Sweet Home Pwll Deri: The walk to Fishguard

With the 'brute of a day' under our belts, and the pain and terror fading into distant memory, I had a bit of a rush of blood to my head. I was getting delusions of adequacy and this can be a dangerous thing when planning a walking holiday. The next section we needed to walk was the section from Pwll Gwaelod, down toward St Davids. This would involve us walking the section we had first taken as hopelessly unprepared teenagers. In order to complete the nostalgia kick we were going to stay in the same Youth Hostel. The hostel is midway though the section so this time were were going to break with habit and end up walking in two directions, but obviously not at the same time (although we have almost achieved it). In case anyone is interested this is was the plan.

Day 1 We were going to walk out of the hostel to Pwll Gwaelod

Day 2 We were going to walk from Abberiddy back to the youth hostel.

Day 3 We were going to walk from Abereiddy to Whitesands Bay and pick up the walk later in the summer.

I must have been out of my tiny mind.

Our first visit to the Youth Hostel at Pwll Deri was 41 years ago, when we were excitable, naïve teenagers. We were sixth formers at Treorchy Comp, champing at the bit to get out into the world. At the time, backpacking around Europe was a rite of passage for students (as it has since become again) and I really really wanted to do this. I dreamed of rural France, stopping off to earn some money grape-picking, meeting a handsome Aussie or the like, and, ahem, sleeping under the stars. I wanted to jump on and off local trains and explore beautiful towns and cities, staying in Youth Hostels and taking in the art and culture. This I was to do later on, but at this point we couldn't afford it and anyway, our parents wouldn't let us. So we came up with the next best thing: walking in West Wales at Whitsun. (I think this says everything you need to know about how optimistic Rhian is. And how very misguided this charming positivity can sometimes be.)

We planned it carefully. I bought a rucksack in the army surplus shop in Pontypridd. It was canvas, and it weighed a ton. I didn't consider the implications of this at the time. I had a really comfy pair of flat shoes that I wore to school. Perfect for walking, I reasoned. Helen had a pair of "pasties" which she thought would be suitable. I had two pairs of flared jeans, one to wear and a spare.

The photos below shows Helen's shoes on the left. She has very big feet and is clearly much heftier than me. My little tootsies fitted into the daintier shoes on the right. (Ahem. this is a big fib from Rhian or 'Boat foot Rhian' as I call her.)

So we turned up at Pwll Deri in my dad's car. We had enlisted our fathers, mine to take us there, and Helen's to pick us up. Dad helped unload our rucksacks, wished us all the best and drove off with a slightly ironic wave. I think he knew we might be somewhat unprepared for what we were doing. What I was unprepared for was when we checked in, dumped our rucksacks in the dormitory and reported for duty, as we had read was expected in those days and they gave us a whole sack of bloody potatoes to peel! I'd never peeled a potato in my life, as my mother didn't trust me with sharp implements and I had certainly never insisted on learning the necessary kitchen skills. Steep learning curve indeed.

We picked the Youth Hostel option as it was cheap. I remember spending ages looking at the Youth Hostel book and finding three places close enough that we could manage to walk from one to the other. In those day you were limited in how many days you could stay in a hostel and were not allowed to stay inside the hostel during the day. No matter what the weather was like, you had to be out during the day and would only be let back in after a day of healthful outside exercise and fresh air. Sadly, we picked the worst possible week for an outdoor holiday as it coincided with the 1979 Fastnet race disaster, which cost the lives of 19 competitors. The poor competitors had a terrifying time of it, sailing in a Force 10 gale. We were better off, being on land, but the wind and rain were both dreadful. We had grown up with wind and rain as an almost daily occurrence but that was bad, even for Wales. There was a lot more fresh air than we had bargained for. We did have a modicum of sense and decided that walking along a coastal path in that sort of weather was a Bad Idea. The Hostel manager was old school, had no pity on us and were were turned out into the driving rain, wearing tasteless shoes, jeans and pakamacs. The water ran off on to our jeans which swiftly became saturated. We really were a walking advert for what not to do on a walking holiday. It's worth noting that this holiday set the scene for all the later cock ups we were to experience while walking the Coastal Path.

This is Rhian on the evening of our first night. This was just after we had had to peel a sack of spuds and just before the torrential rain. I think this was the only picture we took in sunlight. Doesn't she look fab? Please note the inappropriate shoe and trouser options for a walking holiday.

The rain and high winds continued as we trudged along a pebbly beach which, on a sunny day might have invited us to take a swim, with the waves crashing on shore in a rather frightening manner, that we met a little gang of kids of a very similar age to us. I can't recall exactly how it happened, but they had a tent, pitched under some trees at the back of the bay, and they invited us to take shelter with them. We agreed with some alacrity.

There were four of them, two boys, two girls. One, I recall, was named Julia, and one of the boys was called Pavel. They were very friendly and we exchanged stories, chatted and laughed - their companionship in this suffering was a real pleasure. (I think that the girls were staying in the Hostel but the boys were in the tents.)

We were all sixth form students, but in some ways the differences between us were quite stark. We were two lunatics from the Rhondda with entirely the wrong kit and absolutely no experience of this kind of venture. They were from Bristol, went to The Gordano School, were very confident, very well-spoken (to the point of being positively middle-class!) and clearly used to doing character and team-building exercises in the outdoors. They had proper walking boots, waterproof clothing and something totally unknown and game-changing to me, a girl from Treorchy whose gastronomic experience was hearty but somewhat limited: a product called Jordan's Country Crunch. Well. I can only say that it was a revelation. Middle class snacking! They offered us some, and scales fell from my eyes as to the mysteries of granola. What the hell else was I missing, food-wise? I was bowled over. Plus, I rather fancied Pavel. This was really very enjoyable.

Eventually the Jordan's granola ran out and we had to leave the tent. Even we realised that walk along the Coastal Path was out of the question in the middle of a gale and the Hostel manager wasn't going to let us in, no matter how bedraggled we looked so we had to find something to do and somewhere to shelter, preferably under cover. The Fleshpots of Fishguard beckoned. Sitting in the tent, listening to the rain hammering on the canvas we looked at our maps and saw that we could walk into Fishguard along country lanes. A five mile walk in torrential rain into a sleepy Pembroke town, wonderful. And to think that we could have been picking grapes in the South of France!

We headed off into town, getting wetter with every step. The lane was one of a warren of roads leading to small hamlets and farms. Thankfully we were not having to walk on mud and eventually the rain stopped. The day was looking up. After a little while a milk tanker came towards us, slowed and turned up a lane.

'Fetching the milk, Rhi.'

'Full of wisdom as ever'.

We plodded on, entertaining ourselves by reciting the start of 'On a Hot Summer Night'. It was almost an invocation, a charm against sodden boots and soggy trousers.

'Oh look, he's back!' I was treated with a withering glance. I was trying to make the most of the entertainment, but the milk tanker was forcing us to lean back into the hedge. However, the driver pulled up ahead of us, and as we walked alongside he asked us what on earth we were doing. When we told him that we were walking to Fishguard, he laughed. I felt aggrieved until he said that he was passing there and would happily drop us off. Lovely chap. (At this point I would like to make it clear to my children that this was a VERY SILLY THING TO DO and you must never do VERY SILLY THINGS. Honestly, I would have had conniptions if my kids had ever done something like this. We had gone into the wilds of West Wales in the middle of some of the worst gales in living memory to walk along a coastal path complete with cliffs and drops onto jagged rocks with no means of contact unless we found a phone box. But parents in the 1970s were either blissfully ignorant and/or made of tougher stuff. Either way, we survived and arrived in Fishguard safe, sound and sodden.) We went to the pub to dry out and spent a happy afternoon, drinking underage. this was also something that seemed to happen a lot in the 70s.

41 years on we were older and I was proving to be no wiser but at least this time we had our own cars and wouldn't have to rely on lifts from milk tankers.

'Lets go back to the same hostel, Rhian, it will be fun!'

'Why? We could afford a B and B.'

'Oh go on, the nostalgia will be wonderful!'

'Don't you remember the potatoes? The sleeping in a dormitory? The being whole 'being out in a Force 10 gale' thing?'

' I don't think you can blame the YHA for the weather'

'But the lack of comfort?'

'Its all different now'.'

'How do you know?'

'Because I've looked it up on line. You no longer have to be a member to book and chores are a thing of the past!' There was a long pause.

I wore her down and she eventually gave in. I booked us a private room with its own bathroom and things seemed to be completely different from our first experience.

When we arrived at the YHA in Pwll Deri we were both astonished. The room had a very comfortable bunk beds and a functional bathroom. There were no sacks of potatoes to peel and we found a wonderful lounge area and an outside area with seats with the most amazing view. We sat and shared some wine and congratulated ourselves on picking the YHA and how much better we had become at long distance walking. We were dangerously smug. Hubris guys, hubris.

The view. It was just amazing. The wine wasn't bad either. The sun set and we sat and laughed about our last visit and mentioned several times that we were so much better prepared this time. the headland you can see is the part of the coast we would be walking on the second day. The Pwll Deri YHA is in the most breath-taking place and I strongly recommend it.

We both slept quite well in our bunk beds and were up showered, breakfasted and out of the door in good time. We drove to Pwll Gwaelod, parked one car, returned to the hostel, rucksacked up and strode off and within a matter of minutes were were not sure if we were on the path or not. I know, I know, this is hard to believe but we aren't that good at this sort of thing.

Getting lost is something that we can do with great ease but this time it was made more likely because we were walking the section in reverse, all the directions in the guide book were, as far as we were concerned, the wrong way round. It doesn't take much to confuse us. We walked down a road and came to a dead end with lots of 'Private, no entrance' signs. We retraced our steps and failed to find the path a second time and so opted to take another path that was better signed, across the side of a hill and down another road to Tresinwen, we could see that we could pick up the path after about a 3/4 of a mile. When we got to Tresinwen we saw it was a farm, complete with barking dogs and a very helpful farmer. He was quite amused when we told him that we had managed to misplace one of the best waymarked long distance paths in the world, but pointed us in the right direction to get back on it.

'It's a bit muddy down there mind, and there are cows so it's a bit messy under foot.'

Beside me, I could feel Rhian flinching. Muddy was an understatement. We headed off into a field, the mud was thick and heavy, claylike and it stuck to our boots. We were sinking almost ankle deep into the sodden ground as we walked across the fields and when we got to the gates at the end, the mud was joined by noisome pools of stale cow piss and semi dissolved cow shit. We were walking through a khaki, stinking quagmire. It was grim and we only managed to stay upright (the thought of falling in this cow latrine was too horrible for words) because of our walking poles. We slipped and slithered our way and eventually got back on the path. Thankfully we didn't meet any actual cows. If we had I think Rhian would have killed me. Strumble Head remained firmly in the distance. The scenery was staggering - bleak, rugged and very beautiful. Back on the path proper we walked high above the sea and it was blissful.

We passed the memorial at Carreg Goffa which marks the site of the last invasion of Britain. On February 22nd in 1797, French troops lead by the Irish American Col William Tate landed o this remote site. The invasions failed when (as local story tells), the men got pissed and 12 of them were captured by Jemima Nicholas, wielding a pitch fork. In two days the invasion was over.

It was hard to reconcile the peace and quiet of this place with a warlike invasion.

We walked around the area known as Pen Caer, resisted the temptation to detour to Pen Anglas to see basalt rock formations (I was keen, but knackered) and as ever we failed to see a range of prehistoric and medieval sites in the area. At last we could see the long breakwater of Fishguard harbour and walked down a steep slope and steps to sea level and the Ocean Lab on the sea front.

'Shall we get a coffee in town?'

'Good idea' I said. I was very tired and the thought of a sit down was wonderful.

At this point we were on the seafront at Goodwick, where, amongst other things, there was a large petrol station. We walked across the car parking area and the road with signs marked ALLAN/EXIT. Easily amused, we laughed at the old Wenglish joke that this was the exit belonging to that nice Welsh chap, Allan. This is a joke that depends on your knowledge of Welsh pronunciation of a double LL. As I say, we are easily entertained.

Walking in slippery mud had made for a hard day, we still had several miles left to walk after Fishguard and I thought that the rest would help us. We walked up into the town and saw the welcoming Cresswell's cafe. The steamed up windows promised warmth and hot drinks. We pushed the door and went in. We collapsed into some seats and looked at the menu. Tea and toasted teacakes looked wonderful.

Rhian pointed at the menu, 'Look at the owner's name!'

I looked. Allan. Perfect, and the tea cakes were even better.

He took it well when we told him about our earlier conversation about the road sign - he had clearly had to put up with this from many a local in his time.

The rest felt good but eventually we decided that we were too exhausted to walk the last stage to Pwll Gwaelod and wondered how we could get back to my car parked at what we had foolishly thought was going to be the end of the day's walk. We were discussing bus routes when the the ever helpful Allan must have over heard us and he chipped in, 'You don't want to bother with a bus, you need Carrot's Cabs, much easier for you'.

Finishing our tea we phoned Carrot and walked up to the town square, waiting for him to pick us up outside the pub we had gone to as 17 year olds sheltering from a gale. Speculation was rife.

'I wonder if the cab is shaped like a carrot?'

'No', said Rhian

'It might be', I was hoping for some amusement.

'No, its Carrot's Cabs, possessive. Not Carrot Cab, description'. There is no arguing her over English. As we squabbled a nondescript saloon car pulled up and a nondescript man shouted out the window, 'Did you book a cab?'

We climbed in and he asked where we wanted to go to and he laughed, 'No problem. I will take you round the back way'. I started to snigger and Rhian gave me a hard stare, which stopped me from saying something vulgar. In place I asked him if his surname was Carrot.

'No, that would be daft, I'm Carrot because of my hair, its a nickname.'

He had very little hair and what he had was grey. We looked confused.

'Everyone round here knows me as Carrot.'

'Nice'.

We pulled into the car park, said farewell to the balding Carrot and drove back to the hostel. We were 5 miles short on the distance we had hoped to cover but at least we wouldn't have a bag of spuds to peel and we had another good bottle of wine waiting for us.