Mynydd Carreg and Porth Oer.

The summit shelter on Mynydd Carreg.

There must have been some hint of promise in the skies to tempt us away from the campsite and the shelter of the tents. The moment we got out of the cars, of course, it started to rain. I’m not sure why Andy isn’t wearing a coat here, but I think his grimace neatly summarises the nastiness of the wind-driven drizzle. Is it possible to have heavy drizzle? The sort of rain which seems light, but which quickly has you soaked?

TBH and Little S weren’t wearing coats because they had neglected to bring one with them. They jumped back into our car and sped off, returning later, when coats weren’t necessary, with coats, for the return leg of the walk. As Andy frequently says: ‘School boy error’.

Mynydd Carreg is a modest little hill of around 90 metres in height. I’m puzzled as to why it has such a substantial and solid shelter on the top, but can’t find anything helpful regarding its history online.

Porth Oer.

It seems extraordinary that in all the years we’ve been travelling to the Llyn, I’ve never been to Porth Oer (also known as Whistling Sands) before. It’s not very far from where we camp, so no excuses really.

Whistling Sands.

There were a couple of hardy, wet-suited surfers in the sea. Once you’re in, of course, the rain doesn’t make much difference, but I would rather not get changed in the rain, either before or after. I do recall going into very wild seas once, at Harlech, many years ago, with some of the present company, possibly in cagoules? Or did we put those on to keep the rain off afterwards as we changed? Andy might remember, but whichever it was, it was an exhilarating, but possibly ill-advised, dip.

We checked out the little cafe on the beach, but it was very busy, so we walked to the far end of the beach for a brew and snacks. I thought it had stopped raining by the time we’d reached the rocks at the end of the beach, so I’m surprised to see that the Eternal Weather Optimist still has his hood up in the photo below, especially given that the rain stops for him at least an hour before it stops for ordinary mortals. He was one of the hardy souls (idiots) involved in the Harlech ‘swim’.

The EWO on Whistling Sands.

After the brews, we walked a little way further along the coastal path before turning back to retrace our route.

Wild Carrot.

Because Wild Carrot is abundant in the Dordogne, I tend to associate it with that area and am always cheered, for that reason, to see it elsewhere. Actually, distribution maps show it growing in the North-West of England, and since it thrives in calcareous grasslands, I ought to be able to locate some close to home. Must try harder!

Porth Oer, Mynydd Carreg and Mynydd Anelog.

Back on Whistling Sands – with some patches of blue sky!

Fortuitously, we arrived back at the western end of the beach, just as TBH and Little S also arrived, back from retrieving their cags from the campsite. They joined us on a lower path around the coast, just above the rocky shoreline, before a steep climb through the bracken to regain our outward route.

Looking east along the coast.

Mynydd Carreg.

Mynydd Carreg and Mynydd Anelog pano.

Back in the summit shelter.

Mynydd Anelog.

Pano looking west. Note the sea on either side of the peninsula.

Someday I’m going to come back and walk the coastal path around the peninsula. At a leisurely pace, with frequent stops for swims in places like Porth Oer and Hell’s Mouth where I’ve visited, but never swum. I wonder who’ll come with me?

Wrapping Up July.

It remained hot. The kids, well A and B anyway, were joining friends for swims in the Bay at high tide. I’ve always regarded such behaviour as a sure sign of insanity, as the sea is not all that inviting here, being full of silt and murky brown and almost certainly full of unsavoury pollutants too, but finally I cracked and TBH and I cycled down to a spot near Jenny Brown’s Point a couple of times for a dip.

And……it was very pleasant. Hopefully, we’ll get the right weather and do it again next summer.

Carn Fadryn.

And then we went for our annual, marvellous, camping trip with old friends to Towyn Farm on the Llyn Peninsula. I remember that I did a lot of snorkelling in the first part of the week. The water was a lot colder than it had been in the Bay, but it was clear and there was lots to see as ever. Later in the week, the winds picked up and we switched to body surfing. Lots of games of Kubb and Molkky too. Beach cricket, frisbee throwing. All the usual fun.

Lots of walking happened too, but with B still suffering with his knee we generally opted to stay at the campsite/beach and keep him company, the only exception being the obligatory ascent of ‘Birthday Hill’ or Caryn Fadryn.

I apparently took no photos at all, apart from the rather poor one above of some of the Naughty Nine on Carn Fadryn’s summit.

Inexplicable. I did take lots of pictures in the garden after we returned home though! So here’s one of those:

Edit – TBH to the rescue – I did take more photos at Towyn, but using TBH’s phone – I think mine had no charge. So here’s a selection of photos, some of which I took and some of which are TBH’s work:

On the campsite – Chocolate Brownie for the Birthday Boy – complete with Candles.

Back on Carn Fadryn – we always have a long sit on the top. The views demand it.

UF and the EWO – almost certainly discussing the weather.

The Birthday Boy on Birthday Hill (although this was a couple of days after his actual birthday)

Late night beach cricket. Should have been playing with a white ball.

Bowled!

The boys on Andy’s SUPB. They loved it, B in particular.

Packing up – deflating the rubber rings.

Obviously the travel restrictions over the last two years have been a pain in the neck, but if I’m allowed to go to Wales for a week every summer, I reckon I can get by; with a little help from my friends anyway.

Back to Rügen

We returned to Rügen the following day because we were keen to climb this enormous tower in the beech woods.

I’ve read that it’s 17m tall, which doesn’t sound all that high, but it certainly feels huge when you are on it.

The views from the top were superb, although I don’t think any of my photos really do them justice. Rügen has several large lakes and also there are numerous other islands just nearby – from the tower you can look down on all of that.

It was most enjoyable. There were various entertainments on the way up and down the tower, like this xylophone type instrument…

And this…

…sand sculpture by the car park.

Later, we drove to a long stretch of beach on a peninsula in the south-eastern corner of the island.

The DBs were desperate for a swim. TBH and A were equally adamant that they wouldn’t join us. They read their books on the beach instead.

They had their reasons: the sea here was teeming with jellyfish. It seems to always be the way with Baltic beaches. The DBs found it highly amusing. B said he could feel the jellyfish stinging him, but he must be more sensitive than me because I just felt them brushing against me. Eventually, we swam out a little further and there it began to feel like swimming not so much with jellyfish as in a jellyfish. Like a slimier version of one of those kids ball pools that ‘fun pubs’ have. I have to confess that I found that a little unnerving and even the DBs seemed to be a bit put off.

From there we drove to Thiessow at the tip of the peninsula for a wander along the beach. It was a quiet and very tranquil spot.

The beach extended into a sandbar continuing out into the sea…

We had a wander into the dunes behind the beach.

There were signs warning walkers not to disturb the snakes whose habitat this was. Sadly, we didn’t spot any, but we did see loads of the these very large snails…

I think that this might be Helix Pomatia, the Roman snail, perhaps better know as escargot. We don’t see them in the North of England, though they are found further south. Fortunately, I think that they are protected in Germany.

Rügen: Jasmund National Park

The island of Rügen was quite close to where we were staying, and I have to confess that images of the chalk cliffs of the Jasmund national park had quite a significant influence over my choice of that location.

We parked on the outskirts of Sassnitz and walked through the woods to a visitor centre, then back along the coast.

Painted Lady on Hemp Agrimony.

Silver Y moth on thistle.

Silver Y moths have appeared on the blog before, we’ve even had them in the house, but they are immigrants in the UK and I’ve never seen them in the numbers I saw in clearings in the beech woods of Jasmund. Often there were three of four together.

Another Painted Lady.

The visitor centre – I didn’t go in, I was too busy photographing insects outside.

I had been hoping to see the Wissower Klinken, a spectacular rock formation, but my research had not been thorough enough to realise that it had collapsed in 2005.

Not to worry, the cliffs were still worth a look.

The path was in the woods, but followed the cliffs for a while, before dropping down to the shingle beach.

Cormorant.

House in Sassnitz.

Further north, at the Konigsstuhl, the cliffs are taller still. Maybe someday I’ll come back to see them. In the meantime, here they are as featured on a DDR stamp from 1966.

The cliffs here also featured in paintings by Caspar David Freidrich, of whom more to follow.

Three Weeks Under Canvas: Kubb at Towyn Farm

So, as the title implies, we’re recently back from three weeks of camping. The late-evening photo above shows our trusty Conway Countryman trailer tent, with Carn Fadryn in the background. Long-suffering readers will know that this was the thirteen annual get together at Towyn Farm near the village of Tudweiliog on the north coast of the Llyn Peninsula (although, only our twelfth, because we skipped 2009 to go to Germany for my aunt’s birthday instead.)

This year we were a party of 17, at least when everybody was there. Different members of the group arrived and left at various times, some only there for the weekend, others staying for longer. We were late, the boys and I arriving early on the Sunday after an early-hours start. We should have been there on the Saturday, but muppetry on my part, including not being able to locate the pump for the tap (it was in the sink) and not remembering, until B reminded me as we were about set-off, that the number plate on the trailer needed to match the ones on our new (to us) car. TBH and A arrived later still, on the train, having stayed behind because A had her DofE Bronze expedition that weekend.

Anyway, once we were safely pitched up, we had the usual marvellous time. The mornings were often misty and damp, but the weather always improved by the afternoon and we spent our afternoons on the beach. In fact, we settled into a rhythm of a late and leisurely breakfast, a late lunch and a very late evening meal, usually followed by one final visit to the beach, in the gloaming, and a late retirement to bed. I’m not sure whether the prevailing weather dictated our behaviour or if it just fit in conveniently with our lazy inclinations.

After so many visits, we have a routine for the beach too, alternating swimming with games of tennis, cricket and some frisby throwing. I don’t have any photos, because I don’t like to take my camera to the beach. After all of the fresh water swimming we had been doing, the temperature of the Irish Sea came as something of a shock – it was freezing. But that didn’t prevent some of the kids from spending hours in there.

The game of Kubb has become part of our regular routine too. My brother bought us a set several years ago, and it has to be one of the best presents ever (and he excels at presents). I’ve never seen anyone else playing it and our games always seem to attract attention and questions wherever and whenever we play. (As does Andy’s enormous space-age trailer-tent).

It’s a good game for parties like ours, since up to twelve can play, in two teams. Essentially it involves knocking down wooden blocks by throwing wooden batons at them, which makes it sound rather dull, but it isn’t at all. When we play, it also involves a great deal of barracking, banter, gamesmanship and accusations of cheating and, in the case of the game in these photos, a fair deal of hubris too. The team on the right here, who had, in fairness, won once already, had been ahead in this game too, but are now on the point of losing.

You can find the rules here. Andy will be disappointed to find that ‘kubbs that right themselves due to the momentum of the impact are considered knocked down’ since that happened to him and, despite his quite correct insistence, we overruled him and let the offending kubb stay upright. Disappointed is probably the wrong word. Disgruntled, unsettled, indignant, might all be closer. Indignation is one of his strong suits, though, in truth, his bark is much worse than his bite. Once he knows the truth, we will never hear the end of it, that’s for sure.

During one of our late trips to the beach, I think on the same evening that I took this photo, we saw several seals popping above the surface briefly to watch us, watching them. I’ve seen seals along this coast before, but usually early in the mornings, and not by this relatively busy stretch of beach.

Carn Fadryn Clearing

It’s as sure as night following day, as predictable as a collapse of England’s top-order, as inevitable as unsettled weather during a British summer: the end of July finds us heading once more for Towyn Farm on the Llyn Peninsula to meet old friends for a brief holiday together. Rather less predictably, this year we arrived on the campsite first, in daylight, and in glorious sunny weather to boot. Having pitched the tent, we headed down to Porth Towyn for what became a staple of our stay: an evening on the beach.

The following day was Little S’s birthday, and so we left the plan for the day to him:

“Climb Birthday Hill and then go to the beach.”

Birthday Hill, or Carn Fadryn, as it is known to the locals, can generally be seen from the campsite, but that morning it was shrouded in cloud. Not a lone cloud moreover, but merely one of the many hulking bullies currently lurking threateningly across the entire sky. The forecast, however, was for improving weather, and by the time we’d driven the rather tortuous route round to the village of Garnfadryn, where we always park for our walk, the cloud was lifting although not yet clear of the summit.

The kids staged a snail race in the road, there being an astonishing number of snails about, no doubt enjoying the morning damp. A large Garden Snail, christened by the kids Usnail Bolt, was proclaimed the popular winner, despite the fact that the contestants all resolutely ‘ran’ in different directions.

The walk was, as ever, an absolute delight with the usual all round views.

And, if anything, an even better crop of Bilberries than those we’ve previously enjoyed.

We perhaps didn’t see quite as many butterflies as we normally do, but only because it was very dull still as we climbed. By the time we had reached the top the cloud had dispersed and we found a spot out of the wind to sit and enjoy the view.

Heather.

Bell Heather.

Very pale Bumblebee, not sure which kind.

Usnail Bolt.

The weather stayed fair and we did get down to the beach later for mass cricket, tennis and a bit of a swim. Is there a better way to spend a birthday?

A Short Stroll Along The Shore

With members of our little tribe now working or studying at four different schools we had a staggered back to school arrangement. The boys had a weeks more holiday left when I started back and had gone away to County Durham for some peace and quiet. (Peace and quiet for those of us left behind, obviously.)

On the Thursday afternoon, with the sun still beating down, TBH, A and I decided to get out for some fresh air. We didn’t go far. Just down to the Cove and then a little way along the shore.

 

The ladies decided to cool their feet in the channel, whilst I took a closer look at this rockfall…

 

Part of the charm of the outdoors is the way things change with the seasons and the weather and even the time of day. We’re well used to seeing the course of the channels in Morecambe Bay changing for example, we expect it, and the changes are frequent and sometimes quite dramatic, but I was bit taken-aback to find these large boulders and the matching scar where they had tumbled to the beach. The striking colour revealed is evidence of the haematite present, which was quarried nearby at Red Rake at the back of The Cove.

 

Apparently, I was missing out on shoals of tiny fish which were hurrying about in the shallow channel.

 

But there were bigger fish too, quite a few of them it seemed. We saw the splashes as they sprang from the water from time to time, and this heron..

 

…seemed to be finding rich pickings, when we weren’t disturbing his fishing.

 

I’ve cropped these already, they aren’t as sharp as I would like, but you can see a successful catch below.

 

It really was all wonderfully peaceful and not solely because the Dangerous Brothers were away terrorising their grandparents.

 

TBH and A headed home at this point, but I extended the saunter just a little by heading up Stankelt Road to Sharp’s Lot.

 

There’s a wilding apple tree there which seems to produce a lot of fruit every year. Last year I was bit late in visiting it. This year I was too, although at least there was still some fruit on the tree.

 

The apples are pretty tart, not as tooth-curlingly sharp as crab apples, but not really dessert apples. I imagine they’d be good for jam, but I’m only guessing really.

 

This year seemed to be a bumper year for hazelnuts. Certainly, the large tree which hangs over the bottom corner of our garden was shedding large quantities of nuts for a few weeks. Although many of the shells held disappointingly small kernels when you cracked them.

 

 

Acorn.

Sloes.

Another autumn has passed without my fulfilling my regular promise to myself to make some sloe gin. I don’t like gin at all (something to do with drinking it in inappropriate measures in the dim and distant past, perhaps) but I do enjoy sloe gin. And I suppose that’s the problem – if I make some, I’ll only end up drinking it, which is probably not advisable.

Towyn Farm, Tudweiliog – Mostly Sunsets

A bit of an annual ritual this, or two in fact, first going to Towyn Farm on the Llyn Peninsula for our camping get-together, to start the summer, and then blogging about it, usually somewhere nearer to the end of the summer. This was our eighth trip in nine years – I suppose recommendations don’t come much higher than that.

The gratuitous fry-up picture? Well – the weather was scorching, at least to begin with, and almost all of the cooking happened outside. As usual, I was extremely methodical in the run-up to our trip and had made and frozen both a chilli and a Bolognese sauce to bring with us. Shame I left them in the freezer at home. Never mind – we managed.

 

All the usual stuff happened – digging and stuff, swimming, snorkelling, crabbing, beach cricket and tennis, messing around in our inflatable dinghy. I didn’t see as much this year snorkelling as I have before, not sure why, a few crabs, one of them a spider crab, a few small fish, but to be honest just the colour and variety and motion of the seaweeds is enough to bewitch me. Rubber rings seem to have become a firm favourite – keeping the kids happy in the sea seemingly for hours on end. Throwing a Frisbee, and even sometimes catching it too, was also a big favourite this year.

 

Later in the week, there was even some good body-surfing to be had, which is unusual at Porth Towyn, at least when we’ve been there.

 

‘Little’ S always has his birthday whilst we’re away. Can’t be bad. Here he is enjoying a well chosen gift. I’ve actually posted about S and his affection for bubbles before. I was surprised to find that was four years ago.

 

Sunsets are always a feature when we’re camping at Towyn. I made a bit more of an effort to take photos this year. They don’t compare to the real thing, but here’s a sample….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One evening a few of us watched the sunset from the cliff-top (there were people still swimming, I wished I was one of them) and then walked along the coast path out to a point. The orange glow along the horizon was in some ways even more enjoyable than the more spectacular sunset had been…

A couple more posts to come about our holiday – we didn’t neglect Carn Fadryn for example, and we managed to squeeze in a trip to a castle.

Aldingham, Roa Island and Piel Island

We’ve spent our last couple of Whit weeks visiting with our good friends down in Herefordshire, so it seemed only right to invite them for a reciprocal visit. It was a much anticipated staycation for us: having been treated to a wide variety of days-out in their neck of the woods, we were excited to share the delights on our own doorstep and there had been long-running debates about which of our favourite outings we would choose.

High in the children’s top five was a trip to Mega Zone in Morecambe: essentially, running around in a dark room shooting each other with ‘lasers’. For some reason they seemed to think that, in particular, our friend Andy would be thrilled with the prospect of playing at soldiers. It was almost as if they think he’s a big kid at heart*.

Anyway, we’d been a couple of times this year already and I think our kids were hoping for a rainy day as an excuse to go again. They were duly rewarded on the first day of the visit (wet Wednesdays being something of a tradition for these ‘exchange’ weeks). All was going well until Little S ran around a corner into his sister’s ‘laser’ and split his lip rather badly. The cut crossed his vermillion border (the edge of his lip – something I learned from the whole sorry episode) which meant plastic surgery in Preston for Little S on the Thursday. I went with him and it was a very long day, but – they did do a terrific job and you have to look to find the scar now.

All of which meant that, for me, it felt like the holiday only really got started in earnest on the Friday. It was another rather gloomy day, but a bit of a cracker none the less. We went to Aldingham first. I’ve since found a list of Cumbria’s Top Ten Beaches, in which Aldingham comes in at Number 8. Mind you, Arnside is number 5 and Grange Over Sands is number 9, and neither of those places has any discernable beach. You can see that Cumbria is hardly blessed with miles of golden strands. The picture gives a reasonable impression of what Aldingham beach is like: a strip of pebbles and then miles of Morecambe Bay mud, with a distant view of Heysham Nuclear Power Station. We enjoyed it even so: building towers with the larger pebbles, having a brew and a picnic and making several feeble attempts to start a fire with driftwood and dried seaweed.

Next stop was Roa island, to catch the small ferry across the channel to Piel Island.

 

TBF is caught looking at the camera….

 

…but everyone else seems to be practising their Synchronised Looking-Away.

But the Dangerous Brothers** can be relied upon for a thumbs up!

We walked around the island. It doesn’t take long. There were eider ducks just off the shore and oystercatchers picking around in the pebbles.

There was a grim tide line of bleached crab shells and limbs…

 

We wondered for a while about the cause of this phenomenon, but decided in the end that, rather than some mass extinction event, this was the result of the sheer numbers of crabs in the sea hereabouts and the lightness of the hollow remains which would all float up to mark the limit of the highest recent tide.

 

I’m always impressed by plants I haven’t seen before. I thought these very large leaved cabbagey  clumps might be sea kale, because they look a bit like kale and they’re growing in a shingle beach. Having consulted the ‘Wildflower Key’, I’m pretty confident that I was right.

 

In ‘Food for Free’, Richard Mabey suggests eating young shoots, or stems which have been growing underground (they will push up through three feet of shingle apparently). He suggests cooking the stems for 20 minutes, which perhaps explains why I found Kale so unappetising when I tried it a while back, since I didn’t cook it for anything like that long, and it was as tough as old boots – or, actually, a great deal tougher than your average modern hiking boot. (Whinge, moan etc etc…) (To be fair my current pair are still doing well, although some of the stitching is looking a bit tatty. I’m told that I have very wide feet and that’s why I destroy boots.)

Piel Island is a bit of a miniature classic. It’s tiny, but it has a pub, you can camp there, and there’s a castle:

 

That bit of handrail visible on the Keep is a tease since it hints that it might be possible to get up there, but the stairs are locked and barred. There are many more photos of the castle (and some of its history) from our last visit here.

 

On the return journey, the boys win the ‘Looking Away’ competition. The Junior Sherpa makes a silent prayer for safe passage.

 

The Beach Funsters return on a separate sailing, no doubt discussing the optimum number of fleeces to pack for our seaside camp in July. Thirty-seven.

We returned to Aldingham for a barbecue on the beach and then yoyoed back to Roa Island for low tide, because the rock-pooling at Roa Island on a sufficiently low tide is second to none.

If Andy wasn’t in his element at Mega Zone, he certainly was now. To some people ‘Crabman’ is a character in the hit US comedy ‘My Name Is Earl’, but for me, it’s an ideal alternative nickname for The Shandy Sherpa.

If there are crabs to be found on a beach, Andy will find them, catch them, play with their pincers in an all too cavalier fashion and stockpile them in a bucket. On Roa Island, you don’t turn over rocks wondering whether there will be a crab underneath, but how many there will be. And the answer is always: ‘Lots’.

An edible crab. I think that this is the, apparently docile, crab which, when placed in a container with numerous shore crabs, proceeded to crush and splinter their carapaces with its claws. Oops.

There were hundreds of shore crabs. Also this gorgeous butterfish….

 

….starfish and brittle stars….

 

It had finally begun to brighten up a little.

Piel Island.

A hermit crab bathed in a late evening glow.

The ferry.

I think that this is a three-bearded rockling, because it was ‘pinkish orange’ and its head has three barbels as you can see in the picture, and just as the field guide specifies. If I’m right, we were lucky to find it as it is ‘Mostly sub-littoral but sometimes found in pools on lower shore.’ It can grow to 50cm in length, but this was much smaller than that.

 

‘We’ll just turn over one more rock – who knows what we might find?’

We’ve already planned our next visit to Roa Island. And it’s not at all unlikely that we’ll be back at Piel Island and/or Aldingham again this summer.

Pictures from our last rock-pooling visit to Roa Island here.

*A Big Kid

He is. So am I. Is there any other way to be? Mega Zone was fantastic. Was, sadly, since it has subsequently had a large fire.

Slideshow here, courtesy of The Lancaster Guardian, of fire-fighters tackling the blaze.

**The Dangerous Brothers

This is Andy’s sobriquet for our boys, but, alarmingly, they have begun to refer to themselves this way too.

Castle Rising and Cromer

Back in August…

“Hang on, did you say ‘Back in August’?”

Yes, I know – hardly current. However, needs must when the devil drives. TBH is working full time, work seems to expand exponentially….blogging time is in short supply. Expect short posts. Intermittently. At best.

Anyway. We had a week in Cromer on the North Norfolk coast with my Mum and Dad and my brother and his family. Very nice it was too. So here’s a very partial account……

We’d been in Lincoln for a family party and called in at Castle Rising on the surprisingly long drive down to Cromer. There were re-enactors busy re-enacting everything from battles between the Iceni and the Romans to….err, battles between the redcoats and French. We liked this diddy Centurion….

 

….who looked oddly familiar.

Even in the middle of summer, the North Norfolk coast has miles of almost empty beaches…

 

And cliff-tops thronged with butterflies….

 

Some sort of skipper?

 

A gatekeeper.

We had an unsuccessful afternoon’s crab fishing off the pier. We saw somebody catch a large eel in his crab net – a bit more than he bargained for I think. We did find large crab and lobster shells and pincers on the beach. Shellfish seems to be something of a culinary speciality of the area, so much so that even I felt beholden to pluck up the courage to try lobster, crab and crayfish. Enjoyed it too.

The weather wasn’t too bad. The company was great. I’d go back tomorrow, if I could.