The last few summers had been uniformly pretty dreadful, some of the wettest on record and with three harsh winters on the trot as well it came as quite a surprise when July 2013 turned out to be hot, dry and sunny - to the extent that we were complaining about the heat even by the middle of the month. By the time that we entered the last week it was almost too much of a good thing but I was off work, had painted the garden fence and shed, mowed the lawn and weeded the drive and was footloose and fancy free as a consequence - Anglesey beckoned and one of the final stages of The Path.
For only the second time I set off walking from the car rather than catching a bus to the start and walking back. The rationale behind this plan has been that there is no time pressure or worry about finishing in time to catch the bus back at the end of the day but Four Mile Bridge didn’t seem to have any parking facilities and as the planned stroll was a reasonably short one I felt that the risk was worth it - I would certainly be done in the five hours I was allowing myself before the last bus of the day. And so at just about ten o’clock I turned the corner by the RNLI building (officially opened by Prince William and Kate on their first official engagement as an engaged couple) and strolled down the prom above the beach.
As forecast, the morning was dull and cloudy with the hint of a sea-fog and it was difficult to see where sky ended and sea began. Nonetheless there were already plenty of family groups occupying the still thin strip of sand between the prom and the ebbing tide. Two wardens carried signs about keeping dogs off the marked area of the beach, boasting proudly of the blue flag status that it enjoyed and warning of the presence of jellyfish; two ice cream vans and one selling bacon butties and hot drinks blocked each other in and vied for the same customers whilst a staff member from The Waterfront bar/restaurant set out chairs and tables to try and tempt people inside rather than the cheaper alfresco alternatives the vans provided. No doubt as the tide went out and the mist burned away there would be a run on the catering but for now there was a distinct air of over-supply.
At the far end of the prom I turned right, passing an award-winning pub/restaurant, a cottage with a blue plaque indicating that Thomas Telford once stayed there and the black and white timbered “Old Abbey” which I was disappointed to discover was not actually an abbey (although it was built from materials reclaimed from two unspecified Anglesey churches.) After a couple of hundred yards on the road came a rocky cove with a little islet giving shelter from the main bay beyond, shelter that a number of boats were taking advantage of with an overnight mooring. As I watched, an elderly lady swam across the gap between two outcrops about fifty yards out, her pet black labrador bravely guarding the pile of clothes she had left on the coarse, gritty sand below the pavement. Another cove lay a few yards further along and here there were the squeals of three or four kids using an inflatable dinghy to get from ship to shore, under the close eye of their parents on board one of the scruffier yachts anchored thirty or forty yards out.
The road continued on, frustratingly separated from the coast itself by a number of beautifully situated properties - many in need of some care and attention - and a row of tiny bungalows that were unlikely to have anything like as good a view as you would expect due to the presence of larger, more modern properties behind. It was beginning to get a little annoying - you knew the sea was tantalisingly close but could hardly get more than a glimpse of it - and then the road came to a junction where vehicles had the choice of left to a caravan park or right to a caravan park, which is not the most enticing of options if I’m honest but it was clear that the footpath turned right within less than a hundred yards and so it was with not too heavy a heart that I turned through the gateposts to The Lee Caravan Park.
At the signpost I made that right hand turn and met a drystone wall at the precise point that it, too, veered right. A small sign at its foot warned - in Welsh, then English - that care should be taken for the cliffs were unfenced and undercut and potentially dangerous to children and dogs, which should be kept on a lead (I assume that this was purely the canine element of the last sentence but cannot be 100% certain - but there were no kids with me so I was OK). And then at the very foot of the sign were the words BEWARE OF SNAKES - Keep To The Path. Funnily enough I had already thought to myself that the terrain was pretty similar to The Range that we had walked through on our way in to Trearddur and that this may be snake country. The nature of the warning suggested to me that it was probably adders rather than grass snakes but it would change nothing if I saw one - poisonous or not, I would be miles away quicker than you could blink and breaking all sorts of personal speed records for minutes to come. Happily, although I was conscious of the warning for ten or fifteen minutes, I saw nothing sinister and pretty soon had put it completely out of my mind and was stalking insects through the long grasses. Before then though the path would lead past those undercut cliffs and bring the guts of the caravan park into view.
The next week at work I was to meet someone who has a van on this very site and I was able to talk about the beauty of the situation, the peace and quiet and the lovely wildlife but the truth is that my inner voice was screaming out that its very presence desecrated such wonderful surroundings. The sight that should have greeted me was of another lovely cove with distant views of the hills and mountains of the Lleyn Peninsula; instead I got rows of beige metalwork scattered around patchy areas of grass dotted with cars and covered boats. It isn’t pretty and is by no means the last eyesore that this stage will bring us in amongst all of the beauty.
Happily there was beauty and interest in abundance even as I stood above the site, for the thick vegetation provided seemingly perfect conditions for butterflies and there were scores of them flitting from gorse to heather to grass just begging to be photographed. For all the time I spent trying (probably thirty minutes in total) I got perhaps two or three shots that you could say were anything like reasonable - a couple of common blues and a meadow brown. Despite my best endeavours the many large whites were to remain utterly elusive, however hard I tried, however still I stood, however stealthy my approach - clearly they have had a bad experience with previous photographers and were unwilling to co-operate.
The path ultimately dropped steeply down a sandy track between two caravans, so steeply that as I approached the bottom I felt the sand slipping away beneath my feet and ended up practically running down those last few yards to avoid ending up on my backside. Luckily I was able to immediately turn my back on the static mobile homes and head off towards open country. A lone yacht occupied the cove, sails stowed and with no sign of life but looking like an idyllic spot to drop anchor - but the view out to the boat was probably more attractive than the view back to shore and the little boxes on the hillside that I had just left behind.
Beyond the cove I passed by a small freshwater pond on the inland side of the path and was treated to another display of attractive insect-life - this time dragonflies. Or damselflies. Or both. The difference is in the way they hold their wings when at rest - the dragonfly outstretched, the damselfly tucked in along the length of its body. Facially they are both pretty ugly (although this is obviously in the eye of the beholder, and I didn’t really get close enough to get a good look) but the beauty is in the colouring. In this instance there were a couple of fairly delicate-looking electric blue (probably) damselflies but if you are expecting a photo then I am afraid you will be sadly disappointed - there was no way I was able to get anywhere close enough to even bother switching the camera on. There was then a much bigger - much, much bigger - brown thing than looked like something the dinosaurs would have left behind and it was understandable where the “dragon” part of the name comes from. I have not the first clue what either of the species were but I was delighted to have had such a good view and had a smile on my face as I strode onwards.
The stride didn’t last too long - within a few yards I was brought to a halt by a couple of female stonechats and four or five swallows all making use of the barbed wire fence running up to the kissing gate for which I was aiming. Beyond lay another field of long grasses, clover, knapweed and thistles which seemed to be even more suitable for butterflies than the gorse and heather that had excited so many thirty minutes earlier. I may have been armed with a camera rather than a mesh net but I could only have made myself more of a nuisance to these creatures had I been there with the intention of putting a pin through them and displaying them in a glass-covered desk. Again, common blue, meadow brown and large white were most conspicuous but I gradually began to notice more and more six-spot burnet moths until it appeared that 
Across the next bay the eye was caught by a lovely little sea arch, where a limestone headland had been eroded by the ebb and flow of many thousands of tides, initially to create a cave, which would probably have collapsed to create a blowhole. One side will then have crumbled away leaving the arch as it currently stands but erosion is a never-ending process and at some point in the near or distant future this too will fall, leaving a sea stack standing proud of the coast to which it was once joined. The huge timescales involved in the whole process blow your mind if you think too deeply about it but it does bear giving it a little thought , if only to be able to truly appreciate its remarkable nature.
The route turned away inland to avoid a large holiday home but the path itself was ample compensation for the brief loss of a sea view, making its way through irises, daisies and thistle-strewn grasses before descending to yet another grassy field and a closer view of the arch. But the best was still to come, as I climbed up the field’s edge and was able to look down into the cove where the remains of one of those rock-falls could clearly be seen beneath the shallow green-blue waters and the imaginative leap to see a cave and a blowhole became somehow so much more achievable. I gazed down in awe, a little nervous about the steep drop but wanting to get as close to the edge as I dared at the same time. Sheep could be spotted halfway down, somehow able to hang on to the vertiginous near-vertical slopes, baa-ing at one another as though fascinated by the echo effect their bleating achieved. I pulled up a rocky seat (OK - I sat down on a big stone) and settled back to enjoy the view and a coffee. A group of four walkers arrived at the edge, walking from the direction I was headed, but they didn’t seem anywhere near as fascinated as I was, quickly moving on around the headland and disappearing into the distance. One of the sheep looked at me, seemingly rolling his eyes in astonishment at their lack of interest. I shrugged back - “Humans, eh.”
It was only when I reached St Gwenfaen’s Well that I actually believed that the worst was over. It’s quite a sizeable structure although the websites I’ve looked at to try and find out when it was built seem to make it sound so much bigger - they talk of two or three chambers, seats at the corners, and a stone paved floor. What I saw was good but not that good - I certainly got the sunken chamber and corner seats but not a great deal more - although I am no aficionado of pagan temples - and I still couldn’t find out when it was built!
High on the skyline the Coastguard Station had now come into view and although the guide book says it is no longer in use, it was fairly clear that someone had failed to tell the Coastguard for the door was open and a couple of elderly women came out, dropping some loose change into the collection bucket hanging from the metalwork. I wandered up and, seeing the sign on the door announcing that visitors were welcome, popped my head in. The uniformed chap beckoned me inside - “Come on in. The view’s stunning” he told me in a lovely deep Welsh voice. He was right - the huge picture window gave the crystal clear view that you would expect, down the coast in each direction and out to sea and some particularly dangerous offshore rocks. I asked about the guide’s erroneous report of its demise and was told that it had actually been reopened a couple of years earlier and was manned purely by volunteers and only from Friday to Monday each week, although there were plans afoot to extend the opening hours to seven days during the school holidays. Noticing the rucksack that I’d left outside (and my sweat-stained brow, no doubt) he asked where I’d walked from and we got into a very pleasant chat about the whole path. The weather by now was blazing hot albeit still a little hazy but we both agreed that with the current heat wave there was absolutely nowhere that we’d rather be than holidaying in the UK. “Take a look through the telescope” I was offered. “There was a huge grey seal on the rocks over there yesterday but I haven’t seen him yet today.” A couple of minutes later an older couple entered and I stepped back in order that they could get the best of the view. Were there dolphins to be seen, they asked. Not recently it transpired but a month earlier about five or six had been spotted. There were better areas in the near vicinity but you perhaps saw them once or twice a year from up here.
It had been a pleasant interlude and a most unexpected one as I had anticipated the station being closed but it had eaten further into the time I had available before catching the bus back to Trearddur. I make time-keeping harder for myself in these circumstances by my refusal to wear a watch when on holiday - the mobile phone in my pocket being the only reliable indicator of time and one that I am reluctant to resort to. Clock-watching is for work days; a more relaxed attitude to deadlines is the stuff of high days and holidays. And so I blithely dawdled on downhill, enjoying the view out to the beacon on one of the myriad rocky islets dotting the coast around here - and providing the reason for the coastguard station (and earlier Rhoscolyn lifeboat).
At the foot of the hill the path passes between a number of cottages, down narrow little passages hemmed in by speedwell and honeysuckle and cow parsley and across recently mown back lawns where you feel as though you are trespassing in spite of the clearly marked public footpath signs. It emerges onto a driveway that leads down past the Old Lifeboat Station (now a lovely-looking home with a simple but elegant garden) and onto the beach at Rhoscolyn. It’s a well-regarded beach it seems, but it lacks a little something for me - probably because the rocky headlands that protect it from the open sea also keep it at arm’s length and a little too distant to be ideal. Nonetheless there were plenty of young families here and, more surprisingly, plenty of sunbathers - surprising because the afternoon was pretty warm now but still the sun refused to shine properly and hid itself away behind greyish cloud. But who am I to quibble at the sun-worshippers - in my long trousers and wrap-around sunglasses that are almost guaranteed to give me panda-eyes when I remove them at the close of the day.
Having pottered across the sand I paused before leaving the beach to sit back and enjoy a long, cool drink of water. The heat had crept up on me and I suddenly realised just how dry-mouthed I was. I took a look at the guide book as I did so, estimating how much further I had to go and roughly how long it would take me (it is one of the book’s few faults that there is no table of intermediate distances - merely the total mileage of each stage. The classic long-distance guide - Wainwright’s Coast To Coast - has a table of distances between each prominent spot on the route which is a great aid to planning.) It seemed that I probably had about three to four miles left to walk and when I glanced at the time on my phone I was horrified to see that I had about an hour to do it in before what I thought was the last bus of the afternoon - I had obviously dawdled, pottered and pootled along all day and allowed time to pass by un-noticed. I jumped up and strode off, determined to put some miles beneath my feet.
Ten minutes later I was once more distracted by plethora of interest that the most unexpected of wildlife had provided throughout the circuit. If you were to have told me that I would have spent more time in pursuit of elusive butterflies than puffins or arctic terns, I would have been disbelieving but the remarkable truth is that I have “wasted” more time on hands and knees photographing insects and wildflowers than I have staring out to sea in search of birdlife. In doing so again now, I ensured that I would have to change my plans about where to catch the bus - and I would fail to get a single usable photo of the gorgeous red admiral that fluttered from one gorse bush to another, tempting me to try over and over again to capture its stunning colours for posterity. Finally I gave in, only to succumb moments later to a stonechat, more knapweeed and a failed attempt at a ringed plover.
By the time I had reached the blue flagged Silver Bay the time:distance ratio was rapidly diminishing and the deep sand wasn’t exactly conducive to rapid movement. I pulled out the bus timetable and changed my plans - I could set my sights on Rhoscolyn village and catch the bus there instead, reducing my walk by about a mile and a half (or thirty minutes) and catching the bus four minutes after it left Four Mile Bridge. I’d probably even have chance for a quick drink at the White Eagle if I was lucky.
And so I took to the back roads of this Rhoscolyn peninsula, avoided the two or three cars that constituted a rush hour and made the pub with thirty minutes to spare before the bus arrived. I asked at the bar where the pick-up point was - just below the church three or four hundred yards uphill, I was told - and bought a (quite expensive) apple juice that went down without hitting the sides. A second bottle disappeared into the litter bin a hundred yards uphill as the clouds above finally cleared and revealed a bright blue sky above. The bus was on time - I would certainly have struggled to beat it to Four Mile Bridge - and as its only occupant I felt that I had done my bit to retain the service for the good people of the area, if only for a little while. I would have a slightly longer walk to Rhosneigr than I had originally intended but it had been a much better day for the relaxed attitude to time than it would have been had I rushed any earlier than I did - my lack of a watch had been amply vindicated and I rewarded myself with an ice-cream on arrival in Trearddur Bay. There remained a choice of two vans, one with a queue and one without - I took pity on the one less in demand which was probably a mistake as it didn’t have the “whippy” option but there is no such thing as a “bad” ice-cream and it made for a pleasant end to a more than pleasant day.
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A few days later the bus set me down outside the church and I retraced my steps along the road for a mile and a half. The slightly fresher feeling to the air after a couple of the days intervening had seen some heavy rainfall made for pleasant walking, albeit on tarmac which is rarely the most enjoyable of surfaces. As such I was pleased to see a farm track off to the right and realised that saltwater wasn’t far away again. The path detoured around the back of a farm - some buildings had been converted into attractive holiday cottages; some remained scruffy and obviously unused which made for an unusual combination - and then headed straight through pastureland to the shore.
This is the tidal channel that separates Holy Island from the “mainland”, a place where the boundary between land and sea is less strictly defined than elsewhere on the island, a place of mud-flats and salt marsh and every step is a mixture of walk and paddle. There are houses on the far bank, perhaps half a mile distant, but it takes a detour of twice that to reach them without the aid of a boat. The path hugged a low-lying dry-stone wall but with the tide on its way in there were only a couple of muddy patches to be negotiated and ample bird and insect life to keep interest levels higher than the tide.
Four Mile Bridge is a counterpart to the Stanley Embankment at the other side of Holy Island, a far from glamorous low-lying bridge that does its job of transporting people and vehicles across the water but in a way that doesn’t raise the spirit one iota. Happily, the views to north and south are good - Holyhead Mountain and a converted windmill beyond the Inland Sea to the north and the “estuary” wriggling away to the south. But it could have been so much more had even the slightest imagination gone into its design and construction.
There then followed a scruffy sort of a mile as the path winds its way through empty fields, alongside a long-abandoned quarry and across a tightrope of a causeway coated in rotting seaweed from the last spring tide. It’s pretty enough in places, ugly in others and a little bit dull all over. When the best bits are the incredible spider’s webs draped across the gorse bushes you know it hasn’t been the most exciting thirty minutes (although in fairness they were pretty impressive!)
Things look up temporarily when the path dropped down to a wooden bridge alongside sluice gates that are there to help protect Valley and its hinterland from flooding. There are some information boards here that explain exactly what the Environment Agency have done to improve things but frankly I lost interest reading them once I had discovered that the estuary that would dominate the rest of the day was that of the Afon
Cleifiog. I made use of one of the benches that were kindly provided for a brief coffee but was quickly up and away, my path leading through a gap in the hedge above, through thigh-high dandelions and back into a rut of fields and lanes before finally dropping to the banks of the estuary for an extended period.
It was only now, after all of the path’s prevarications, that the beauty of the area began to become truly apparent. By now the tide was probably close to being at its height and the water was the deepest blue, mirroring the colour of the sky above. With the estuary full there was no ugly tide-line, no smelly seaweed, no mud, nothing to detract from the sudden splendour of the surroundings. My mood, hitherto a little disappointed, was lifted immediately. This was why I’d woken at six o’clock and driven for three hours; why I’d been almost evangelical in singing the island’s praises; why I’d set out to walk the island in the first place. This was FUN!
The path was largely glued to the edge of the estuary, raised perhaps ten or fifteen feet above the water, millpond-like now and I found myself thinking about all of those sea-kayakers we had seen north of Trearddur. I would gladly have traded the adrenalin rush of the surging tide for the simpler joys of exploring the nooks and crannies of the estuary and Inland Sea on a day as perfect as this. And yet I saw no-one. Ratty, from The Wind in the Willows, would have been outraged -“Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats” as he put it and I would have thought that there could be no more perfect day than this on which to do it. There had been a few small boats moored alongside Four Mile Bridge and a kayak propped up way, way back when first arriving at the shore but nothing so much as a glimpse of anyone actually out and about on one. When people say Anglesey’s busy, don’t believe them!
Ten minutes later I realised why I wouldn’t after all be splashing that hard-won cash in this direction. As I stretched out my legs, lay back and drank deep from the water-bottle the peace was shattered as a jet flew high overhead, presumably in the direction of RAF Valley which should be a couple of miles further on. Minutes later it was back, circling around and now at a much lower altitude. Minutes later there was another, again circling around to reduce height like geese “whiffling” as they come in to land; a third and fourth followed shortly after. It seemed such a shame that the earlier calm had been so easily disturbed and for the rest of the afternoon there was a near-constant procession performing the aeronautical equivalent of circuit training. That beautiful house could have been beneath the Heathrow flight path for all the peace and quiet it received. There was a certain novelty value to the display, that is undeniable and it was quite exciting as I got closer to the runway and the views became clearer with the increased proximity. Eventually I found a wall of a convenient height and sat down to try and get a photo sequence of the plane’s approach. It wasn’t easy but after four or five passes I began to understand the rhythm of it and the results began to improve - but still not to my satisfaction. I did, however, get a half-decent picture of a helicopter as it, too, did its shuttle runs. And yet despite the roar of the engines, swallows laid waste to the insects life of the meadow completely unperturbed by what was going on around and about - but far too quick for my negligible photographic skills.
A few hundred yards further lay a car park, with the boundary fence immediately alongside. Despite the warning notices advising people not to linger because of the extremely low-flying planes, there must have been twenty or thirty people there, many sitting in comfy deckchairs the better to enjoy those close-up views. I chose not to linger, though, turning right and following the fence down to the beach at Cwmyran. This took me immediately below the flight-path, although I was already beyond the actual “corridor” before the next wave began their approach and finally I was able to get three or four clear pictures, the final one of which came out slightly blurred but at least showed its incredible speed.
The beach was a narrow one when I arrived, the tide still quite high and there were views across to the beach at Silver Bay that was surprisingly close across the mouth of the river. The airfield runs tight to the back of the beach but dunes hide it away so it doesn’t affect your enjoyment of the two-mile stretch of sand. What became immediately apparent was the proliferation of jellyfish left stranded by the tide; there must have been literally thousands lining the route all the way to the edge of Rhosneigr. All were clearly the same species, about the size of a saucer and with four purple markings at their centre. Subsequent research has shown them to be moon jellyfish, a species whose sting is apparently too weak to penetrate human skin, although the extremely painful lion’s-mane jellyfish was also present in North Wales waters as a result of the heat wave we had been “enjoying.” As a result, people were giving the corpses a pretty wide berth - especially if they were bare-footed. Being well-shod, I ploughed on - ploughed because a long walk on soft sand does begin to take it out of you after a while. So much so it seemed, that no-one but me had strayed this far down the beach this side of high tide. At one point - having left behind those who
I now had a choice to make. The Afon Crigyll runs across the beach, substantially smaller than the Cleifiog and Alaw estuaries that had demanded such long inland detours but still something of an obstacle. A path therefore cuts up the dunes to meet the road north of the village and so arrive at the clock tower that is at the village’s heart. However, there is an alternative outside of high tide - to wade it. It had been clear for a while that the tide was ebbing but it was by no means at its lowest so to push on was something of a gamble but it was one I felt worth taking. I allowed a little more time to drift by as I watched a chap setting out his parachute before engaging in a spot of parasurfing. It was fascinating to watch the ease with which the chute just lifted him off the ground without the wind seeming particularly strong. As always, it looked great fun but hard on the arm muscles. A few minutes later he was riding the waves and I plodded on towards my date with destiny that was the river crossing.
There were a few families on my side as I approached and I figured that maybe this signalled that it was no big deal, a little paddle across a shallow stream. Then I saw how much the sand dropped, how deep the water, how strong the current. It wasn’t the Mississippi, not even the Dove but it was a damn sight more than a paddle across a shallow stream. At the same time, if I’d been wearing swimming trunks and not carrying a dirty great rucksack I would hardly have given it a second thought. As it was I pulled off my boots and socks, unzipped the trouser legs and hitched the resulting shorts up as high as I could before treading tentatively forward in search of a suitable crossing point. As if to prove that clothing makes a difference a chap in a wetsuit carried a surfboard across without a backward glance. I was surprised to see just how far up the water came though - thigh high at the very least. He saw me take my first couple of steps, feel the strength of the current and the sands shift beneath my feet and watched as I stepped back, taken aback a little by how unstable I felt. Did I want a hand, he asked. Could he carry my rucksack for me? My chief concern was for my camera so I gladly passed that over but held on to everything else. I watched where he stepped and tried to take as similar a path as I could. Reaching the far shore with trousers soaked two or three inches above their zip-off point I thanked my Good Samaritan for his help and made my way over to the rocks beyond. Here I finished off the last of my coffee, let my trousers dry a little and pulled on socks and boots once more.
From here to the car was a matter of minutes, passing between scores of happy holidaying families enjoying the sun, the sand and the watersports, Tragically just a week later a man drowned here in weather little changed from today. His two sons had been body boarding it seems - lying flat on the waves and riding them in to shore - when they got into trouble, at which point their father went in to try and save them. An RAF helicopter winched one of the sons and the father from the water, whilst the Trearrdur lifeboat rescued the other son. Sadly the father was dead when he arrived at hospital, the son was critical but pulled through. So safe it seemed as I strolled amongst the holidaymakers, so family-friendly and yet within a seven days it would be the scene of such a tragedy. Yet again the coast reveals its teeth, and not in the depths of a stormy midwinter’s night but a pleasant, sunny, slightly breezy afternoon in midsummer.
Sadder still, for our family at least, was the fact that I was no longer able to call in and see Pat at the end of the day as he had lost his battle with lung cancer a week earlier. And so it was that I was back on Anglesey within a further ten days, this time for his funeral. We had a couple of hours to kill in the morning before the early afternoon service, so I took Mum and Dad off to see Llanbadrig Church, for no other reason than the beauty of the location. Surprisingly we arrived to find a sign advising that the church was open and so before strolling around the churchyard we popped in to see the inside. It’s a stunning interior, decorated with both Christian and Islamic influences as I mentioned when passing through eighteen months earlier. Swallows were nesting in the porch, one nest at either end of the apex and at least one of them contained a young brood, their gapes visible each time a parent darted in with an insect for their delectation. These parents were remarkably fearless, swooping in and out with no regard for the humans passing in and out of the doorway - one getting so close to Mum’s head that there seemed absolutely no room for them to both get through and yet neither seemed aware of the other’s presence.
The “guide” engaged us in conversation and seemed keen to show us a photo. I was a few feet away at the time but when she mentioned that it had been taken a few minutes ago and showed something on a churchyard path I glanced up. “It’s a snake, isn’t it?” I said. “I’m afraid I’ll give looking at it a miss, if that’s OK.” Mum and Dad were made of sterner stuff and indeed took a stroll outside, although they were told beforehand that the adder had long since slithered away. Meanwhile I explained to the guide about my fear, to which she replied that there were loads of them around here - perhaps not the greatest news I could have been given, but at least I didn’t have to cope with that knowledge on the day I teetered along the path on the far side of the wall.
As we left, the guide said something about coming back soon and Mum replied with something about having lost one of the reasons for visiting - which is undoubtedly true - but I think something might keep bringing her back. Even a sad day can create happy memories.
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