do it in pretty much one go. At this my fragile ego backed into its burrow like a nervous puffin (more on puffins later) at this point and curled up in a little ball to avoid predators. Helen, on the other hand, with her customary joie-de-vivre, confidence and friendliness exchanged stories with them. She is being kind. She means gobshite. They were a lovely couple, and we were full of admiration for their efforts. We were to meet them going in the opposite direction, every day for the next 5 days.

The other person we encountered that day, and several times afterwards, was an American fell-runner. Terribly skinny, in orange shorts, he raced past us several times, and then passed us again on his way back when we were still breathlessly navigating steep climbs and treacherous screed slopes. Bastard. It is a shameful thing but I will admit to loathing fell runners. I'm in awe of them, for sure but I can't stand the bastards. while we were flogging up slopes, gasping for breath and red of face, these etiolated specimens would bound pass us, leaping from rock to rock. Aside from their impressive level of fitness, it's the sense of balance that I envy. Bastards. and as if running past us wasn't bad enough, this git reached our destination and then smuggly ran past us on his way to some wholesome dinner of chia seeds and smugness. We still had miles to go and I was planning on several beers. Just before the walk down into Llangrannog there is a slowly sloping field, open after what seemed like hours of trudging up the same few meters of path. The open space felt wonderful and I remember twirling around like Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music. I might even have broken into song…

End of an exhausting 5 miles, Llangrannog finally appeared beneath us. We teetered down the hill at speed, aided by those ruddy backpacks, and hurtled in through the door of the pub by the beach, where we were staying the night. Hurrah! We proudly announced that we had just walked from Aberporth, to the wry amusement of a group of local men, fishermen and West Walian country types with a somewhat satirical view of people like us. They didn’t say much but I sensed a bit of winking and smirking going on, as their conversation paused as we made our elegant entrance.

However, quite frankly at that point I didn’t give a flying one of those what they thought – I needed a drink!

We quenched our mega thirst, and were shown to our rather lovely, very comfortable twin room with a side view of the sea and a proper shower and bath. I posted a few photos from the day’s endeavours on the book of face. Helen had a hissy fit and made me delete one or two them: “Ohhhh! Take it down! Take it down now! NOW!!!!!”

I felt a bit disgruntled – I was trying to record this thing truthfully! I'd like to say that this is dramatic licence. But it isn't. I’m not really vain but those photographs were grim. And if you want to know just how grim please consider that the photos of me on this blog are fairly crap. These were worse.

This pub, The Pentre Arms, is excellent and sits right on the seafront. There is a wonderful picture window so you can sit and sip your drink while looking ngnat the endless pull of the sea. The bedrooms were very well set up and I slept like the dead. I was knackered. What is interesting is that this walk was only 5 miles long, but we felt that we had walked a marathon. That's what comes of climbing the Stairs of Cirith Ungol as a man in orange shorts races past you.

The view from the pub window as we sipped our beers and felt our feet throbbing. The stack is called the Carreg Bica and folklore has it that it is the Devil's tooth.

Pentre Arms