Cefn Bryn (again), Port Eynon and Rhossili

One of the things I most enjoyed about holidaying in Gower was that while there were lots of places to see, we didn't have to drive very far to see them. The peninsula is 19 miles long and about six miles wide; our holiday cottage was sitated equidistant from both coasts and nowhere was more than a short drive away. 

So it wasn't too surprising to find ourselves driving past Cefn Bryn the very next day after we'd visited, so we stopped off again, this time taking a slightly different route that led to the Great Cairn.

The weather was dryer, if less dramatic, than the previous day, with clearer views.

We watched a couple of ravens take on what looked like a kestrel for a while, both sides giving as good as they got.

A different view of Arthur's Stone

the longest slug I ever did see

We then drove down to Port Eynon, which was a little disappointing, on account of most of the beach being very dog-unfriendly. We found ourselves corralled in a rocky corner with other dog owners and their dogs, while the sandy - and sunnier - larger part was empty. 

Knowing me, knowing you ...                               Aha!        

Cwtch and I made our way down to the Salt House, which is believed to have been built in the mid-16th century for salt production, although the usual tales of secret tunnels, smuggling and piracy attached themselves to it in Victorian times.

Dewberries

Then on to beautiful Rhossili, one of my favourite places, where we had lunch in a cafe called - aptly - The View, after which we ventured down to the beach. A couple of choughs blew overhead.

Worms Head

The wreck of the Helvetia

Cwtch didn't want much truck with the sea

The wind blowing ribbons of sand along the beach was mesmerising, but it was time to leave so we made our way up from the beach ... 

... and back to Three Crosses to load up the car and head for home. We were leaving a day early, as I had a reading the next day in Portishead, but we'd had a memorable if not very summery holiday, with plenty left to explore another time.

A visit to Llangrannog

 'Where shall we go today?' 

We'd met a couple of women, one a poet, in the car park in New Quay the evening before, and they'd recommended visiting Llangrannog, where they lived, so that's where we went. 

First stop, homage to a Victorian poet whose work neither of us have read because she wrote in Welsh, Sarah Jane Rees, whose bardic name was Cranogwen, and who sounds really interesting, having gone to sea as a child with her father, later setting up her own navigation school. She also edited a Welsh language women's magazine for bluestockings and proto-Suffragettes, lectured in America, and lived openly, it appears, with successive female partners, whilst still being a staunch Methodist and founder of the South Wales Women's Temperance Union. Her grave is in the churchyard of St Carranog's Church and, pleasingly, is entirely in Welsh.  

(Incidentally, St Carranog, or Carantoc, is the same saint who sailed across the Bristol Channel in a coracle, landing at Carhampton on the Somerset coast, where he tamed a dragon at the behest of King Arthur and made an appearance in a sequence of poems in my collection, Map Reading for Beginners.)  

Sarah Jane Rees is also commemorated in the village with a very newly unveiled and extremely impressive statue by Sebastien Boyson, who also sculpted the statue of the miner at the Six Bells memorial. 

After lunch on the front, we went down onto the beach ... 

... and past the rock called Carreg Bica, which, according to legend, was the giant Bica's tooth, spat out when he had a spell of toothache.

I think it looks more like an angel from behind. 

From the neighbouring cove, we climbed the steep steps up the cliff to the coast path. 

stonecrop and slate

Our plan was to walk to the end of the Ynys Lochtyn headland, where there's a colony of seals, but it was very hot and we both had spells of feeling slightly giddy, so we didn't descend to the headland, but looked down on it instead from the heights of the cliff path ... 

... before turning around and walking back to Llangrannog via a path set rather more inland than the outgoing route along the edge of the cliff. 

It wasn't the end of the world not seeing seals, not least since we had Cwtch with us who could have disturbed them, and anyhow, we'd seen some back in 2016, further down the coast at Strumble Head ... 

... and our consolation prize was a pair of choughs, seeing off some gulls from their nesting area. 

A Five Chough Day

Up at 4am and off to Rhossili for the day as the sun rose in my side mirrors. We arrived at 6.45 am and, perhaps predictably, we had the whole place to ourselves, at least to start with.

My marriage was bookended by visits to this beach at the westernmost tip of Gower. The first visit, in 1985, was a literal washout. We arrived, couldn't see the sand for rain, had an ice cream and drove back to Cardiff. 

The second visit, just four months before it ended, was positive for reasons that would sustain me during the hard times ahead, as I walked and walked with my friend, Jill. 

We walked the high downs behind the beach. We climbed Worm's Head. We discussed the loneliness of motherhood, the difficulty of keeping a sense of self. I went home with a sequence of poems waiting to be written. 

There was no climbing of Worm's Head today - for one thing the tide was coming in; for another, been there, done that, no need to do it again even if I still could (which I almost certainly can't). But I was there with my new life and it was beautiful.

Ted has spotted rabbits

As if to underline the turn in my fortunes, my attention was grabbed by two birds having a bit of a squabble, their yelps definitely corvine but slightly more musical than their cousins'. 

Choughs! 

We descended to the empty beach ...

... which was now emerging from the shadows. 

First stop, the wreck of the Helvetia, a Norwegian barque which became stranded on the sands of Rhossili bay during a storm in 1887 - a story which has many parallels with that of the SS Nornen on Berrow sands in Somerset. 

There were choughs there too: a parent bird, by the looks of it, and a couple of younglings. What a treat. 

We were headed for Burry Holms, the tidal island three miles distant at the far end of the bay ...

... though it looked like it might take us a while to get there. 

Up by the dunes there were herring gulls, kittiwakes, plovers and oystercatchers. 

The lack of rain had coloured the island beautifully.

We'd planned to go out on it for a bit but the tide was further in than we'd expected and we would be in danger of getting cut off if we did.

We decided to explore the dunes instead.

Looking towards Burry Port and Laugharne

Ankle-high brambles indicate how harsh the climate is here. I especially loved the harebells and sea holly. 

Discarded razor shells

Back at our starting point, the tide had reached the wreck of the Helvetia ...

... and it looked more like a prehistoric monster than ever. 

The climb up the steep cliff path from the beach proved just about as much we could handle post walk and in hot August sun. We revived with a cold drink and a Magnum, and vowed to come back again before too long.