Tenby Day 6 & 7

August 19 and 20:  Another 2-day blog post and two days of hiking for us.  On Friday, we had our appointment to drop off the rental car in Pembroke Dock (the industrial/dock lands for the city of Pembroke, NW of the main downtown).  We managed to get to the Europcar office by going the wrong way around, on narrow, frustrating roads and passing an overturned car in the ditch (if one can say ditch when they really don't have any space on the side of the roads here). The road was twisting and slick, and we guess that too much speed was involved.  The Europcar representative inspected our car, recorded the mileage, etc., pronounced it "brilliant" and gave us a receipt.  I had driven just over 2,000 miles without a scratch (though with a lot of cursing at near misses).

It was raining hard, but we had no option other than to walk to Pembroke-proper, about 2 1/2 miles away, along a bikepath luckily.  We reached downtown via the Mill Bridge that leads up to several parallel streets running along the top of a small rise with the Castle at one end.  The mill pond (and what once was tidal water) is on three sides of the castle.  We walked around the castle but decided to not pay to enter - after Hampton Court in London, we don't need to pay to visit any more castles.  Instead we found The Cake and Tea Shop and stopped for tea/coffee and scones.  We also dried out mostly.  We had plenty of time to wait - we had a single bus to catch at 1:15 pm that would take us to Bosherton, south and nearly at the coast and the path we were walking for the remainder of the day.

Pembroke Castle

It stopped raining while we were in the tea shop and we still had an hour, so we walked along the city's Mill Pond Trail.  It is a small wildlife area with ducks, swans, otters, frogs, birds, etc. created when Mill Bridge was built and a railroad embankment  isolated the upper part in the mid-1800s.  The Upper Pond silted up and is mostly marsh now and frankly, the main area was shallow and had lots of water plants and algae.  It is a good nursery for swans - we saw six cygnets still in their gray plumage but with long necks.

Mill Pond, with Castle in back

We walked back to the bus stop by way of the main road.  Pembroke was the seat of power in western Wales and is the birthplace for Henry VII.  "Reforms, etc." by son Henry VIII, diminished the importance of the town for this area and the power shifted elsewhere, though shipbuilding remained an important business, thereby creating Pembroke Dock.  It has access to the ocean.

We caught a small bus that drove south past the towns of Freshwater East, Stakepole Quay, and Stackpole to Bosherton where we got off (just short of St. Govan's Point).  About 2 pm, we began a 7+ mile hike, first around some lily ponds and then along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path (186-mile trail that follows the Welsh Coast from near Cardigan (on the west) to just past Saundersfoot (in the east)).  We went by and crossed over 3 lily ponds in the shape of a trident, formed by a dam at the mouth of Broad Haven, just inland from the beach.  The ponds were constructed by local gentry many years ago (1800s).  Two of the legs are spring-fed and support lilies.  The third and largest leg/pond receives surface runoff, and with the fertilizers and nutrients in the runoff, is free of lilies. The area hosts a variety of wildlife, with herons and otters being the big 2.  

Lily Pond

Broad Haven, with Lily Pond behind

We reached the Coast Path at Broad Haven Beach and started up onto the headlands, zigzagging along the edge of dramatic sandstone and limestone cliff edges.  We had mostly good weather, but a couple of brief rain showers skidded by, momentarily wetting us with sideways rain.  The wind was constant and "fresh," but mostly behind us.

'Old Red Sandstone'

We walked by Stakepole Quay, reportedly the smallest harbor in Wales, where limestone was shipped out of for use as building blocks, and a couple of fine, protected beaches with people playing in the waves.  We arrived at Freshwater East, our overnight stopping point, around 5:30 pm.  I had arranged a room in a B&B at Thorntrees, which turned out to be a private home in which the owners, a retired couple, rented out a single bedroom.  It was quite nice but a bit uphill from the Coast Path.  They had a large golden retriever named Darcy, who greeted us every time we came to the front door.

We had tea, cleaned up, and walked into town for dinner at the one and only place.  We had drinks while we waited for the kitchen to catch up before taking our dinner order.  We both had chicken, leek, and ham (bacon, really) pies with peas.  We returned to Thorntrees for a brief conversation with the owners and the youngest of their four children (all grown).  They were intent on the Olympics, particularly show jumping and women's field hockey, which Team GB won.  (I bet you didn't see either event on NBC.)  They had all walked the entire Coast Path at least once.

We had a pleasant sleep, though the wind was fierce outside, rattling the windows with some occasional rain.  We got up and were served a hearty breakfast in the main room of the house.  We walked back down to the beach to pick up the path and again zigzagged along the cliff edges, down to beaches or low points and then back up to the headlands.  The climbs were never above 300 feet, but in a stretch of about 7 miles we gained a total of 1,600+ feet in cumulative altitude.  The wind blew hard all day, but fortunately from the seaside inland, so we were pushed landward,as opposed to toward the cliff edges.  There were places where the edge was within a few feet of the trail.  The trail is well groomed/worn and in the British tradition, goes straight down and straight up, though we had a couple of switchbacks on the very steepest parts.  With the roaring wind, raging surf, thorny hedgerows, and jagged rocks, it felt like a very hostile environment.

The wind is blowing upslope left to right

We detoured off the path slightly at Manorbier to get out of the wind and to cut off a bit of the headlands, which we had seen plenty of.  We cut off Lystep Point also but had to walk through the largest caravan resort/park ever imagined.  It extended along a 3/4-mile long beach front, known as Lydstep Haven.  Not a single person was on the beach, with the winds and high tide  We arrived at the Army's rifle range at Penally, and concluded our walk back to Tenby along the railroad, as we had previously done on a walk earlier in the week.  Total distance for two days was 21 miles.

Vertical limestone, called Church Doors

We had dinner out, since we were tired and didn't have any food in the flat, at a small bistro with photos of Tom Jones on the wall.  The owner had had his picture taken with Tom and we shared with him our "levitating bandanas" competition (see photos below).

Actual wind, or what I call my levitating bandana trick

Levitating bandana trick one by Varis in Portland (hot and I bet no wind); Varis wins the "best looking bandana" prize

Levitating bandana trick two by Ron in Colorado (looks hot and I don't know what the wind is doing)