By and large the bus drivers have been universally friendly, the one exception that I can recall being the chap who nearly ignored Jan and I at the bus stop in Pentraeth. Today’s though was especially cheery realising from my boots, rucksack and guidebook that I was walking the coast and so pulling up at the point in the route that was nearest to the coast rather than at the actual bus stop. “Down that road to the coast” she gestured as I descended, although I already knew that having made the climb up to Llanfaethlu the previous August. I thanked her nonetheless but she was already turning to announce to an older couple towards the rear of the bus that they, too, could save themselves a few minutes by hopping out now. A postman carried on the theme with a cheery “Lovely morning” as he strode between deliveries. I concurred. “Will it last?” He gave this some consideration before replying. “Until mid-afternoon, no longer if the forecast is to be believed”. Could it be believed, I wondered. “Oh I’d say they were probably about right today. Spot on yesterday!” As I was hoping to be done and dusted by early afternoon I didn’t think this too much of a concern, wished him a good day and strode on.
A couple of hundred yards downhill a drive led off to the right with a public footpath sign clearly pointing the way. I’d stuck to the road on the way uphill but this looked a more scenic way back to the path so I cheerfully headed off towards the unpronounceable Carreglwyd. I was striding out quite briskly, keen to get to the sea, but hearing a car approach behind me stepped off the tarmac onto the short grass. I turned around, just in time to see the postie give me a cheery wave as he passed - a gesture he repeated a couple of minutes later on his return journey, this time accompanied by a toot on his horn. The drive dipped into a little woodland area just before the buildings, before turning left and climbing up to open fields. Although it was only late April and the daffodils weren’t properly out at home celandines and bluebells dotted the floor of the wood, drinking in as much of the sun as they could before the brilliant green of the new leaves filled out and overshadowed the undergrowth.
Despite the harsh winter, it had been some time since rain had fallen and the ground was firm as I strolled down alongside the field’s wall, passing a number of ewes and their new-born lambs, attracting a good deal of curiosity as I did. The ewes were keen to ensure that their offspring didn’t take too close an interest and so followed them as they approached me, their high-pitched, inquisitive bleating contrasting with their mothers’ much deeper warning cries. Far from the Silence of the Lambs this was a cacophony of noise that accompanied me down to Port Twryn.
The tide was almost in when I reached the beach, so I didn’t hang around but just adopted the usual walking position - sea to the right - and plodded on. Today was a low-level route, mainly hugging the shore itself, and there were the usual cries of gulls and oystercatchers to accompany me on the way. It wasn’t long before I reached the first beach of the day, a little cove with very defined stepped levels of shingle. To either side were little rocky outcrops upon which cormorants were silhouetted - something that would have utterly captivated me before I began this expedition but has now left me, I am ashamed to say, a little blasé.
Soon after leaving the cove the path turned inland, heading up a grassy path with a stone “hedge” on the right and barbed wire fence to the left. Beyond the hedge my eyes were caught by one of the more arresting sights on the route - a pretty sizeable boat hauled up on the headland, perhaps twenty feet above the high water mark and a good twenty yards inland. Why on Earth it was there, how it came to be rusting on what otherwise appeared to be agricultural land I have no idea. There’s a story to be told here - I just don’t know what that story is. As the path joined a road and turned to run parallel with the shore it became apparent that the farm was a curious mixture of “couldn’t care less” - the boat, a rusty tractor and an even rustier Reliant Scimitar - and pride in the property, as a horse sculpture in a prominent position on the shore suggested.
I pondered on this as the way led downhill and back to the shore. I was lost in my thoughts when I was surprised by another tooting horn and looked up to see the same postman giving me yet another cheery wave - he pulled over and wound his window down. “Last time I’ll see you today,” he said. “You’re heading away from the road now, and I’m heading back for breakfast. Enjoy your day.” And he was off. In sixty minutes I had exchanged more conversation with this chap than I ever have my own postman back home in Werrington.
As he had indicated the path did indeed move away from the road, carrying straight ahead as the road turned through ninety degrees and set off inland. As it did I spotted a herd of curlew flying in to land in the grassland to my left. You would expect there to be fewer of these lovely birds here at the coast by late April as they tend to breed inland - in areas such as Wetley Moor a hundred yards from home. North Wales is another popular breeding ground, though, and with snow still lying on some of the very highest ground it may be that they have stayed at sea level later than normal this year. Of course, it is entirely possible that they could be nesting here - I just tend to assume that because I see them close to home, then that is the only habitat that they enjoy. The collective noun - a herd - seemed appropriate here as areas that cattle have grazed tends to produce the ideal conditions for them to nest and as they do so from early April onwards it could be that these are already brooding.
The birds will have been out foraging for worms just above the tideline, a pretty good indication I thought that it was ebbing now and with the path rising slightly I was able to see that sand was being revealed both ahead and behind me. It was the colour of the sea that really surprised me at this point, though - or rather the colours, for there were countless shades of blue, green and grey depending upon the depth of water and it created an increasingly pleasing patchwork design like a quilt sewn together from various disparate materials to create a single unified whole.
The path beneath my feet had changed from hardcore wide enough to take a vehicle to a sandy single track, with gorse bushes hiding and revealing views seawards but it wasn’t long before we again reached tarmac, albeit for no more than five minutes before arriving at Sandy Beach - accurately named if a little unimaginative. It was here that the spectre of caravan sites raised its ugly head once more in the form of the imaginatively named Sandy Beach Caravan Site. The site backs right on to the beach - which is very nice for the occupants of those caravans but rather spoils the view from the sand. Every van seems to have made an effort to be individual - a variety of seashell decorations, wind chimes, plants and decking - but these efforts are doomed to failure it seems to me, for all the decorations do is highlight the identikit nature of the vans themselves. To put a positive slant on the site, the ready access to food meant that gulls were here in numbers and I was happy to sit down and crane my neck backwards and admire them as they flew overhead, the sunlight highlighting their bright white feathers and huge five-foot wingspan. When in flight like this they can be seen as truly beautiful birds; when on the floor, when we get to read their gaze as baleful and aggressive and their scavenging habits as distasteful, they are far from attractive but ubiquitous as they are they form an integral part of every trip to the seaside.
The access road to a second large site led me away from the shore for a while and I was beginning to wonder if I had missed a signpost when I came across an elderly couple with a more up to date guidebook than I held. My OS map was more up to date however and between us we came to the conclusion that we were on track. I pushed on quicker and when I reached Penrhyn Farm and spotted one of the “tern” markers and a clear view of the way ahead I retraced my steps twenty or thirty yards to wave them on before making my way through the farmyard, down into the bay and quickly uphill to the top of Peniel Dowyn, the only real height gained throughout the day. Boats entering and leaving Holyhead Harbour can be seen clearly from here with the heights of Holyhead Mountain behind. The Mountain looks like a proper climb but it is still some miles distant and the port itself must be negotiated before the pleasures of a summit attempt can be savoured.
I had split this section into two short days so only had a couple of miles left now. Ideally I’d have taken a coffee break here or at Penrhyn or Sandy Beach but the presence of those caravans had deterred me until now. As it turned out the beach here was quiet and peaceful and a much more pleasant alternative than the earlier option so I settled down and enjoyed a flask of coffee and a Mars Bar. It was only later that I realised I had been sitting on a sewage outlet - although granted I was a few yards from the end of the pipe itself. Anyway, no harm done, it being a couple of months ago now and I’ve suffered no visible effects of which I am aware - not a mistake I’ll make again though.
I mentioned earlier about how dry and firm the ground was and boy was I grateful for this when the path met the estuary of the Afon Alaw and turned away inland. Until recently there was no way across the estuary and the path had a gap of one mile between the villages of Llanfachraeth and Llanynghenedl which you were recommended to bridge by catching a bus - a once in four hours option and the reason that I had split the stage in two. But in early 2013 a new footbridge was opened that has rectified this issue and I was keen to see just how big the river must be to have presented such an obstacle for so many years. I must confess that I was quite taken aback at the size of the estuary - with the tide in it was quite an impressive body of water, reed-fringed and glinting in the mid-day sun, and was obviously an attractive spot for water-birds given the number of ducks and geese landing and taking off as though directed by an avian air traffic controller.
There is over a mile of walking still to go before the new bridge is reached - and a further quarter of a mile to the village of Llanfachraeth where I had left my car - and with it leaving the sea behind this could have been a downbeat ending to an upbeat walk but it absolutely wasn’t. It was, instead, an utter joy. It was warm now, the sun high in the sky, fluffy white clouds in a blue sky and changing views at every turn. Rabbits kept the grass short and seemed unperturbed by my presence, although they were probably ready to flee at the first movement I made in their direction, swans floated gently downstream, buzzards mewed overhead, yellowhammers flitted to and fro, it was idyllic - hopefully a sign of things to come in the forthcoming summer months. Peace and quiet reigned. Four or five fields contained vegetables of some description growing under low-lying bluish polytunnels - I have no idea what the crop was but it made for a striking image, particularly the field with a stone barn in the centre.
The path snaked along a track, taking a left turn here, a right turn there until I began to wonder exactly where the river itself had disappeared to. Eventually path and river converged, some two hundred yards short of the elegant metal footbridge that crossed the still thirty yard wide barrier of the Alaw. My route today led away from the bridge rather than across but I couldn’t resist a quick crossing to take in the view from the apex of the span. This was pretty good but I was almost more impressed by the decoration on the bridge itself - designs from the local legend of Branwen as told in the Mabinogion. This is a medieval book of eleven stories from Celtic Welsh folklore - the story of Branwen being one of the four “Branches of the Mabinogi” that derive from a much earlier date. Branwen herself was the daughter of Llyr, a mythical British King and the story tells of her unhappy marriage to an Irish king, the animosity and intrigue between her husband and half-brother and the unhappy ending that saw her return to the banks of the Alaw where she died of a broken heart.
All in all it seems to me that the bridge is a major asset to the community and it was clear that it received a lot of use from local walkers even from the few minutes that I spent there. Again swans drifted with the river’s current, graceful as always with no signs of effort, their beaks dabbling in the water as they went. Their progress gave an indication of just how quickly the current flows - any game of pooh sticks on this bridge would be a sprint rather than a marathon.
I dragged myself away, a track leading into the heart of the village. As with other villages on the A5025, there’s nothing really to attract me to it - it’s a strip development essentially with minimal depth to it and there’s little of interest. But no matter, it was journey’s end for the day and I’d been really surprised with how enjoyable the walk had been. For some reason I’d had low expectations - it was low-lying, passed through a couple of caravan sites and there were views over Holyhead - but these had been completely overturned and I had a huge smile on my face as I drove away. A few months earlier I had walked the latter half of this stage (described below) and been glad to finish it; today was over too quickly but I was able to savour it. Had I walked from Church Bay to Holyhead in one fell swoop I would have forgotten the good bits and just dwelt on the weak second half - but I’m spoiling the rest of the chapter, dear reader, so please ignore the last couple of sentences and read on.
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As I have mentioned so often during the walk, it was from the Whelan home in Valley that the vast majority of our Anglesey adventures began and so it was that I had been looking forward to passing through the village and I had hoped to pop in and say hello to Uncle Pat as I did so. And so it was that when I arrived in Holyhead on the first Friday in October I immediately rang Pat to see if he would be in. I hadn’t wanted to ring any earlier because as with the rest of this year, the weather had been pretty dreadful in the days before and had the day dawned wet I would have turned over and gone back to sleep for an hour or so, writing the expedition off for another day. As it happened, there was no answer to my call and although I did call around in the mid-afternoon there was no sign of Pat - it appeared that he was away visiting one of his far-flung offspring.
Although not raining, it was still a pretty depressing sort of morning and my mood wasn’t helped by the fact that Sarah was in a London hospital having a tube inserted in her throat to aid digestion. Her mum was with her - and before you accuse me of being heartless by not being at her bedside, this was the way she had wanted it - but my thoughts were obviously with her as I pulled on my boots. We exchanged text messages and her positivity put a smile on my face but I remained worried about her and no doubt this affected my mood throughout the course of the day, for it was a low-key and unsatisfactory sort of walk. It is undeniable, though, that this was also the least pleasant of any of the routes I had yet followed - or would do in the months to come.
I had time for a coffee before my bus arrived but the café I chose was awaiting a delivery and could only offer me tea or hot chocolate to drink. I went for the chocolate but it was a bad start to the day and my mood sunk a little deeper than it already was. The town centre is a dispiriting one anyway but a café without coffee is hardly designed to improve matters. I suppose it is a fairly typical port, being a gateway to another destination rather than a destination in its own right but it really is an ugly place and the multiple vacant properties and plethora of charity shops is worse even than Rugeley. Unbelievably the town has had some substantial money spent upon it in recent years to improve matters - the most obvious sign being a new bridge between the town centre and the harbour. It’s not unattractive but is completely out of context with the scenes of dilapidation elsewhere and this only serves to throw the other buildings into an even less flattering contrast.
I can’t say that I was disappointed to hop aboard the number 61 bus out of town when it arrived but even the journey out seemed depressing. Within five minutes it had pulled up at an out of town retail park and it became obvious just why the town centre was so devoid of anything resembling a healthy economy - Tescos, Morrisons, Argos, New Look, Brantano, Wilkinsons, Peacocks, even Poundland had large stores with ample parking on the doorstep. What incentive is that for anyone to visit the “old” town? You have food, clothes, shoes, hardware, all the necessities and it is only a middle-aged bibliophile and music-lover who mourns the absence of anywhere to buy books or CDs other than the absolute best-sellers available from the superstores. I suppose that the answer is to surf the ’net but one of the great pleasures of my teenage years was browsing the records and cassettes in Woolworths to see the back catalogues of my newly favourite artists amongst the new releases. I couldn’t afford them very often but I would know the listings and the songwriters and the covers inside out before I even got to take them to the till and actually buy them. And as for bookshop browsing…..
But this, I suppose, is the modern world and we can’t turn the clock back, although that is perhaps what this whole expedition has been at least partly about. Within minutes the bus had crossed the Stanley embankment between Holy Island and “mainland” Anglesey and had turned left towards the Gorad estate where Pat lived. This surprised me - I had expected to continue into the village centre and to turn left at the crossroads - and it became clear that I would be retracing practically the whole journey on foot that I was now making by motor, for it was another major disadvantage of today’s route that so much of it was by way of minor roads and tarmac.
Llanynghenedl was my stopping off point (and try asking for a single ticket to that location if you’re from the English Midlands!), a roadside hamlet on the A5025 that consists of a few grim-looking grey houses and a standing stone described as being “in a field just off the side of the road but not particularly visible from it” - a fine recommendation I’m sure you’ll agree. And having just been driven along the minor road from Gorad at what had seemed a breakneck speed, I began to repeat the journey at a much, much slower pace. The road was enclosed by tall hedges on either side, hedges of hawthorn and blackthorn, wild roses and brambles and a variety of songbirds flitted from bush to bush feasting on the hips and haws and blackberries that were close to ripening in the early autumn sunshine that was striving manfully to break through the near-constant cloud. That northerly breeze was no doubt responsible for the shaping of some of those trees in that classic coastal manner that indicates precisely the direction of the prevailing wind.
If all of this makes it sound like it was wonderful, it wasn’t - it was OK; if you have to walk on tarmac, make it as pleasant as you can by looking for the positives but it’s still walking on tarmac. But after a mile or so there appeared “Beach Road” to the right and an indication of a return to the true coast. A house on the right bore the name “Byways” and my thoughts turned to my grandparents on mum’s side - “Byways” being the name of the successive houses that I remembered them living in, both in the same Chaseley Road, something that it now occurs to me might have caused problems for the postman once they had built the bungalow into which they moved when Grandad retired. I suppose the original house - with its flat “funny roof” to the rear porch on to which we would carefully step from the back bedroom (with Grandad holding tight to our tiny hands I hasten to add) - was re-named or numbered when they left but until today I had never given it a moment’s thought, although I pass both the house and the bungalow a quarter mile away each time I visit mum and dad.
Beach Road is a dead-end and it narrows as it approaches the shore before it turns into a private drive. At the point that it turns right and follows the beach back to the north-east the path drops down to the beach itself and turns left and south-west. The cliffs here are low-lying and they don’t appear particularly stable -there are occasional indications of landslides it seemed to me, although there are buildings that do seem fairly close to the edge that are newly built and must surely have checked this out before construction started. I remember once running down to the beach with Brian practically the moment we got out of the car from Rugeley and being completely disappointed that there was so little sand and so many rocks - it wasn’t a beach to play on in the way that Church Bay was. Today I was delighted to see that my memory was pretty accurate - it’s far from the best beach on the island but there were still curlews and oystercatchers and herring gulls and that still makes it pretty good. If I had turned left and clambered up one of the flights of steps I could have been outside Whelan Towers inside two minutes but instead I headed straight for the Stanley Embankment ahead and a pavement alongside the “old” A5.
Designed by Thomas Telford (that man again) and constructed in 1823 to carry the A5 across the narrow channel between Anglesey and Holy Island, the embankment was widened a few years later to carry the newly built railway line as well. The wall that remains between road and rail was apparently built to prevent the horses from being startled by the new-fangled iron horses. And these days there is still another route here with the “new” A55 on the other side of the railway line. The soil excavated to build the embankment created a small valley and the temporary village that developed around it eventually became permanent and took its name from the feature. About halfway across there is a sluice gate to the right through which water plunges at high tide, passing beneath the road and railway and entering what is apparently known as the Inland Sea in a standing wave upon which thrill-seekers unbelievably kayak or surf, as evidenced by a number of pictures and videos posted on the internet. The Inland Sea was effectively formed on completion of the embankment for its construction prevented the free flow of the tidal waters, retaining water between here and the narrow bridge at Four Mile Island a mile or so distant. It’s not a true sea, or even a lagoon as I have seen it described, as the water is recycled daily at high tide - flowing in as I have described and out into the Irish Sea via a narrow estuarine channel and Cymyran Bay. There is, though, a circuit of Holy Island before we shall see that exit.
At the far end of the embankment is found a toll-house, a small, squat, octagonal, white building - quite pretty in its own way - which now guards the entrance to Penrhos Coastal Park. When we were visiting the island regularly I’m sure that this was designated a bird reserve but it’s largely just a change of name that sees it now a Coastal Park. Anglesey Aluminium actually own the land - it is their enormous chimney that dominates the skyline for miles around - but for over forty years they have allowed access to the area and provide three wardens to actually manage it for the benefit of both wildlife and the general public. The car park is a testimony to the site’s popularity - it is both sizeable and well-used - and the presence of a burger van even on a wet Friday in October indicates that there is a regular trade passing by. I’d be inclined to suspect that dog-walkers form a decent proportion of the visitors, based on a purely unscientific survey of those people getting in and out of their cars as a I made my way through the car park. There are a couple of small ponds alongside the tarmac and it was disappointing to see the levels of litter both in and around the water. It is a flaw of designated nature reserves that they provide the opportunity for interested parties to visit to see the wildlife but at the same time provide the opportunity for the disinterested to spoil the very habitat it seeks to maintain.
One last criticism before I get on to the enormous plus points (and despite the misgivings expressed I am enormously in favour of country parks and the like) is the constant background noise - partially planes, trains and automobiles but also from the aluminium plant. It may be churlish to complain about the very organisation that is funding the path you’re walking on but it’s an unfair, unjust world so they will just have to deal with it!
And after all of the moaning and whinging you emerge onto a pleasant meadow area that is no doubt covered in wild flowers come spring and leads up to a viewpoint through a near 360 degree field of vision and takes in the Inland Sea, Embankment, Gorad, the mountains of Snowdonia and the Lleyn Peninsula , wide open grassland and farmland, wind farms, Carmel Head, the Skerries, Holyhead breakwater and lighthouse, a huge Stena Line ferry, Holyhead Mountain and lastly (and definitely least) that damn great chimney. The view is so sudden and so far-reaching that it fair takes the breath away and I think this helps to illustrate just what is so wonderful about a coastal path. There are few places inland that you can stand with a huge smelt works with a three hundred foot tall chimney so close to you and yet have a view anywhere close to being as good as this one - the presence of the sea means that there is so much that cannot be built upon and this means so much that is left to nature and to beauty. As a view it was up there with almost anything else I’d yet seen since leaving Menai Bridge and yet mere moments before I had been thinking how dull everything was and wishing I was elsewhere.
Half an hour later I dragged myself away, back down the meadow and into the woodland once more. A cyclist rode past, what appeared to be a large Tonka toy strapped to his back but unaccompanied by any kids which might have made that seem a reasonable load. If the woodland had carried on for too long I would have pondered about his reasons for carrying a pretty big toy in the place that a rucksack should have been but the path soon emerged back onto the coast and with that onshore breeze blowing a smile back onto my face my mood was lifted once more. Curlews flew in on the wind, landing in the field to the left of the path and almost immediately disappearing into the long grass but giving just enough of a view to raise spirits further and then a charm of goldfinches flew up from the hedgerow in front to a bush and tree ahead. Is there a more accurate collective noun than a “charm” of goldfinch? A loveliness of ladybirds is the only other one that springs immediately to mind but I still think that a “charm” edges it.
At what I assumed to be the “bathing house” I dropped down to the shore itself - only seven or eight feet below the path - and sat for a few moments watching the enormous Stena ferry leave the shelter of the harbour and set a course for Ireland. The size of the ship is flabbergasting but it was the speed with which it moved that took me aback; I had been expecting it to take forever to make the manoeuvre but it was only minutes after it set off that it disappeared beyond the breakwater and out into the Irish Sea.
Past the Battery - the last of the Penrhos estate buildings - the path emerges onto a set of playing fields on the edge of Holyhead itself. It’s a bleak spot, the sea to the right and blocks of flats in pastel-coloured render to the left. More than anything I was reminded of the football pitches in the film of “Gregory’s Girl”, a wonderful picture but certainly not one that makes you wish you live in Gregory’s cramped apartment block. Here in Holyhead they resemble prison blocks, tarted up with blue or beige ground floors or even those Soviet Bloc buildings you saw on John Craven’s Newsround reports forty years ago. And yet even here there is a joy to be found in a flock of oystercatchers grazing the centre circle of the pitch to my left as I plodded onwards.
But the truth is that Holyhead arrives all too quickly and is as depressing as it was three or four hours earlier. It is strange to me that this is the official start and finish of the path. St Cybi’s church is perfectly pleasant but no more than that and blighted by its situation. My choice of Menai Bridge seems a much better option, a more logical one even. Of course Holyhead is the main town on the island and has attracted a fair amount of European funding over the years but no-one ever starts a journey here looking forward to coming back; no-one ever ends a journey here and feels uplifted; and no-one has ever written a song mourning the leaving of Holyhead. I got in my car and skedaddled.
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