The Wales coast path - the home run

The Wales coast path – the home run

An evening walk and the start of a week’s serious walking to get to Cardiff. Having travelled down to Cardiff that afternoon, it was over to Swansea at tea-time, then a couple of hours walking, making the most of June’s light evenings.

There has been some money spent on some areas of Swansea, and the bit where you cross the river does look rather nice these days. Yes, there are other bits where some more money needs to be spent, but credit where it’s due.

Leaving Swansea, the cycle path follows a dual carriageway, but I followed the footpath which follows a canal. Then it almost seems to head onto the M4. Of course, it does branch off immediately before you get there, but I did wonder what was coming for a moment.

After sorting out that mini spaghetti-junction, you are on the approach to Port Talbot, but somehow my maths didn’t seem to be adding up. I had found a railway station on the map which I thought it was Port Talbot Parkway, but the signs were still saying that Port Talbot was 5 miles or so away. All became clear when I reached the station, it turned out to be Baglan, but I decided that would do!

Returning to Baglan the next day, it was time to do some serious walking and see how many miles I could cover. Not as many as I initially hoped, to be honest, but it was a good walk all the same.

The first puzzle of the day was trying to get to and then out of Port Talbot! Getting to it was reasonably simple – simply head along Aberavon beach, but then trying to exit? Not so straight-forward. The path leads between two roads at a roundabout, and if you blink, you miss it, but once you are on it, it is well-marked. This is just as well, as the next section of the path leads through some back streets, where the landmarks are people’s garages and the like – it really did feel to be most odd.

Having walked close to a road to Margam, trying to get back onto the beach was not as easy as it sounds either. To either side of the path, there were signs that this was private property, and it felt most unwelcoming. As well as that, I also felt to be going in the wrong direction. I wasn’t, it’s just the way the path leads to get onto the beach, but all the same, I was glad to cross the Cynffig and reach Kenfig Sands.

Porthcawl proved to be a pleasant place, a seaside town enjoying some fine June weather, and it was a good place to stop for coffee.

Leaving Porthcawl, it was over the sands to the river Ogmore which had to be crossed at Merthyr Mawr, which translates as Big Merthyr, not to be confused with Big Bertha, that’s someone altogether different!

At Merthyr Mawr, I decided to call it a day and walked into Bridgend for the train back. I could have done more, but that was far enough for one day.

Returning to Merthyr Mawr the next day, it was raining and was also cold and wet. These really were not nice conditions for June – or for any time of year come to that.

I started by taking a taxi back to Merthyr Mawr from Bridgend, then the plan was to talk to Barry today, but due to the weather, that was not going to happen. When I realised at one point that my hands were so cold they could hardly hold anything, I decided to give up at Llanilltud Fawr. Now if you are looking for that on a map you may struggle. That is its Welsh name. In English it is usually called Llantwit Major, but as IIltud was no twit, I am going to use the Welsh name for this place. Indeed, not only was Illtud no twit, he is a saint of the church, he was an abbot and teacher, founded an abbey and college in the place that bears his name. More than that, the college is believed by some to be Britain’s earliest centre of learning. The church now stands on the site, and when I reached it, having simply plodded on through a couple more miles of wind, cold and rain, I had a brief glance inside. I was dripping wet, and there wasn’t long to wait before there was a train back to Cardiff, so I only popped my head round the door, but it was good to see part of the church being used to house a fine collection of Celtic crosses and stones.

The weather was better the next day, so when I returned to Llanilltud Fawr, I started to make progress once again and was able to get onto the beach and back on the coast path pretty quickly.

However, after a couple of miles, it was difficult to find the path, it seemed to be marked on the map as going across the beach, but it was a very rocky beach, and trying to clamber my way over the stones and rocks made for slow progress.

Things did get better when I reached the power station, a power station which had a concrete path round it. That was easy to follow and enabled me to pick up the pace again. There were a few large puddles on the other side, but I could simply walk on the sea wall round them.

The path led on to Rhoose point, the Southernmost point of mainland Wales. It is also very close to Cardiff airport – so close, in fact, that when a Thompson plane was coming into land, I had such a good view of its undercarriage it was almost indecent!

Finally, onwards through Porthkerry country park and into Barry. Barrybados they call it. Whilst it was a nice enough day, that is probably stretching a point. I ended up at the docks station, and, as I have said about the walk a few times this week, whilst I could have done more, I had tried to pack reasonably light, and needed to do a batch of laundry before the day was out!

Back to Barry, and back to the roads, this time skirting round Sully before doubling back on myself to head away from the roads, across some fields and back to the coast leading into Penarth. That is another nice seaside place, and it was time for another coffee stop (coffee stops have been quite a feature of the walk!)

From Penarth, the path leads uphill for a while, and once again doubles back on itself before dropping down onto a marvellous feat of engineering, Cardiff Bay barrage. Cardiff could be seen in the distance,

and Cardiff Bay with its millennium facelift, Millennium Centre, Senedd building, Dr Who exhibition and more places to eat or have a coffee than you can shake a stick at, is well worth exploring.

I was greeted by my colleague Mark and had lunch with him.

From Cardiff, I have previously walked to Bristol, and so, whilst I might not have stuck rigidly to the Wales coast path the whole time (indeed, I started the walk before I had heard of the Wales coast path, shortly before it was officially opened) the original plan was to walk the Welsh coast. That’s just subtly different from walking the coast path.  Know that one day soon I will have to return to walk the 11 miles between the Severn Bridge (from where my walk to Bristol took me across the border into England) and Chepstow, but given my original plan, I can now say my walk round the coast is complete.

It has been an incredible journey. Whilst there have been many miles and many days of walking on my own, it has been good to share bits of it with friends, to chat briefly with people I have met along the way, to bump into old friends quite unexpectedly on more than one occasion, and, after various stages of the walk, to share my thoughts with you, dear reader.

A couple of days after returning home, I celebrated by having yet another gentle stroll to a coffee shop and treating myself to a coffee and cream cake. Ok, so the coffee shop was at the summit of Snowdon, the gentle stroll was perhaps not all that gentle, and Snowdon is not exactly on the coast, but it did seem to be the crowning glory in so many ways.

Some people have been asking me “What’s next?” In the first instance, a rest! But I know it won’t be long before I start to get itchy feet again. Perhaps Offa’s Dyke (which could start with the missing bit, Severn Bridge to Chepstow) so that I have circumvented Wales. I’m also very conscious of the fact that although I visited Anglesey, I didn’t include any of its coastline in the walk, so that’s an obvious gap. Further afield, there is a Fife Coast path, I am looking at the Danube trail from Vienna to Bratislava, and a totally crazy idea would be Lake Michigan (but that’s 1200 miles, and to do that would require another sabbatical!)

There’ll be other walks and other ramblings of a different nature to come in the pages of this blog, but once again thanks for sharing this journey round the Wales coast path with me. Diolch yn fawr iawn i bawb.