In the couple of days walking between Angle and Bosherston, I made sure to pause at the Green Bridge of Wales, a huge sea-arch next to the Castlemartin firing range. The sea was white and rough there, thumping and roaring, a lacework of white water, a thrown jumble of spray, angry heavy slaps against the rockface. The water contorts and sways, rushing inwards and back on itself to meet in a central swirl of confusion until another incoming swell overcomes and hurls all back again to hit the rock.
I wanted to play on the Green Bridge of Wales, to climb over its ridge and dive from its huge awkward shoe, resting humped on the flat rock. But to swim through the huge circle of stone and sea would be to die; looking down from such a height had turned it toylike.
I had a farewell meal with Lynn at Amroth – pie and chips outside on the patio while a minibus dispensed dressed-up women, a touring birthday party which giggled and tottered around us as we ate. Then it was a day spent walking behind the firing-range on the peninsula at Pendine, miles of clear yellow sands along the edge, following the Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk – info boards and chiselled quotations through the woods – and the Laugharne Corporation’s cocklers’ path into the town, where Gez and his friendly family awaited. They opened their beautiful home to me, small children moving out of the playroom so I could enjoy the double bed, scratched drawings laid to welcome me, and a delicious meal of sausages and dark Puy lentils.
The next day I continued on beaches and through the woods that lined the estuaries, the sky running patchy clouds to shadow water-pooled tidal sands, all the way to Llansteffan where I sat on the wall separating car-park from beach and looked over to the small houses of Ferryside, across the Tywi estuary. That was where, once the train came in the mid-19th century, Welsh people would welcome poor tourists, fitting the holidaying miners into their attic spaces and spare beds. Accommodation was arranged by letter, people coming for their regulation two weeks by the sea before flitting away home to resume the smoky harness of underground labour. How lucky I was to be able to take a year and a half away from work. What seemed like hardship to most, living on counted pennies, sleeping in field corners, was freedom to me.
Ferryside was only a mile and a half away across the river mouth, but I’d walk at least 300 more miles before I set foot there. I was going to turn away from the coast, buy maps in Carmarthen and follow the River Tywi up to its source before walking across to the Teifi and down again to the Cardigan coast.
THE RIVERS TWYI AND TEIFI
Route description: The two longest rivers that flow completely within Wales, both noted for their sea trout and salmon fishing, have a combined length of 148 miles. Their sources begin within 10 miles of one another and end 26 miles apart at Cardigan (Teifi) and Carmarthen (Twyi).
Length: 130 miles
Total ascent: unknown
Maximum height: 460 m
Dates: 9 – 17 June 2015
Time taken: 9 days
Nights camping/nights hosted: 6/3
Days off: 0
Average miles per day: 14.4
Following a river is a wonderful experience: witnessing its beginning, manifesting from a sloping hollow of hillsides, the ground fecund with water, saturated. It trickles down through peat and mosses, gurgling, until it coalesces and a pool is born, overflows, water running down the side of the hill, around stones, pushing away flecks of earth, carrying them with it until it finds a grounding of stones to run over, always downhill, meeting other trickles until a stream emerges. This is the source of many a Welsh river: no surprise spout from the ground, no fountain of clear underground water, but a draining of the water-heavy hills, a gravity-born collection of rainwater drainage.
This is how rivers begin their runs to the sea, and I love to follow their journeys, through all their many faces: small, trickling, mist-laden moorland streams to shaded pools, trees drooping their branches down into the water; branch-choked, weed-filled country rivers, fish chasing in and out of shadows; deep cool water, cows coming, lowing, to drink; wide curves and loops culling the earth to shape sickle-moon ribbons through flood-flattened valleys, falling into gorges, rushing, pushing around boulders. Grain by grain the water carves holes in stone, shaping the land with its transient, unyielding force. Finally the river widens, becomes a great, unknowable mass growing away from me, fresh with the scent of leaves and earth, folding flat against the tang of salt, becoming sea.
These are the rivers of Wales. We fish in them, trade on them, drink from them, grow towns around them. Around us they move, silently slipping from land to ocean.
First we followed the Tywi, my sister and I, after she returned to walk with me for a final two weeks. There was no preordained route this time; I had maps and a will to follow the river as closely as possible. Walking away from the sea at Carmarthen it seemed that many people throughout history had already had the same idea. Trackways had grown into tarmacked roads that stuck close to the valley bottom on either side of the water. We had a couple of long days of road walking: hot, sticky, boring, faintly dangerous, looking out for cars, making sure they saw us as they rushed – sometimes too fast – towards their important destinations. We walked, drank water, pausing at bridges or in the welcome shade of tree-lined gardens. Sometimes the river came into view, shrinking incrementally as we passed the small streams flowing into it and we’d pause to admire, say hello.
In time we reached Llandovery. The river changed from there, growing smaller, straighter, with no wide valley to twist around in. It came down from the hills and we followed it up towards them. The farms got bigger, the soil thinner, mountain sheep having to range wider for nibbles of juicy grass. Humans had wrought change to this river, damming and trapping it, filling valleys, drowning habitat until the river rose to the hilltops and became Llyn Brianne: a jagged, stretched reservoir that provided drinking-water for part of South Wales. We walked six miles around the curving edge, cars appearing far away and passing us minutes later. Out to the bridge on the other side and we were in the mid-Wales highlands: pine forests and wet moorlands, the river smaller now, running white around boulders, blurring at boggy edges.
We stopped overnight in Dolgoch hostel – a strange dark building, still with a feeling of scratched survival in a harsh landscape. It had huge stone-flagged floors, gas pipes running along the walls for lighting, no mains electricity, solar showers, reminders to boil the water before drinking. We’d meant to make it to the bothy that lay a few miles further up the valley, but it was too far that day so we paid and collapsed gratefully into the soft sponge-beds, sleeping thick dark sleep in the silence of the valley. Rain came overnight and stayed the next morning, mist whitening the hilltops and hanging thick in the trees. We suited and booted up and pressed on – to the source!
The river thinned to a friendly brown stream and we forded it, only ankle-deep, cold water tingling my tender feet and leaving them freshened. The next ford was not so friendly – knee-deep and wide. Luckily, just as we reached it, four Land Rovers came along behind us. Sticking our thumbs out we grinned, and they took us through the next three river crossings. I felt bad about cheating 200m of the walk away. But only a tiny bit. The small guilt was worth the time and effort saved wading. We got out where the river, a stream by now, split in two.
The Tywi disappeared into pine forest where it would slowly melt away into bog; there was no track to follow any more, just a reedy, wet mess of land to cross. Saying goodbye to our lift we took the track curving around the side of the hill that birthed the river, looking at the ground where the water drained down and formed the trickle that became the torrent that became the path we’d just followed, all the way from the sea at Carmarthen.
Less than five miles away, over the rolling smooth hills, lay Llyn Teifi, source of another river. A beginning that would, again, trickle down, gathering strength, and carve a path to the sea.
The clouds thickened, tiny droplets of rain misting. The decision had to be made; do we go directly over the hills o
r follow a path down into the valley and back up again? No compass meant we chose safety, not wanting to get lost in disorientating cloud. So we walked, following bridleways through the dank and dripping forest, tree roots holding peat sludge, wetness everywhere, leather boots long since saturated. We walked into mist, following sheep tracks over hillsides to a farm, then a track, then a road, before branching up to another farmhouse – abandoned this time, rabbits scurrying away from the front garden. We peeked through the windows. Ripped wallpaper hung from the ceiling, the remnants of an elderly life still inside the house, left to be a rotting time-capsule: wooden chairs and a worn laminated tablecloth, no-frills washing-powder and rusting tins of custard. A small museum of Welsh life.
Dumping the bags by the shed where we could return to them later, we went lightly upwards, into Cwm Teifi and towards the lake, water rushing downwards past us and the mist clouding, confusing the path. Finally, we climbed the side of the dam, to the silent stretch of Llyn Teifi.
We each took a ceremonial mouthful of the Dolgoch-boiled River Tywi water and spat it into Llyn Teifi to mark our journey. The two rivers mingled and ran away from us and we followed them down the hillside, back towards the sea.
Good times with my sister. It was easy to be with Rose; she’d lived the same life, knew exactly how our upbringing had shaped and distorted us. We could talk over ourselves in a way that others would take years to understand, with an immediate understanding and tolerance of one another developed over a lifetime. Each of us was an influence and wise woman to the other, using our individual strengths.
We climbed up to Twm Siôn Cati’s cave and explored the slanted boulder walls, a small shafted opening above letting in a beautiful light, picking our way from the rushing white River Tywi below.
We slept in Rhandirmwyn Church porch, waiting up the road until a service had finished and the parishioners had trundled home; I told her the story of Sue discovering me and the unexpected breakfast, glad that it hadn’t happened again. Turning up a second time meant I was a tramp, didn’t it?
Another six days of descent brought us back to the coast; swimming in the gushing river, cooling sunburnt shoulders, giggling and messing about in rests under bridges, posing for silly yoga photos, eating ice cream. We stopped in Maesycrugiau, guests of Menna and Paul who’d heard me on Radio Wales. They were lovely – good Welsh people, descended from farmers, running their own small business. When I described walking around Llyn Clywedog, seeing a farmer who turned his quad-bike off in anticipation of a chat, Paul knew the man; he was the son of the farmer who’d bought his farm from Paul’s father. It was a wonderful coincidence, the kind of interconnectedness that’s so typical of Wales.
Rose was travel-hardened, used to this kind of itinerant lifestyle. She’d lived a transient life over the years, taking her bag to Spain and beyond, to the Americas. This was easy and relaxing once she’d done as I did at the beginning: found the right shoes and taken most of the stuff out of her bag. We knew how to live like this, scouting for sleeping spots, packing food into bags.
It was a fantastic week or two, dipping back into mid-Wales after the coastal journey south. I was having fun! My body felt good, feet weren’t hurting too much, the sun was out, and around 700 miles still to go.
Once we reached St Dogmaels, I sat on a bench by the river mouth and contemplated. To get back to Carmarthen, the place I’d left the coastal path, and continue walking east, I had two options. I could walk inland from Cardigan to Carmarthen – which was roughly thirty miles and would take two days – or I could follow the coastal path all the way around Pembrokeshire again. When I’d designed the walk I thought I’d definitely walk around the coastal path again. But I didn’t really take into account that it was 180 miles of the most rugged coast in the country. There was a lot that I didn’t take into account before starting this ridiculous journey, though; and rightly so, because if I’d really absorbed just how difficult and painful it would be I probably wouldn’t have started the whole thing in the first place.
So here I was, with a choice: the planned 180 miles or a thirty mile shortcut. Although I felt great every day, underneath the exhilaration and wonder I was totally exhausted. The walk was taking way longer than I had expected; budget and body needed me to finish by the end of the summer. Despite my tiredness, the whole precarious enterprise rested on the fact that I didn’t quit, didn’t give up and didn’t make it easier. I laughed at myself, shrugging in resignation. Pembrokeshire was so beautiful, I was going to walk around it twice.
WALES COASTAL PATH FROM CARDIGAN TO CARDIFF
Route description: Another section of the Wales Coastal Path, repeating the Pembrokeshire Coast and incorporating the Gower peninsula with its northern salt-marshes and southern sandy beaches before reaching the more urban areas of Swansea, Port Talbot, Barry and Cardiff.
Length: 372.75 miles
Total ascent: unknown
Maximum height: 167 m
Dates: 18 June – 27 July 2015
Time taken: 40 days
Nights camping/nights hosted: 7/33
Days off: 12
Average miles per day: 13.3
This penultimate stretch of the walk started with a wonderful family visit, all four of us – my brothers, my sister and me together – in one glorious weekend, to celebrate our successes and to spend time together as a sibling unit. I’d prevailed upon the generosity of walk-follower Natasha to lend us a holiday cottage near Fishguard, one of her converted outbuildings. I couldn’t imagine that four of us could successfully blend into a wild-camping field-corner, and Owen was still healing. We looked out for him, arranging the cooking and logistics. He was alright with us, fitted into the unit we’d known all our lives; it was only when talking to strangers that his brain injury became more awkwardly apparent.
We came around Dinas Head together, in sunshine this time, turning around to look at the two bays laid out behind us. Dinas was an almost island, frozen in the birthing, man-made concrete ditches preventing further tidal fragmenting of the umbilical strip.
After my siblings’ visit came another break: off to Glastonbury Festival again. I didn’t want to go but it was very necessary to earn an extra few hundred pounds. It was hard, though. I worked the night shifts there which meant completely reversing my body clock. Used to early exhausted nights and dawn-wakened mornings, that week I worked until 3am and tried to sleep during the day. It was the usual raucous good fun, but I felt quiet and withdrawn, preferring to try and rest, read a book. It was a struggle to boost myself to the extrovert behaviour needed to keep festival crowds entertained.
It was hard when I returned to the walk too. I might not have been walking for a week or so, but I’d been spending energy in a different way; my body ached from constant standing and late nights. I was offered the use of a friend’s holiday cottage out at Strumble Head. At first I thought I’d stay there for one rest day, but my heavy and aching body said otherwise. When I wasn’t walking, starting again felt like the worst thing in the world; in no way did I want to hump a painful and tired body outside for ten hours a day. On the way to the cottage, flush with festival wages, I bought enough food for three days and spent a couple of days on the sofa, eating scones and cream, crisps and toast and cereal. Finally, late on the third afternoon, I grudgingly caught the bus away from my cottage cocoon, back to where I’d left the walk ten days earlier.
It was going to be another wonderful 180 miles around the beautiful and friendly Pembrokeshire coast and, best of all, I wasn’t going to camp for any of it. I had hosts lined up all along the way: a combination of eight different houses, three having me for more than one night. These angelic helpers, with their varied ways of finding my journey – through internet or newspapers or word of mouth – and their varied reasons for offering to help me (cancer or adventure or just kindness) would ferry my bag around and pick me up from the coast. It was going to be easy and lovely, revisiting lots of the lovely people who’d helped
me the previous month.
First, though, I met someone new. Lyn picked me up from the sea at Abercastle and took me away to her house inland for a cosy night in and delicious food. She was bright and cheerful, wearing splashes of colour on scarves and jewellery. Lyn would have liked to come out and walk with me but couldn’t go far; she had to watch her dog run along the beach instead of moving with him. Tumours throughout her abdomen were sapping her strength; chemo drugs and their aftermath were taking her energy. Lyn had stage 4 ovarian cancer; her tumours weren’t removable and were not going to go away. All her treatment was about extending life, rather than saving it.
She had the BRCA2 gene, which gave her an 85% chance of getting breast cancer too. She mused aloud about whether to have a preventative mastectomy. This was a heavy burden to bear; cancer is a brutal illness that requires equally brutal treatment. This was what I was trying to prevent, with my own journey; I wanted women to catch this cancer sooner than stage 4, when there was a better chance of survival past five years. Lyn did too, also dedicating a lot of her energy to fundraising and awareness-raising.
It was hard to discuss certain subjects with Lyn. I felt her upset quivering deep beneath her determination, and knew there was a lot we wouldn’t talk about. Who was I to capsize the carefully constructed sailboat made of silver and art and shells and lipstick that she was using to bring herself safely through her cancer storm? Why should I remind her that the ocean is deep, and eventually we all end up sinking to the bottom? Knowledge shatters illusion, and sometimes illusion is what we all need to survive, to paint ourselves a picture of a different life, using that to bring ourselves through the hard times. I’d been taught to dwell in my pain, but Lyn showed me a different attitude to hardship; the keep-on-keeping-on, the rise-above, the shake-it-off. Lyn was navigating her circumstances with strength, determination and positivity, and I was awed. It was an honour to meet her.
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