Mum’s whole aim when on holiday, it seemed, was to get us “off the beaten track”. Given the choice of two diverging roads, she would always want to take the one less travelled; the one with the grass growing down the middle. Dad may not have been as keen, being the driver more often than not, but he didn’t really have a choice - Mum had the map and was the official navigator so her decision was final. It’s a trait that I’ve probably inherited - certainly today I was to follow the equivalent of that grass-lined lane when I strayed from the official route to avoid some particularly sheer cliffs around Carmel Head and I was to pay a heavy price for my timidity as we shall see.
Initially though I was keen to get back to the path proper and so hopped off the Number 61 bus in the narrow main street of Cemaes, ignored the claims of the coffee shop and made my way down to the village’s tiny harbour. It was immediately apparent that it was as windy today as it had been a few months earlier. The bay
itself was filled with white horses, waves thundering in and crashing over the sea wall by Harry Furlough’s buoy (I’ll explain later) drenching the road beyond. To progress onto the path proper meant timing your pass to avoid a soaking. Working on the theory that the seventh wave is larger than the preceding six, I carefully counted and was pleased to see that however crackpot the theory might have been, I was able to make my way past and remain dry. (Incidentally, the theory is deeply, deeply flawed but I can’t help feeling there’s a little bit of truth in it somehow. Oh, and Harry Furlough’s buoy used to mark the safe shipping lane past the eponymous rocks just off Cemlyn Head and for some reason has been plonked down at the roadside with a big sign on it- it’s surprising just how big a buoy is when you see it out of water.) Away from the shelter of the bay, waves broke higher still and you saw once more that this was a wild and dangerous coast. It seems fanciful to say that waves “exploded” onto the shore but the noise that they made - a “whoomph” that was heard moments after the wave broke - was undeniably spectacular.
In its own way the Wylfa nuclear power station is also spectacular, a looming presence that dominates the early part of the route and which feels totally and utterly out of place in this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Coming from Rugeley, it is hard to be critical of a power station’s ugliness spoiling the general environment but Wylfa is truthfully a horrendous blemish , the archetypal blot on the landscape - even more so than Rugeley “B” station is on the edge of Cannock Chase. At least the cooling towers can have a certain elegance to them in the early morning or evening light; the huge monolith of Wylfa couldn’t be elegant if it were decorated with Doric columns and Regency windows. Unfortunately it is ever-present throughout the early section of the route - indeed it’s the target for the first mile or so and is consequently unavoidable.
After that first mile the path turns left away from the coast in order to pass behind the reactor - and through one of the strangest nature reserves I’ve ever visited. It passes through a conifer woodland, the trees close planted and blocking the sunlight from reaching the floor which is absolutely covered in pine needles. Dark, even with noon approaching, it is an eerie place from which birdsong is almost entirely absent. Even the wind - so strong along the shoreline - couldn’t penetrate those close knit upper branches. The only sound was the scrunch of my boots on the pine needles. For a nature reserve, there seemed very little in the way of nature and probably a little too much in the way of reserve. I honestly didn’t like it and was glad to make a left turn and clamber up some steps that did eventually give a view out of the woods. That the view was of the back of a nuclear reactor was largely irrelevant - I was just pleased to see something outside of my immediate vicinity. The path then dropped and passed between the four outstretched legs of an electricity pylon. As it did so I took the opportunity to look up - I don’t think that I ever had the opportunity to do so from such an angle before - and was struck by just how elegant (that word again) the structures are. Everyone enjoys the Eiffel Tower but pylons are taken completely for granted, despite the similarity of their shape. All this proves, though, is just how desperate I was for stimulation at this point as I have not given them a second thought subsequently.
I pottered on, the power lines overhead giving off a gentle buzzing that wasn’t really disturbing but was still a distraction and a reminder of the workaday world that you hope to leave behind when walking. I wanted to get back to the coast but this damn power station was still blocking the way. In fact, the path was being forced further inland as it headed towards the visitor centre. Eventually a right turn off the approach road promised a return to the littoral and spirits rose. Butterflies began to appear on the blackberry bushes to the right of the track; swallows swooped low over the recently cut grass to the left. Having left the nature reserve behind, nature was now making itself visible once more. As is my habit now, I was immediately drawn to try and take a photo of the small white butterfly (that’s a butterfly known as a “small white” - not any old butterfly of diminutive size and minimal colour). That was fairly easily accomplished but the speckled wood that followed proved much more elusive - alighting on a neighbouring bush and then fluttering away as I trained the camera upon it. I was so taken with the task that I almost failed to notice a group of six other walkers approaching.
Unknowingly, in casting their shadows over the bushes they made it impossible to take a decent photo anyway but I had pretty much given up by then and had no objection to being engaged in conversation. They were intending to do almost the same route as I was - although they were cutting it a good deal shorter by the simple expedient of having come in two cars and leaving one at the car park ear-marked for the end of the day. Three retired couples from West Yorkshire, they had been on Anglesey for a week and had spent four or five days walking sections of the coastal path, dodging the thunderstorms in the main but once or twice getting a good drenching. Only the day before they had walked from Aberffraw to Newborough Forest, sheltered in their people carrier whilst the rain lashed down, ambled down to Llanddwyn Island and then hurried back as the rain came down in sheets and soaked them to the skin. It had been a day to remember, all the same.
We tramped along together for half a mile but they decided to take a break before the path reached the coast again. I pushed on, relishing the return of the wind and the sound of the angry sea crashing onshore, the path almost immediately passing a dilapidated old mill, a “clapper” bridge crossing the stream that would once have driven the mill-wheel. Ivy covers the walls and nettles block the doorways but the building is still attractive and were it not for the proximity of Wylfa would almost certainly have been converted into a particularly desirable dwelling.
The views ahead were now of low-lying coastal scenery, far from the sheer cliffs that I had read about in the guidebook the night before, although I had no doubt that these would come soon enough. As it was my next target was a feature that could only exist on a low-lying area - the Cemlyn Bay lagoon. The lagoon is separated from the saltwater by a shingle ridge, created by the action of longshore drift that we had learned about in Mrs Slater’s geography class of fond memory. The water in the lagoon is described as “brackish” - a mixture of fresh and salt water, the sea seeping through the shingle and occasionally over it at high tide to maintain a low level of salinity that enables a unique ecosystem to survive.
The shingle ridge itself is home to sea kale, yellow horned poppy and large daisies but it is the lagoon behind
that is considered the jewel in the crown of Anglesey’s nature reserves. Man-made islands are home to a large summer colony of terns - common tern, sandwich tern, arctic tern and occasionally the rare roseate tern all nest here. This late in the summer they had sadly pretty much gone - to winter in Africa or the Antarctic. Arctic terns in particular are stunningly beautiful little birds, almost pure white underneath, light-grey upper wings and a black cap and bright red beak and legs. I had seen them in action on the Farne Islands a few years earlier, swooping low to warn you off their nests and once their eggs have hatched even physically attacking visitors to the island and drawing blood from the head as they use their dagger-like beaks to drive them away. With their forked tails and outstretched wings, they make a wonderful photo from below if only you are quick enough to capture them in flight. Their annual migration to and from Antarctica, at around 45,000 miles there and back, is the longest undertaken by any living species - and considering their tiny size is an undertaking quite staggering in its audacity. The tern is the symbol of the Coastal Path and appears on each and every official signpost with an outline of the island situated behind. As such there is another reason to find the birds friendlier than their aggressive posturing would have you believe. I was disappointed that I had timed my passage here so badly wrong - I would have loved to see the colony at its spectacular and raucous best. I shall have to return at a later date to see it properly.
The path between the sea and lagoon actually sticks close to the lagoon’s edge rather than hugging the top of the shingle. This both protects the ridge itself and also makes for substantially easier walking than would be the case were the stones and pebbles immediately underfoot. The lagoon being a good bit lower than the ridgeline, the sea remains invisible but you cannot fail to be aware of its presence beyond the shingle as the noise of waves breaking and retreating is exacerbated by the rattle of the stones as the tide constantly arranges and rearranges the ridge’s profile.
At the far (western) end is a weir that regulates the lagoon’s level and salinity. This was put in place by the then owner of Cemlyn - or specifically the property known as Bryn Aber - a Captain Vivian Hewitt. A lover of birds, his actions helped to create the conditions that has made this Bay such a Mecca for so many varieties of water bird. Bryn Aber was developed in order that Captain Hewitt could view his beloved birds, with high walls built around the house and garden with spy-holes from which he could view the lagoon; the walls also ensured a predator free existence for those birds within their protective custody The National Trust bought the estate in the early 1970s under their Enterprise Neptune project. The campaign was launched in 1965 - the year before I was born - with the aim of protecting sections of the UK’s unique coastal heritage and habitats. It now owns over 700 miles of that coastline and whilst it remains keen to acquire further sites in need of protection, the main focus is now on maintaining and managing those 700+ miles.
A few yards beyond Bryn Aber is a memorial stone which commemorates the 150th anniversary of the first Anglesey lifeboat. It was from this spot in 1823 that a James and Frances Williams witnessed the shipwreck of the Alert, for once as a result of calm waters rather than the storm winds that we have seen elsewhere. The ship was travelling between Ireland and the Wirral when the lack of wind caused it to become becalmed. The tidal race took hold of the ship and drove it onto rocks off the tiny West Mouse (the third and last of the offshore Mice). With no lifeboat to launch - indeed with no boats at all - the holed ship sank and over 140 people drowned. On a calm day. In clear visibility. In front of a helpless curate and his wife. It must have been awful to watch with no hope of doing anything to save even one of the ship’s passengers or crew. It’s not as if this were an isolated incident - in a three year period during the 1820s some sixty ships foundered on Anglesey’s shores. As a result of what they had witnessed, the Williamses began to raise funds for the provision of boats - one for Cemlyn was purchased in 1828; one for Holyhead the following year. Also in 1828 Williams was elected treasurer of the Anglesey Association for the Preservation of Life from Shipwrecks - a similar organisation to that formed by a Sir William Hillary on the Isle of Man ; the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was the fore-runner of today’s RNLI, which eventually took over responsibility for the Anglesey lifeboats in the 1850s. Not only was James one of the driving forces behind the provision of Anglesey lifeboats, he also put his mouth where his money was and served as coxswain on the Cemlyn lifeboat for a number of years - receiving two gold medals for the saving of nineteen lives in two separate wrecks whilst his son Owen achieved a silver for his efforts in the wreck of the SS Leeds in 1843.
We should not, of course, assume that Frances was anything other than fully committed to the saving of lives at sea - prints of her paintings were sold to raise the funds that purchased those first boats but it was her actions in rowing out to The Skerries in the teeth of a gale to treat a sick lighthouse keeper that shows the stuff she was made of. The keeper survived, no doubt helped by her ministrations, and another story had a happy ending. And her artistic talents passed down through the generations - her great-grandson was the renowned Anglesey artist Sir Kyffin Williams (about whom I know little and as I am not greatly taken with his pictures I am disinclined to do a great deal of research about him I’m afraid).
Anyway, back to the memorial stone. It’s quite an impressive thing, renovated by Wylfa Power Station in 1998 and set on a cobbled platform. The platform made a pretty good spot to sit and have a cup of coffee and the salad I’d brought along for lunch (cold roast chicken breast prepared the night before and Morrisons pre-washed Italian salad leaves - very tasty.) As I drank the coffee I wrestled with the map while the wind tried to tear it from my hands. I was conscious that the path ahead strayed pretty close to the edge of some very large cliff edges and had already decided that I would take an inland alternative so wanted to check the route out.
Having plotted the paths and roads I would need to take I packed up and set off once more - initially following the coast and climbing uphill as I did so. Down to my left, across fields dotted with circular hay bales, lay the church of St Rhwydrus and the adjoining farmhouse of Tyn Lan. It was a pretty enough sight but completely overshadowed by the glorious views out to sea. I had first seen The Skerries from Llanleiana Head, the other side
of Cemaes, but this was a much clearer view and with the slightly nearer West Mouse and its strange white beacon - like a large trig point with a ball on top - I could see why Carl Rogers (the author of the official guide) described the area as “Hebridean”. The beacon on West Mouse should be lined up with one on another islet to the north and a third on the shore to aid a safe navigation of the notoriously dangerous waters. While calmer than it had been earlier, the sea remained full of white horses and if ever you wondered about the capricious nature of the tides hereabouts there are more than enough stories of shipwrecks in the vicinity to allay those doubts.
One of the most famous wrecks (and the last such tale that I will tell, for a while at least) is that of an unknown ship during the 1740s. Two young boys were washed ashore, lashed to a raft, the sole survivors. Unable to speak English (or indeed Welsh) they could not explain where they had come from or indeed anything about their past at all. Of one child we know nothing more than that he was alive when he made landfall; the second is rather better documented as he was adopted by the local Thomas family who gave him the name of Evan - he could hardly sound more Welsh with that name but modern thought is that he was probably of Spanish origin. In the years that followed it was discovered that young Evan had an exceptional ability as a healer of broken bones - a “bone-setter”. His gifts brought him a certain renown, which his descendants built upon - eventually his great-great-nephew Robert Jones founded a well-known orthopaedic hospital near Oswestry, where old cricketing friends of mine have received a variety of artificial joints in recent years.
When the path followed the curve of the bay to the west, I carried straight ahead, the noise of the surf fading to be replaced by the gentle babbling of a brown peaty stream as it trickled downhill. I emerged at a ninety degree turn on a very minor road, turned right and passed behind a pretty little cottage, climbing - it seemed - through the back garden, although there was a clearly signposted public footpath. At the top of the slope the narrow path opened up to reveal a grassy field full of sheep. The remains of a dry-stone wall led away directly in front of me, as the map indicated that it should but when it entered another field the anticipated path leading away to the left did not appear to be there - at least not clearly. Not to worry, to the left of the distant farm was a long thin wood and according to the OS a track led through the trees to join the missing path. Between me and the spinney lay about a quarter of a mile, the farm track being the easiest way between them. Just before the farm I turned left and immediately found that the ground was sodden underfoot. There wasn’t an obvious entrance to the trees - there was a chicken-wired enclosure which sounded like it contained pheasants but that was about it. However, there was a gate to the left and a duck boarded way beyond which implied some sort of path - it might not be within the woods but it would certainly run parallel so I squelched over, opened the gate and strode onto the boardwalk beyond.
As I teetered on the last inches of the wood I saw that the ground in front still seemed to be holding a considerable amount of moisture, with standing water visible and glutinous mud where the water wasn’t. But there did appear to be a track there and the boardwalk wouldn’t have been laid otherwise so I stepped off the safety of the wood and onto the “grass”. It was immediately apparent that this was far from “solid ground” but if you kept moving you could make forward progress. If you’d stopped, you’d have sunk - you could feel the ground wobbling beneath your feet; the only option was to keep moving and tread as lightly as possible. Somehow I made progress, passing through one field into another, almost skating over the surface, practically walking on water, only to find that there was no exit from the second field. A deep ditch blocked the way ahead, with a steep bank and a barbed wire fence beyond. A gate led into the trees to the right but within a few feet the way ahead was impassable, the tangle of undergrowth and low hanging branches of long-neglected coppiced trees formed a barrier that could just not be broken - and conditions underfoot gave you no hope of solid ground from which to try and push through. It was frustrating - immensely so - but there was no alternative but to retrace my steps to the farm and try to slip un-noticed through the yard. Treading as lightly as possible, I tried to stick as closely to my outbound route as I could - occasionally spotting the imprint my boots had left ten or fifteen minutes earlier. Ahead of me lay the boardwalk - fifty yards in front…forty…thirty…twenty…ten…five…two. And suddenly, at the very moment of attaining my goal, the ground gave way beneath me and I felt my left foot sinking into the gloop. I lunged for the wood, putting my right foot down to push myself forward and that also disappeared. I grasped the first plank and pulled myself up onto it but not before I’d sunk up to my thighs in deep, black, oozing, viscous, glutinous, horrible, horrible mud. God it was awful. I stood up and examined the damage My trousers, cream at the start of the day, were dripping with smelly primordial swamp, my rucksack and camera case covered in the splatter as I’d lunged forward, my face ditto. It can’t have been pretty. But I was laughing. The fates had let me believe that I had made it back to some semblance of solid ground and then pulled the rug from under my feet right at the last. I had no-one to blame, no-one was hurt, no-one had seen my embarrassment (yet) but it was funny.
My trousers were of the zip-off variety so I momentarily thought about doing so, walking bare-legged from the knees down which is something that I never normally do but then I figured that they would dry better on my legs than in my rucksack so I just carried on. I almost tip-toed into the farmyard but it was soon apparent that a footpath passed through, and that the farm track led to the road I was aiming for anyway. In trying to minimise the actual tarmac walking I had led directly to my own downfall. I gave a wry smile and pushed on. Within a few minutes the sun and the wind had begun to turn the thick mud on my trousers into a dry crust a couple of millimetres thick, whereupon it began to crack and fall away. They remained utterly filthy though and I must have been quite a sight as I plodded uphill on the single track road.
I have to say that it was a bit of a plod as well - little in the way of views, little in the way of flora or birdlife, the only sound the rhythm of my feet on the tarmac occasionally interrupted by the noise of a chunk of dried mud hitting the floor. For twenty minutes or so it was a little dull. But then came the little car park that I had been anticipating and a little detour down to the shore at Ynys y Fydlyn, an island at high tide and the site of a spectacular rock arch. The path down to it was initially on a fairly shallow gradient, although the closer to the shore it got, the steeper it became. Dozens of hen pheasants scattered as I approached, some flapping into the woodlands to the right of the path, some scampering away following the path downhill. As I got to the foot of the hill the view opened out a little to reveal a shingle beach and the island, with red towering cliffs to either side. Behind the beach was a long thin lake, half-choked with rushes and reeds and it was here that the pheasants had congregated. I had already realised that they must have been reared for shooting, but it was only as I descended the last few feet to the shingle that I realised that this was also the reason why the path around Carmel Head was closed between October and February each year - the route I had take was the official alternative (with the notable exception of the swamp!)
I unhooked my rucksack and sat down on the shingle, enjoying the views of the lighthouse on The Skerries - almost within touching distance it seemed from here but in reality a couple of miles offshore. I glanced up at the path that I would have arrived on had I not taken the inland option and the decision was utterly vindicated - it clung so tightly to the edge of the tallest, sheerest cliffs certainly that the main island has to offer. It made me nervous just thinking about it. Surprised at how comfortable the pebbles were, I lay back and closed my eyes. I’m sure that I’d have dropped off and had forty winks but as I drifted away I became conscious of a pecking just beyond my feet. I opened my eyes and stared straight into the inquisitive face of one of the braver pheasants - not so brave that she didn’t turn tail and scamper away as I sat up but considering the barrage of guns she would likely face in a couple of months time, surprisingly fearless.
My dozing having been duly interrupted, I began to retrace my steps uphill to the car park and the tarmac once more. I did briefly clamber up the steep slope to the south of the beach in an effort to get a good view of the arch but it began to seem a pointless exercise very quickly - I certainly wasn’t going to continue along the cliff top and was merely delaying the inevitable return to the road - so I dropped back to the beach and turned right. As I approached that tiny car park I passed a slight, white haired old lady and what I took to be her two daughters supporting her, one to either side. They turned to say hello and their eyes were drawn to the muddy remains on my trousers. I acknowledged their greetings and began to explain about my little incident. The nearer of the daughters laughed. “You still seem like you’re enjoying yourself though!” - and I was. Greatly. It would have been easy to get annoyed or frustrated about what had happened but it was really of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Ynys y Fydlyn had been brilliant, well-worth the diversion and I began to talk about the stunning views. It turned out that this was another family that used to holiday on Anglesey (the women were of a similar age to me, I’d guess) and they’d last visited about thirty years ago. Could you see The Skerries from the bottom, I was asked - it had proved a bit too steep for mum - and they were pleased to hear that you could. It clearly confirmed their thought that they’d been here before. I was asked where I’d walked from and where I was going and what I’d seen and what I’d hoped to see and before I knew it about fifteen minutes had passed. I had no idea what time it was - I don’t wear a watch when I’m on holiday - but I ideally wanted to get to Church Bay while the café was open to be able to take in a pot of tea before it closed. The women reassured me that I should easily make it but let me go with their best wishes. It was a pleasant interlude - nice to have someone showing an interest in what I was doing and to hear their reminiscences about the island in the late seventies.
Another couple of miles of tarmac followed before reaching the village of Rhyd-wyn, site of the church that gives Church Bay its English name (the Welsh name is Porth Swtan - Bay of the Whiting - which describes the main catch for those who made a living from the sea here). The church, dedicated to St Rhuddlad, is clearly visible from the sea and may well have assisted those whiting fishermen in navigating their way home. The current building dates from the mid-nineteenth century although a church has existed on the site for the best part of 1500 years. It’s not unattractive from outside, with a tall and slender spire pointing skywards and photos of the interior make it look very attractive indeed - but like all the churches I have passed on the walk, it was locked with a note about how to obtain the key should you wish to do so. It would have meant disturbing someone, retracing steps, delays and explanations - that I wasn’t religious, just curious - so I again decided not to and carried on down into Church Bay itself.
This was the beach that we visited more than any other as kids; “our” beach. We’d first come across it when exploring the island from Benllech, the year before the Whelans came north. If I remember correctly we’d set off with the intention of visiting Holyhead - we hadn’t realised then what a mistake that would have been - but somehow ended up at the end of a narrow dead-end lane twelve miles away (but at least with a view of the port). However we came upon it, from the moment that we did it was going to be THE beach, the one we returned to time and again. A sandy playground with opportunities for beach cricket, swimming, sandcastles and rock pooling and what more can you ask of a beach than that? (Especially the beach cricket!) We rode donkeys here, buried each other in the sand, threw Frisbees. One day Steve went for a paddle and the next thing anyone knew he had plunged into the sea and struck out swimming as though keen to make Ireland by nightfall. And sandcastles, of course…we made sandcastles, digging a moat around the outside and letting seawater fill it in for added realism. Simple, innocent pleasures; no different to what kids do today despite all of the technological advances we’ve seen in the intervening years.
Really, there’s not much to Church Bay beyond the beach. The Lobster Pot is a locally renowned seafood restaurant - exactly as it was during the seventies - and the Wavecrest Café has changed over the years from your typical seventies beach shop selling plastic footballs, bamboo-handled rock pooling nets and the like into a really nice little café. I know this, of course, because I dropped in for a pot of tea just before it closed and then allowed myself to be tempted by the final slice of apple pie in the chiller. Without a watch I hadn’t realised just how close it had got to five o’clock and I’d have been disappointed to have missed out on a drink - especially once I was sitting down on one of the outside benches and enjoying the late afternoon sun. The waitress did give my trousers an amused glance but I’d almost forgotten the bog incident. Instead I was looking forward to wandering down to the end of the road a couple of hundred yards away and looking out across the scene of so many carefree hours.
Thirty minutes later I was standing at the top of the steepish track that leads down to the sand. There’s a bench at the top from which there is an excellent view out to sea and I’m pretty sure there’s a photo somewhere of me, Steve and Brian with Grandma Lee, possibly taken the autumn after Grandad Lee died. As I gazed out to sea it occurred to me that the beach was pretty much west-facing and that there was a fairly strong possibility that there would be a view of a decent sunset in just over two hours. I still had about an hour’s walk before I reached the car but I hadn’t got to be home for any particular time so made the decision to come back later in the evening and keep my fingers crossed for a cloud-free view.
And so I headed back to the Wavecrest, turning right before the car park and following a muddy path towards Porth Trwyn. This section of the path is notable only for having the widest kissing gates of the entire coast - which is good, because they’re not really made for modern rucksacks and have often proved to be a tight squeeze elsewhere on the island. Perhaps half a mile along the coast is the tiny cove of Porth Crugmor and I was delighted here to see a family group indulging in a game of beach cricket. Two young lads, perhaps aged six or seven, ran excitedly between the wickets each time they managed to hit the ball, the bats in their hands waving wildly above their heads as they did so. As a coach I would have thought that there was much to work on; as a spectator I just loved their enthusiasm. It was like watching myself thirty odd years ago, falling in love with a game that I would play for more of my adult life than any other. My first ever bat had come back from a seaside holiday - Grandad Lee gave it to me one evening at the house in Newmans Grove that Dad, Gwen and all of the other siblings had grown up in and I can vividly remember immediately playing in the back garden with the outside toilet as a wicket. I was probably five years old at the time but it is a memory that Dad has confirmed happened exactly as per my memory. By the time I bought a replacement - from a toy shop in Ambleside on another family holiday - that bat was so worn down at the bottom edge that it almost resembled a hockey stick rather than a bat. Grandad Pope helped me cover that second bat in linseed oil - despite the fact that I was still playing with tennis balls rather than what we then knew as “corkies” and would damage it by knocking stumps into the ground with the face of the bat rather than the handle. Back in 2012 I stood on the little footbridge across the tiny Afon Crugmore and watched these two young lads with a huge smile on my face and could happily have stayed longer but it would probably have looked a bit odd if I had done so,. Anyway, time was passing and if I was to get something to eat before sundown I would need to get a move on, so with regret I turned my back on the run-stealers as they flickered to and fro and headed westward to the next cove a further half mile away.
Before reaching Porth Trwyn I was forced away from the coastal path itself, taking once more to the tarmac to follow the seemingly long and winding road uphill back to Llanfaethlu and the car. The last mile of the day is almost always the longest, especially when it’s uphill, especially when it’s uphill on tarmac and most of all when it’s uphill on tarmac away from the sea and with precious little to look at. This was just one of those miles, one that dragged on and on and seemingly getting nowhere, until eventually I crested the final slope and saw the post office a couple of hundred yards ahead, beyond which my car was parked.
I drove into Cemaes, disappointed once more at how quick the journey was considering how long it had taken me to walk it, enjoyed a fish and chip supper and was back at Church Bay by 7:30. I wasn’t alone, there were twenty or thirty other people there who had clearly had precisely the same idea that I had done. Many had the most fantastic cameras with huge great lenses, cameras which put my own to shame although I love taking pictures with it - as Sarah would tell you, rolling her eyes as she did so, weary of the number I had taken in a walk of just a couple of miles. I perhaps came late to digital but its disposable nature released me to take hundreds of shots in a day’s ramble, view them at my leisure a day or two later and delete all of those that didn’t work for whatever reason. I found myself - as you will have realised by now - taking a ridiculous number of pictures of path-side flowers, wasting hours in a fruitless pursuit of the perfect portrait of a butterfly with both wings clearly outstretched, tip-toeing slower and slower in the hope that I didn’t disturb the wagtail on the barbed wire fence or the stonechat on the wooden post. It may be that the camera comes between me and the experience, that the day out is filtered through the lens and loses a little something in the process. I’d argue, though, that it makes me look closer at the details, to enjoy the little things that I would not have noticed before but I still see, take in and appreciate the bigger picture.
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