Tea shops and towers, part 3

[ladyofastolat]

It was raining when we woke up on Wednesday, with the far side of the estuary barely visible. We'd planned a local day, but, although the forecast suggested that the rain would eventually clear, it also suggested that we would have much better weather if we headed north. So we did, plunging heroically into little white roads, armed only with a road atlas that really wasn't suitable for such behaviour. Rather amazingly, we emerged exactly where we had intended to emerge: at Castell Henllys, between Cardigan and Fishguard. This is a reconstructed Iron Age hillfort, with round houses erected within the old earthworks.

Naturally, we visited the tea room first, then headed up to the Round Houses, which were - as I'd expected - packed full of school parties being shown round by costumed guides. Although this made the whole place pretty much unphotographable, and meant that we had to race from round house to round house, grabbing windows of time when there was space for us to fit in, I think it actually added to the visit, since we could eavesdrop on their lessons. The chance to plunge their hands into a muddy pit of daub went down particularly well.

The only way to avoid photographing children was to point the camera straight up. This was the roof of the biggest round house - a rather comfortable looking place, with individual bedrooms.



Many gods lurked by the spring. A mighty bellow echoed across the hillside as we set eyes of them, but I think it was just a party of woad-painted schoolchildren attacking the gate. I hope so, anyway.



Lunch took an eternity to arrive, but eventually we escaped and made our way towards Pentre Ifan, one of the most impressive of the many burial chambers of South Wales, whose capstone - naturally - is sometimes called Arthur's Quoit. Despite its many signposts, we almost failed to find it, since this time the atlas decided to entirely ignore reality when it came to its placement of white roads, and pretend that perfectly good through roads were dead ends. However, we found it eventually, although I had to photograph it from its shadowed side, since several bikers were lounging beside it dispensing longwinded tourism advice about botanic gardens and flowers.



Pentre Ifan put us in an Arthurian Society mood, so we decided to do something even more Arthurian: park beside the road in the middle of nowhere, follow a vague set of 20 year old directions to find an obscure ancient site. As we dithered next to a path that looked very much like somebody's back garden, a man appeared out of the back door. I was on the point of fleeing, expecting a "get orf moi land!" moment, but Pellinor, less daunted than I am by the fear of being somewhere I shouldn't, said "bedd yr afanc?" and the chap directed us through the gate.

We followed my 20 year old directions, which were vague, and gave no indication of distance. Worse, the directions themselves admitted that the thing we were looking for was "inconspicious," somewhere out on "the open moor."

We surveyed the open moor. Was that our quarry? No, it was a sheep! What about those stones? Those stones? Oh well, we decided, after leaping over several little streams and risking death by bog, let's just pretend we've found it.



On the way back, the man appeared again. "Did you find it?" he asked, and we admitted that we hadn't. He then gave us directions of the "go through the gate, turn left a rock that's probably hidden by the bracken by now, head for a dead tree, turn right just before the sheep, go over a stream, but not THAT stream, turn around three times and rub your eyes, and you MIGHT see it, if there's an R in the month" type.

"Um, let's just pretend that we found it," we said.

Despite being an afanc's grave, no legends suggest that Arthur had any involvement in this particular afanc's death.

So from there to a little place called Newport, where they have... yes, you've guessed it, an Arthur's Quoit.



Look closely, and you'll see there's a gap beneath the stone. Pellinor would like to take credit for this, with his mighty strength.



We then strolled down to the river, and then to a pretty beach, where we paused only to visit a tea room, and then went to explore rock pools of serendipity. There were shrimps and little fishes of various kinds and crabs and all sorts of things.







Sitting on the balcony after we got home, we saw great flotillas of white lumpy things flowing upstream, with the tide. It obviously wasn't foam, because it quite clearly came in solid lumps. Had a ship had a horrible accident with a cargo of ping pong balls? Had there been a polystyrene massacre nearby? Eventually, part of the flotilla came in towards land, so we went out to investigate. Turns out it was foam, after all. Strange!



On the Thursday, we had our Local Day, starting with a walk along the beach, then up to Llansteffan Castle.





We did a four mile walk after that, round the point that separates this estuary from the next one along, then inland a bit, then back to the shore, to walk back to Llansteffan along the beach.



The sand here was strange to walk on. It felt fairly firm, but every step sank a good few inches into the sand. Pellinor enjoyed stomping. I was never 100% sure that my next step wouldn't have me sinking in up to my chin. I read too many books when I was young in which people disappeared without trace in bogs or quicksand, and I've never quite recovered.

There were jellyfish. There were many, many poor, washed up jellyfish, some of them exceedingly impressive.



We had lunch in a cafe by the beach, initially baking in the sun, then moving gratefully to a newly vacated shady table. New people arrived and chose the "nice sunny table," but as soon as we got up to leave, they rushed to move to our table. The metal table was as hot as an oven, and there was no respite from the furnace-like sun.

After lunch, we drove to Laugharne - only a few miles away as the crow flies, but many more miles than that by road, thanks to the branching estuaries. It has a castle, but is most famous as being the place where Dylan Thomas took up residence, and wrote and drank and rowed with his wife.



Since it was only a few miles away, we paid a quick visit to Pendine, where there were caves and rock pools. There was also an ice cream van which shut up shop and drove away at 5.22pm exactly, just like the one in St Davids. Presumably this is Tradition.



We self-catered every other evening, but decided to eat out in one of the local pubs tonight. The one we chose was very much on the restaurant end of pub dining, only recently reopened after a closure. It was very, very nice, and the service was really friendly, but sadly, we were the only people eating there.

Afterwards, full of several glasses of wine/pints of beer, we meandered home along the beach, and saw more jellyfish. I learnt that it is a very hard thing indeed to photograph a creature with flappy tentacles that's being washed hither and yon by the tide, while under the influence of wine. I made about a dozen attempts. This is perhaps the least rubbish.