Llanfachraeth

Today was a good day - dry, warm, but not too hot. We aimed to cover Rogers Volume 2 Walk 10, but with an extension to take us to where we reached on an earlier walk.

We set off from Llanfachraeth according to Rogers' insructions, but these country back roads weren't as quiet today as we ususally find. This being a nice Saturday in the peak holiday season, and in the proximity of caravan parks and beaches (see below), we did have to stand by the side of the road rather often to let by the 4x4s, caravans, trailers, etc..


Where Rogers told us to ignore the sign to 'Porth Tywyn Sandy Beach', our diversion took us exactly that way. Joining the coastal path northwards at Porth Tywyn, which traces the base of fields set back a little from the beach, we could see that this beach was popular, but probably less crowded than the average bucket-and-spade beach (pictured). Sand also a little whiter than on most Anglesey beaches - perhaps the influence of blown Holyhead Mountain quartzite?

We followed our diversion northwards to Porth Trefadog (second picture), then doubled back to Porth Tywyn.


The path here passed through Porth Tywyn/Sandy Beach caravan park, then past Penrhyn Bay caravan park. While we are no experts, these seemed to be rather upmarket caarvan sites. Both had little shops, the former being virtually on the path - although being what they are, the opening hours cannot be guaranteed to cater for all coastal path walkers.

Only after that did we get back on to Rogers' trail. Once we had left the caravan sites behind, the terrain changed markedly, and soon we were following the Alaw estuary in a much quieter environment, butterflies everywhere.

Rogers 2006 edition requires a bit of updating here. Where he says at the bottom of page 60, "Keep along the field edge to a ladder stile which leads onto a short access track", by now the access track has been extended towards us, so that in fact you are on it straightaway, not at a field edge. This ladder stile, and a number of others on this stretch, have since 2006 been replaced by kissing gates. We also didn't follow his little diversion away from the coastal path at the tidal pool, because our over-riding objective was to cover the path itself all the way to Llanfachraeth.

Oh, and as for Llanfachraeth meaning 'church at the little beach', that's rather fanciful (that would be Llandraethbach). It's the more straightforward 'church of Machraeth' - see, for example, llanfachraeth.com.

More gaps

One of the problems of having aimed to do the whole path, but by a series of nice circular walks, is that it leaves a few annoying gaps where the circles didn't quite join up. So we started addressing that today.

First we walked through Rhosneigr, covering what we called "the little bit in the village" that we missed on the earlier Rhosneigr walk, and joining up to where we got to on the Traeth Crigyll walk. Rhosneigr is fairly busy at the height of the holiday season with a High Street of shops that serve the holiday trade and that is more than a little village of this size would normally sustain.

Euler famously worked out that he couldn't traverse the seven bridges of Königsberg once and only once while getting back to his original starting point. A simpler but similar problem faces the Coastal Path walker faced with the little section, east of the Inland Sea, between Four Mile Bridge and Valley. In our case, this joined up where we got to at Valley on both Penrhos and Valley trips on the one hand, and at Four Mile Bridge on both Inland Sea and South Holy Island walks, on the other hand. Unlike our two urban walks today, this was more like a coast!


Then finally we went on to Holyhead, to walk through the town, joining up our previous Breakwater Country Park walk with the other end of the Penrhos walk. This took us past the official start and finish of the Path at Holyhead Church (pictured). Strangely, in contrast to the rest of our travels, the path itself is not signposted at all through the town here...