Filling in another small gap, and some new leaflets

On Friday 8 August we sought to fill in small gap in our coverage of the Coastal Path, between Porth Trecastell (Cable Bay) and Porth Cwyfan. When we started out on doing the coastal path, this little bit wasn't necessarily part of it, and it's not shown in our 2005 edition of the OS Explorer 262 map, either. The "at the time of writing" in the Official Guide seemed a little tentative, too.

Still, we needn't have worrried as the path was clear enough on the ground. A little sign says it's permissive path, which means (in this case) you can use it any time but the 10th of December each year.

Having walked round over the headland from Porth Trecastell as far as Llangwyfan-isaf, we tried to make a circular walk of it by returning first along the road past Plas Llangwyfan, then crossing the A4080 towards the small church of St. Mary's Llangwyfan. We found that the first footpath to the left indicated on the Explorer 262 wasn't there, or at least didn't have an entry from the road, so we proceeded to the next one, just after the church. This brought us back via farmhouses Rhosmor and Cnwc, towards Porth Trecastell. We also found that the path down to the beach isn't the straight line suggested by Explorer 262: it is necessary to turn sharp left to leave the rocky crag to your right before proceeding along a track at the base of this sandy valley.

A number of Stonechats seen on this walk.

We have also come across some new leaflets of circular walks - available here as pdfs or by post from here. We've covered many of these walks, or bits of them, already. First impressions of these leaflets not very good - walkers like us need to know the length and difficulty stright off, which unlike many of our guidebooks, these don't give.

Cemlyn - Cemaes

Today, 24 May, was the first day of the 2008 Anglesey Walking Festival, but that wasn't why we went for a walk - just that we had the time and weather forecast seemed much worse for the rest of the Bank Holiday weekend. The weather today turned out ideal: blue skies, sunny and dry but a stiff easterly breeze all the way.

This was a long walk by our standards, combining, roughly Rogers Volume 2 walk 7 and walk 8, making a total of nine miles.

We started, in fact, at the eastern end of the bar at Cemlyn, and the walk along the shingle bar was not at all comfortable, so we came round the shoreward side of the lagoon before pressing on towards Cemaes.

This section is of couse rather marred by the huge Wylfa Power Station plonked on the coast. Having passed it, we took in the inland path of walk 7 to get to the village of Cemaes. Here we stopped at the Stag Inn. We were warned as we arrived that service could be slow which indeed it was, but the beer was good (Jennings Bitter) and the food reasonable. We took the Coastal Path proper round Wylfa Head, which was the wildest and windiest part of the walk: choughs here as well as the more common seabirds.

We were very glad after returning to Cemlyn to be able to stop at the nearby jam factory for tea and cake!

Aberffraw - Malltraeth

On 18 May we started from Aberffraw village and walked down the estuary following the beach option of the Coastal Path. Going inland later through the dunes, we surprised a hare - and it very obviously was a hare, too, as we were to remark later when we saw the more common rabbits.

The Coastal Path isn't particularly coastal for the next bit, as it passes along the A4080 through Hebron, but on reaching the brow of the hill there is a splendid view of Snowdonia.

We crossed the cob at Malltraeth to join up with where we had reached on an earlier walk to Llanddwyn - while watching the cattle wading through the lagoon.