Traeth Crigyll

On Sunday 8 August we undertook the Traeth Crigyll walk in Rogers Volume 2 walk 14 – a longish circular route although substantially less than half covers the Coastal Path itself.

The walk begins over Tywyn Trewan, which is an ancient common. If you live in the right (also ancient) parish, you can graze your animals, collect firewood and turf here – provided it is for your own use. We didn’t see anybody actually doing so. Part of Rogers’ route takes a bee-line across the common where there is no path, heading for Cerrig Cynrig. He mentions an old gate, which is indeed there, but doesn’t mention the stile nearby, which, once spotted, is a much clearer target to head for when wending your way along sheeptracks between spiky gorse. This was when we began to think that our Rogers Volume 2 (revised edition, 2006) was perhaps a little out of date.

This theme continued as we followed the fairly under-used path around Llyn Traffwll (pictured). The “tumbled down bridge” described by Rogers must now be completely tumbled away as we found a new wooden plank bridge. Later, after the “small reed filled pool”, we really did go astray. Rogers doesn’t identify the fork in the path shortly after this. We took the more obvious left fork, which actually did lead to a ruined cottage, which is the next waypoint. Eventually realising we were on the wrong line, we had to retrace our steps to take the right fork which does lead to a footbridge but the ruined cottage supposedly here isn’t very obvious.

Once on the beach at Cymyran, we were on the Coastal Path once more, where we had reached on our Inland Sea walk, and the route back became clear enough along a quiet but extensive sandy beach and dunes.

This was an interesting walk. The inland stretch seemed less popular; we saw hardly anybody despite the good walking weather and the path did not look much used. The jagged rock features protruding from marshy land in places were striking. The path markers on the ground were more helpful than the guide book – but perhaps this is a little harsh on Rogers who after all has a later edition out.