The Chalet School Teachers and the Case of the Exploding Cows...Angle to the Green Bridge

The next morning dawned. When I opened my eyes, that was the most that I could say. It was morning. I was in no fit state to make any assessment of what sort of day it was as I was gripped by a hang over. The light was streaming in between the curtains and I was lying in bed, tongue like sandpaper and my head beating an arresting rhythm that seemed to be saying, 'You dozy cow, you did it again' on a loop. The previous night had seen us celebrating the Welsh victory over England in the club house. Buoyed along by excited bonhomie, and several pints, we had over done it. I seem to remember that our temporary land lady had bought us some drinks. Everyone has just been in such a great mood. I was just considering the ghastly prospect of getting out of bed and finding some ibuprofen when there was a knock on the door.

'I've got some coffee for you Hel.'

Dear god, I almost wept with gratitude. She is a good woman, forgiving AND prepared to deliver coffee to the incapacitated and liverish. I slumped back in my bed, took some tablets and praised the lord that I had such an understanding friend. Coffee and a shower later and I had just enough energy to shamble downstairs and get some breakfast. We were both a little the worse for wear and the breakfast table didn't sparkle with our normal witty conversation. Still, the weather looked much better than the previous day and thanks to the boot dryer our feet were warm and toasty as we set off for the day's walk.

This walk was going to take in part of the Castlemartin Firing Range. On days when this is active, you can't walk along the coastal path. There is a diversion route inland which is not unpleasant but we wanted to take the coastal route, finishing our walk at the Green Bridge of Wales. I had done my usual and spent ages worrying about this (It was like my anxiety over the tidal crossings of the previous summer but this time my dreads involved tanks and artillery shells) and checking and rechecking the timetables. We drove through the Range and parked one car and then took the other along the B4320 to West Angle Bay. As I jumped into Rhian's car, she turned on the music system and we were treated to a swift reprise of Abilene as we bounced along, passing warning signs about tanks. It made for an interesting start to the day.

As Helen says, the weather was much kinder today, and the sun sparkled a little on the water, making me wish I had some sunglasses as the glare wasn't helping my somewhat thick head after yesterday's excess consumption of lager. It was a very pretty walk up from the bay, however, and as always, my mood lifted as we set off.

We climbed out of West Angle Bay we climbed up and onto some cliffs which took us away from the sandy beach. It is a SSSI and I would have been happy to tell Rhian all about the rare echinoderms that live there but for some reason she wasn't interested and walked on alone. I dare say she was nursing the remains of her hang over. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

As we came to the headland overlooking the wonderfully named Rat Island we saw the remains of a Tudor fortification that was built as a defence against the Spanish. It is known as East Blockhouse. In the distance you can see St Ann's Head which is the site of the West Blockhouse which is a more imposing structure . It might be that the East Blockhouse fortification was never finished. It makes for a dramatic view point. It was impressive to look back on the area that we had walked the previous summer but soon we turned the headland and were in all new territory.

Rhian, in splendid isolation avoiding any mention of the effect of oil spills on starfish. The path along this section is described in the guidebook as 'undulating' . It stretched ahead of us with the sea glinting in the sunshine. All this and I was starting to feel fully human again.

We passed Sheep Island, Guttle Hole and the Pickard Bays, past the uninspiringly named Gravel Bay, on towards Freshwater West. As an aside, Gravel was the name of Siadwell's girl friend in the superb comedy sketches of John Sparkes. I wonder if she was named after Gravel Bay?

One of my favourite jokes came from Siadwell:

"Go on."

"No".

"Go on, mun."

"NO!"

"Oh go on!"

"Oh alright then."

You had to be there.

Siadwel and Gravel

At West Pickard Bay we discovered this: an iron age hill fort, no less! We actually noticed it, and I even remembered to take a photo of it to prove to ourselves that we had seen it!

We were slightly underwhelmed.

"It's a tump." Helen said, with disappointment in her voice.

"A tump inside a ditch," I agreed. We walked on. (I was disappointed but this was a step up from the last iron age hill fort sire that we had seen which was just a ditch. At least this was a ditch and a tump.)

(For those of you who may not be familiar with the term "tump", which I suspect may be a Valleys word, a tump is a small, but quite high sided hillock, very good for sliding down on a piece of cardboard. This one wasn't even big enough for that!).

I love this warning sign. They weren't kidding, this was a tough section but it was stunningly beautiful. All trace of the industrialisation of Milford Haven was now well behind us and we had the most fantastic views across the sea. It was wonderful walking but hard work. I like the warning about sheep paths crossing the track. This isn't to protect you from marauding sheep, hell bent on sweeping you to your doom, but rather that you don't get confused and take the wrong path. Amazingly we didn't get lost and we got to the headland above Freshwater West in time for a picnic lunch. It was an amazing place to stop and rest.

The wonderful Freshwater West. This is a fantastic beach and it is the site of the Welsh Wind Surfing championships. Pembrokeshire really is a fantastic stretch of the coast for all sorts of outdoor pursuits, not just long distance walking. We have seen all sorts of things while walking this section, paddle boarding, climbing and abseiling and coasteering. Freshwater West is also the last resting place of Dobby the House Elf. The house that they built for the filming of this section from the Harry Potter movies has gone, but fans keep rebuilding Dobby's grave in the dunes.

Dobby

We had visited the area with some friends, Su and Laurie and their kids, George and Helena, some years before this, and we went to Freshwater West so that Laurie could get some surfing in. Filming for Harry Potter had recently finished, and the Shell House was still there! We saw it before they dismantled it, which was very exciting for all of us.

The tide was out, so we had the benefit of walking on the beach (something that doesn't happen as often as you would think on a Coastal Path) and refreshed by lunch we relaxed and chatted along the way.

'You realise that we are staying in a chalet, Rhi?'

'Err, yes'

'So that makes us 'The Chalet School Teachers on Holiday''

"Oh yes! I loved the Chalet School books! I think I read them all!"

Thus began a long and in-depth discussion, nay, one might call it an analysis of our reading habits as as children. As we have both said before, when we were children, technology played very little part in our lives. My childhood was spent playing out in the street, or on the mountain behind our house with the little gang of children who lived in that street. It was idyllic, building dens and dams, falling in streams, sliding down hills on pieces of cardboard and generally marauding around getting "filthy dirty" and smelly and then going home when we heard our mothers calling from the doorstep that tea was ready.

Other than that, I used to read and draw and play with my dolls. And reading was the best of all. As an only child, when I went home I was on my own a great deal (by which I mean no brothers or sisters to play with or to annoy). I saved all my pocket money and spent it on books. Enid Blyton, of course, from the Magic Faraway Tree to The Famous Five, and on to Malory Towers and St Claire's. I don't know why but I loved stories based in boarding schools in particular, and I really really loved The Chalet School series. The idea of going to boarding school, having midnight feasts, studying Latin (which we did, later, when at Treorchy Comp) and playing lacrosse (whatever that was - I had no idea) and doing all of that in some alpine idyll sounded like heaven. I think I had been heavily influenced by reading Heidi and watching The Sound of Music as well. I was such an enthusiast that I sent a fan letter to the publisher of these books, in my best penmanship (we were tested on this in our junior school exams). Some months later I received a reply and was sad to hear that the author, Elinor M Brent-Dyer, had died some years before, but they sent me a Chalet Girl badge which I put in my special treasures tin. (You kept this quiet!) I wanted to be Jo Bettany ( who had a passing resemblance to Jo March from Little Women) and wear a jaunty beret, ride my bike with a basket on the front and eventually be Head Girl. Thank god that never happened - we didn't have them in our school, and Helen would have been it if we had, without a doubt. Certainly not me. Turns out I would be totally unsuited to such an important and responsible role. A liability, even. (I was also fascinated by the books and would have loved to attend the Chalet School but I was somewhat put off at the thought of having to remember to speak certain languages at set times in the week. I didn't think that my pitiful French would stretch and I had no German at all. Still, I felt an odd wistful longing to have Kaffee und Kuchen with Jo Bettany. I enjoyed the Malory Towers books but I was a little put off by the frequency of horse related adventures. I don't like horses that much and have always felt that it is somewhat foolish to have a pet bigger than yourself. Why have a pet you couldn't beat in a fair flight?))

At Little Furzenip and Gupton Burrows (oh how I love these names!) the path turns inland, and runs between the road and the Castlemartin Artillery Range, which is bounded by a high, barbed wire fence. The path was basically the grass verge, and extremely lumpy and bumpy it was. And signs were everywhere warning us not to touch anything as it might explode and kill us. I kept thinking that we would be better off walking on the road, but feared that the path might veer off at any moment and then we would be lost. Quite where I thought the path was going to veer off to I don't know as there was this massive great fence that ran as far as the eye could see. The cows on the other side of it seemed oblivious to the danger they were in, playing fast and loose with any dangerous debris and eyeing us with suspicion. I dislike herds of cows, having had a close encounter with them on the very first day of our very first week of walking the WCP (Pamplona by the sea, I think Helen described it as) and what alarmed me now was not the fact that they were slowly walking towards us, some of them. No, that was fine as there was a high fence between us and them. What concerned me here was, well, what if one of them inadvertently chomped down on a UXB and exploded as we walked past? A bovine bomb was bound to be a messy business and I had left my wet wipes in the car. I put on burst of speed and hoped Helen was keeping up.

All I could think when looking at this warning was, 'Will no-one consider the cows!' And this thought made me laugh a lot. In addition I felt The warning signs on the path were extending my minimal Welsh, even if the vocabulary was a little eclectic.

The walking along this verge was really quite hard going, with tussocky grass and muddy, boggy ground. It led us past farms and through several fields, also muddy, eventually bringing us out at a crossroads at the far end of Castlemartin village. I was tired, and a bit grumpy, because I had realised that had we just followed the road we would have got to this point more quickly and with less scrambling and navigating uneven ground, potentially exploding cows, barbed wire and mud. Ah well, never mind, there was a bench. That's all I cared about just then. (Walking alongside fields, while nicer than walking on roadside verges, is not the easiest part of the path. You are normally wedged in between a barbed wire fence on one side and a hedge blocking any attractive view on the other. They also tend to be very muddy. )

It was mid afternoon of a bright February Sunday, and we could see, in the distance, the firing range and our destination, which was the car park just near the cliffs and Stack Rock, as Castlemartin village stands on a rise. Sitting on the bench at the crossroads we looked at the map in the guide book and weren't quite sure which way to go. Hard to believe when I look at the map now - it's obvious! The path splits, and you can choose to go one of two ways to reach the same point. However, when you are on the ground it's not always so easy. We saw a couple and their dog heading down the lane straight ahead, and bickered a little about the idea of following the road to our right before deciding to follow in their footsteps.

Now, I have to confess that I get very anxious at the thought of getting lost, and from this point on I was uncertain. Ridiculous, because our destination was very clear. But the winter sun was lower in the sky now and I didn't want us to find ourselves still walking in the dark. Especially as we would be crossing an artillery range which would be open for business again at midnight. Never mind exploding cows, I didn't fancy being the subject of news headlines such as "Teachers' Trip ends in Twilight Tank Tragedy" or "'We did warn you,' say the Military".

Sundown wasn't until about 5pm, two and a half hours away. Plenty of time. But we seemed to be walking and not getting any closer! The lane lead us towards the village of Warren and we had to use our intuition to navigate through this tiny hamlet and head downhill towards Merrion. It was really quite warm and we discussed the possibility of coming upon a village shop selling ice cream. No such luck. Still, once we turned downhill, walking along a narrow lane that led to the main road my fears died away and I began to relax, though my feet and knees were beginning to feel tired. (It is a Natural Law of the Path that you never find a café or Ice-cream van when you really need one but you will have a smug git run past you as you are sweating like a mad woman, flogging up a hill. Another bylaw seems to be 'You will never find a bench at lunchtime but will immediately find one after you have sat on a wet boulder and eaten your lunch. Not only will there be a well appointed bench, it will also have a stunning view.' I seem to remember that Warren had an attractive church but I wasn't in much of a mood to appreciate it.)

We reached the road that let to the village of Merrion in one direction, and the turn off to the firing range in the other. Hooray! We were glad that the end was near, and our mood lifted. Up ahead we could see Flimston church pictured below, and we seemed to recall that it wasn't far from there to the car park and the Green Bridge. As you can see from the picture the afternoon light was fading. We plodded on, cars passing us on their way home from a walk along the coast. The church was behind us, the road stretched ever onward. I started to sing a song in my head to cheer myself up (Paul Simon, Take me to the Mardi Gras, if you must know) but my inner music was rudely interrupted by Helen, who started singing, aloud,

Hits from the Trenches. It seemed apt, given the warnings about Military ordinance and signs warning of tanks on the road. Plus I was singing them in choir so I could remember the words. I was getting tired and it was an odd place to be walking. 'Its a long way to Tipperary' seemed apt as the path seemed to go on forever (as did Helen) and the abandoned buildings made it an oddly sad and lonely end to what had been a stunning day's walk. The path we were walking was now concrete, hard underfoot and I kept thinking that the next bend in the road would see us back at the car park but it was not to be. We plodded on and on. It seemed an age since we had left Angle and started the walk.

The disused church at Flimston set in the middle of the firing range.

I was getting more tired and grumpy with every step and the car park never seemed to get any closer. Getting lost around Warren had been frustrating, coming at it did at the end of quite a long day's walk. The costal walking to Freshwater West had been stunningly beautiful but it had been hard work. This section of the path was dull and disconcerting by turns and I was beginning to wonder why we were spending so much of our limited free time in doing this walk. Just as I was thinking that this had been a colossally stupid idea we turned a corner and found the car park. All I wanted to do was sit in Rhian's car and laugh at Abilene but she wanted to take a small detour back onto the coast to see the Green Bridge of Wales. So we walked over some tussocky grass and saw this view:

It was breath taking, even in the diminishing light. Suddenly every mile had been worth it. It was simply astonishing and stretching ahead of us was the last remaining section for us to walk in Pembrokeshire.

'Its quite a long way Rhi.'

'Yeh, but we can do it.'

'Do you think so?'

'Yeh, easy!'

'Home now?'

'Yes, home in time for Kaffee und Kuchen'.