Category: Wales
A first visit to Pembrokeshire
6th June 2006 Here is an account of my trip to Pembrokeshire last weekend. An article in TGO and the gift of a fine weekend propelled a somewhat hastily arranged visit. The fact that I was in Ireland on what turned out to be a gardening holiday (yes, work rather than leisure) didn’t allow me any more time to pull myself together. As if that weren't enough, a Friday afternoon meeting threatened to derail an already precarious plan.
Nevertheless, I did get there in the end. After work, I headed south-west on a journey that took me around by Birmingham. Bristol and Swansea. Defeating the conspiracy of a late First Great Western express to scupper the last leg of the journey, I got to Carmarthen almost as planned (even if I was 20 minutes late!); the provision by FGW of a taxi from Swansea helped towards that end.
The next morning, I got to my Pembrokeshire base of Haverfordwest. That might come as a surprise to some but it functioned as intended and I got to sample the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, which was my main reason for coming all this way. Public transport options allowed me to savour the delights around St. David’s, Marloes and Newport before I made my way back home on Monday. That gave me plenty of walking and sea air to enjoy, even if things got a little too hot at times. The up-and-down nature of the stretch between Newgale and St. David’s left me feeling a little “cream-crackered” but the walking around Marloes was a lot easier on the legs. Only having an hour or two meant that I only got a brief taste of the hill country around Newport, but a return is a definite possibility.
My journey home took me through Cardigan, Aberystwyth, Shrewsbury and Crewe, but this was more direct than the way that I came and could be the way I would go if I got the opportunity to return again. After all, there is much more to see. For instance, the Preseli hills are definitely worthy of exploration and I only sampled a fraction of the 186 mile (299 km) length of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path (though the heavily industrialised section around Pembroke and Milford Haven is an acquired taste).
Places to go, places to see
14th May 2006 While doing my recent website update (it’s structural rather than being anything more instilling for non-techies), I got to think about possible destinations for walking trips. What triggered it was that I was seeing photos taken in places that I have already been and thinking: I should go back there. Examples include:
Scottish Borders: I paid some visits to Peebles in 2003 but haven’t been since. Galashiels was considered as a destination for the Easter weekend, but it didn’t work out that way; I went to the Isle of Arran instead.
Loch Lomond: On my forays to the Western Highlands, I keep passing this loch and the surrounding area. I only stopped in Balloch in 1999, and there is much more to savour: Ben Lomond, West Highland Way and much more.
Callander and the Trossachs: Another place that I have passed on numerous occasions. I did go walking in Callander’s vicinity in 2002, but a return is overdue.
Loch Tay: While at university in Edinburgh, I went here every year but haven’t been back in ages. It could be combined with Pitlochry and Aberfeldy for a future visit. I have never walked in the area because cycling was my preferred mode of exploration at the time when I frequented it.
Brecon Beacons: So far, I have walked in the Abergavenny locality, but there is far more to see here. It will take more than a day trip to see more of this national park due to transport constraints.
And then there are other ideas again:
Northumberland: I keep reading about its fantastic moorland, and I did walk along its coastline last January. That was only a warm-up for more, though. Due to transport costs (a Saver Return train ticket costs £65-72), a bit of planning is required for a longer stay that does justice to the county. I did have an idea for Easter that would have seen a visit to the Northumbria National Park combined with a trip to the Scottish Borders. It never materialised though and has remained on the shelf.
Pembrokeshire Coastal Path: I have read about this is in the magazine The Great Outdoors and rate it as an idea for a long weekend.
Ireland: I have seen less of my own country than I have of the U.K. and I keep telling myself that I should set that to rights. I am happy to remain living and working in the U.K. so a trip of a few days in length would be what is needed. While I know Cork and Kerry well (and seeing them in my own time would be a bonus), there are other places where I have never been: Wicklow, Connemara, Mayo and Donegal to name some that come to mind. A car would make the whole idea run a lot smoother…
Western Isles: While I have dreamt up this week-long ramble from Lewis to Barra, I am unsure whether it will happen. After all, I did consider Harris after my 2001 break in Scotland. This is the way that it would work: first get to Stornoway (overnight train/coach to Inverness, coach to Ullapool, ferry to Stornoway), travel to Harris by bus, then to North Uist by bus and ferry, onto South Uist via Benbecula (and causeways), taking a ferry to Barra, leave Barra by ferry to Oban. Of course, my plan would to punctuate all of this with walking. Care is required, though, as Sunday is kept very strictly as the Lord’s Day in Lewis and Harris (there has been a row about Calmac running a ferry service on a Sunday) and I don’t fancy being marooned anywhere. I do respect their point of view, though. However, the southern islands are more Catholic and have a more pragmatic approach to this.
Having all of the above in my mind does keep my feet very much on the ground: I haven’t seen anything like all of Britain and Ireland yet.
Pronouncing some Welsh place names
10th May 2006 I am in the middle of changing how my photo gallery works (techies’ note: I am moving over to using an XML-powered application of my own making) but have come across a bluffer’s guide to Welsh place names that I feel has got a bit buried. Simply put, it gave phonetic spellings for some of the places that I have been known to frequent. Incidentally, I can recommend Tony Leaver’s Pronouncing Welsh Place Names (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, Llanrwst, 1998); its quick listing of place names and how to pronounce them is invaluable. The reason that Welsh causes so much trouble for anglophones is its penchant for extra consonant sounds and seemingly inexplicable use of letters from the roman alphabet (f is pronounced like v, you need ff for an f sound) particularly vowels.
I used to think that Welsh was more weird than the language of my native land, Irish. And, in some respects, it is. But Irish has its own quirks with consonants and vowels too, but you don’t get a w being used to depict an elongated u or oo sound. I suppose that learning Irish at school (it was compulsory all the way up to the end of secondary/high school) got me used to its various nuances and I take it that it is the same for Welsh. What really gets me confused though is Scots Gaelic: words shared with Irish getting pronounced differently. Now, that does need some care and attention! At least, the strange spellings in Welsh give you some warning of what is coming…
Anyway, here is that list of awkward Welsh place names with phonetic spellings alongside:
Llanrwst: thlan-roost
Betws-y-coed: betoos-ah-coyd
Blaenau Ffestiniog: bligh-now fest-in-i-og
Caernarfon: car-narvon
Llanberis: thlan-beris
Beddgelert: beth-gelert
Dolgellau: doll-ge-thl-eye
Llangollen: thlan-go-thl-an
Machynlleth: mach-unth-leth
Llandudno: thlan-dyd-no
This list is far from complete but I have built it from where I have been to date. I hope it helps in some small way.
Hillwalking and me: a history
6th May 2006 I started hillwalking relatively recently. The idea never even dawned on me when I lived in Ireland. Even when I lived in Edinburgh, I thought that it was an activity for other people. In any case, I thought then that cycling was more to my liking. In 1998, the idea came into my head that I'd better see a bit more of Scotland than just Edinburgh and Loch Tay. The reason for this? I was coming to the end of my degree in Edinburgh and I didn't know then what the future held.
That took me on day trips to Fort William, Inverness and Loch Ness. 1999 saw me head to Oban, Mull and the Isle of Skye. Back then, my walking was only done on roads when I couldn't bring a bike. My 1998 trip to Fort William would have involved me carrying a bike but for the fact that Scottish Citylink wouldn't carry it (Bus Éireann in Ireland probably would have and I thought that things were the same in the UK: they aren't). My trip to Skye had me cycling a rented bicycle around the island and I had been known to cycle around Loch Tay.
What changed all this? A bicycle ride from Macclesfield to Buxton on a late August evening in 2000. Admittedly, I couldn't get the bike into first gear, which wasn't a help on the hills: they weren't half steep in places. I got to Buxton but I caught the train when I was going home. There had to be another way to get out and about in hilly country. It was coming, though. I had cycled around the Yorkshire Dales when working there and, while going up was not too bad, it was the descents that gave me the heebie-jeebies. I loved being out in the countryside so thoughts turned to walking it...
2001 was blighted by the outbreak of foot and mouth disease but my explorations had begun. I got myself some trail shoes and some OS Landranger maps and started to head off road in the Peak District. 2002 saw me buying hillwalking boots and moving on to OS Explorer mapping, my staple ever since. The Yorkshire Dales saw a lot of me, even though I was (and am) working in Cheshire. My annual Scottish ramble saw me take in Callander, Fort William and Portree: for their proximity to attractive countryside rather than for the places themselves.
However, it was 2003 that really had me walking. There was a bountiful amount of sunshine that year and I got out and about loads of times. For me, it was the year of the Lake District with loads of walking trips in and around Keswick. The only bum note was that I holidayed in Oban and Fort William in the worst week of the summer!
I didn't get on too badly around Oban because I got to walk along the shores of Loch Etive in pleasant sunshine (pity about the fact that I didn't bring enough colour film with me!). However, it was Fort William that really left me down, though I did walk the final section of the West Highland Way northbound from Kinlochleven on a cloudy but dry day. For the rest of the time, there were ample amounts of drenching rain. Nevertheless, all was set right with bright sunshine for my visit to Lochaber on the last weekend of August. I wasn't to be deterred yet.
If there was a year that could put paid to my walking ambitions, it would have been 2004. When it came to weather, it was a washout in comparison to the previous year and I didn't get out much at all. I suppose that we had to make up for the glory of 2003 sometime... It was very telling when Trail magazine featured an article that hillwalking need not be fair weather activity. It has to be said that fair weather helps, though! Surprisingly, my annual visit to the Scottish Highlands didn't suffer too badly: I managed to get some decent weather in Lorn and Lochaber. I got down to Bridge of Orchy on the West Highland Way. It was all down to very careful timing, though. Other opportunities did present themselves and these were taken enthusiastically: a traverse of Fairfield horseshoe in Cumbria, explorations of the Ogwen Valley in North Wales.
In contrast, 2005 was more like 2003 and allowed plenty of opportunities to get out and about without getting soaked through. I got to spend several weekends exploring around Dolgellau (pronounced dol-ge-thl-eye, I believe) in the south of the Snowdonia National Park. Plenty of walks with views of Cader Idris and the Rhinogs were undertaken. At one point, I ended up on the foothills of Cader Idris itself. Nevertheless, its ascent remains on the to do list. The hills around Llangollen (try pronouncing it as thlan-go-thl-ann) also attracted my attention. Along with visits to my usual haunts of the Peak District, Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, I also made visits to Mull, Lorn and the Isle of Skye. My hillwalking had continued apace.
All of this brings me to 2006. To date, this year has had its share of fine weather. However, the past winter has been colder than those of late: this has meant that I have encountered more snow than I usually do. I even got walk on crisp snow in a yomp among the hills lining the Cheshire-Derbyshire border. Snow or no snow, I have managed a few visits to Scotland: Lochaber, Arran and Perthshire. I hope that I am not spoiling the allure of Scotland for me! In addition, Yorkshire has featured on my list of "adventures". Having ascended Pen-y-Ghent last year, I completed Yorkshire's "Three Peaks" by walking Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent. Will it go on like this? I have no idea. Only time will tell...
