No trip to Towyn is complete without an ascent of Birthday Hill. This time we were a little early for Little S’s big day, but, as ever, it was a great sociable walk.
The view along the Llyn Peninsula from Carn Fadryn.
As usual, we sat on the top for an age, enjoying the amazing all-round views.
A good spot to wait for the slow coaches (like me).
On our way down, we passed a young family with small kids who seemed to be enjoying their walk. I wondered whether they would be back again when the kids were towering over their parents like the DBs do.
Porth Towyn pano.
With the sun actually shining, and a bit of accompanying warmth, a trip to the beach was the obvious follow up. We squeezed in the usual favourites: swimming, body-boarding, tennis, chucking stuff at other stuff and beach cricket; although, sadly, the standard of fielding has noticeably declined over the years. I think it might have been the next morning when I finally got around to a snorkel, but the water was very cloudy.
TBF body-boarding.The Prof taking it all in.The DBs playing beach tennis.A highly competitive match of chucking things at other things.
The Eternal Weather Optimist has been living in symbiosis with his famous green fleece since at least the mid-80s, rather like the ecosystem of algae, fungi, moths, and insects which survive in the fur of sloths. Although, admittedly, he moves a good deal faster than your average sloth. Unlike me.
This is obviously Boules for the old and infirm, with the ‘cochonnet‘ within falling distance.
This might seem a bit rich coming from me, ridiculing my old friends just because they would have as good a chance of reaching the jack by holding their boule above their head and falling flat on their face in the sand, but these folk are all older than me*, I bring the youthful zest to the party! I can chuck a boule more than a couple of yards at least. Even if I have undermined my argument somewhat by using imperial units. *Well, a bit older anyway. Aside from the EWO, but I’m not as old as his fleece, so that’s okay.
A large hovering raptor. A Buzzard?
Later, back at the tents, there was a good deal of excitement about a bird of prey which was hovering above the cliffs. It was clearly much too big to be a Kestrel, which is the obvious first thought in this situation. My expertise was called upon and then immediately called into question when I suggested that it was probably a Buzzard. But they do hover, honest. Not as proficiently as Kestrels, but they can do it.
Sunset from Porth Towyn.
Later still, we had a late wander down to the beach, another staple of our trips. I think this was the evening when we tried to throw some frisbees around in a very strong wind, without much accuracy, or catching.
A late trip to the beach.
Little S and I decided to go rock-pooling in near darkness. Our rock-pooling was never very successful on this trip, but we did find a good-sized Shore Crab. It was very dark and the photo was taken with flash.
A large Shore Crab.
The next day, we were heading home, but still managed to fit in some swimming and a little more fruitless rockpooling before we needed to pack up.
Rockpools and seaweed.Rockpool colour.Seaweed.Little S.B heading back to help pack up our tent.
A short trip, with some very mixed weather, but our trips to the Llyn Peninsula are always good value. Roll on next summer!
The first time we made what was to become our annual pilgrimage to the Llyn Peninsula to get our summer holiday kick-started, in 2006, the kids were toddlers. In fact, Little S wasn’t born until the following year. One of the many happy consequence of having our young brood with us, were early morning walks for me with one or other of the the boys in a baby carrier. The walks were always a great opportunity to see a bit of nature, particularly seals. I would invariably walk along the coastal path for a while and then turn back. Thus summer, I was feeling nostalgic about those early morning outings, and although I’m not so good at early starts these days, on the Monday morning I managed to walk along the coast a little and be back for a late breakfast. Since the weather had turned grotty when I’d turned right along the coast the previous day, I wanted to try that way again. And because the path had been initially very churned up, I decided to return along the minor lane and then take the track back to Porth Ysgaden where I’d turned back the day before.
As soon as was on the lane I met a large, black beetle and a hairy caterpillar.
Unidentified Beetle.A hairy caterpillar. Maybe an Oak Eggar Moth caterpillar?
There were lots of Gatekeepers enjoying the sunshine in the hedgerows.
Gate-keeper Butterfly.
And where the hedge was gorse bushes, there were myriad small webs, most with a tiny spider in its centre.
Araneus diadematus – Garden Spider.
Because the spiders were so small, it was difficult to get either my ‘birding’ camera or my phone to focus on them. I thought perhaps I’d stumbled on some new-to-me small species of spider, but now that I’ve cropped some photos and had a proper look at them, I think they’re bog-standard, but none-the-less handsome Garden Spiders, Araneus diadematus.
A wide verge – Purple Loosestrife and Meadow Sweet.Porth Ysgaden.
From Porth Ysgaden, the strip of land along the coast, which the path runs through, belongs to The National Trust. I remembered it as being a really pleasant stretch to walk, and I wasn’t wrong.
West along the coast.Silverweed.Silverweed runners.
Silverweed is a common plant which is easy to find close to home, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it looking as vigorous as it did along this stretch of grassland. The surface was matted with its scarlet runners. Apparently, Silverweed was once prized for its starchy tuber, which is good to eat, but I’ve read that it’s not wise to introduce it in your garden because it will take over, which I can well believe.
Another coastal view.
I followed the clifftop as closely as possible and kept getting tantalising views of a pair of corvids which I thought must be Choughs. Birds from the crow family often seem to take particular joy in their acrobatic displays in flight, and this pair of birds were swooping across the cliff faces and zawns with what looked like glee.
Porth Gwylan
I was really taken with Porth Gwylan. If I’ve been this far along the coast before, then I don’t remember it. A long arm of rock forms a natural harbour. There were small whitecaps in the sea, but the water in the Porth was completely calm. I thought this might be an interesting place to come snorkelling at some point.
A Chough.
The Choughs (or some Choughs at least) reappeared and stationed themselves at the end of the ‘harbour arm’, preening each other and generally looking right at home.
Choughs.A view from the furthest reach of my walk, near Porth Ychain.
I would have loved to carry on: it seems crazy that, in all of our many visits over the years, I’ve never been a little down the coast to the long beach of Traeth Penllech or to the headland above it, Penrhyn Melyn, which I imagine is a wonderful viewpoint.
Having turned back, I decided to walk on the opposite side of the strip of coastal grassland, away from the sea, and by the low mounded hedge and the fence. This turned out to be a great idea, since, now that I wasn’t busy watching the sea, I discovered that this little patch of heath was thronging with birds.
Thrift which has gone over. Carn Fadryn behind.Juvenile Stonechat.
A whole family of Stonechats were bobbing about in a thicket of brambles. I have some out-of-focus shots of an adult male, but only this juvenile posed for long enough for me to get some half decent photos.
Starlings?
The fields beyond the hedge were busy with some quite large flocks of brown birds, which would periodically take to the wing, but then, on some unheard signal, all settle together in the vegetation in the field and disappear.
Starlings?
I think that they were juvenile Starlings, but that’s a tentative guess. As you can see, this particular field was dotted with blue flowers…
Mystery blue flowers.
They look a little like Chicory flowers, but Chicory is a tall plant, and these definitely weren’t tall. From what I’ve read, it seems that a number of flowering plants are being used as green manure in fallow fields, so this may not even be a native British species anyway.
Meadow Pipit?
I’m still pretty rubbish at identifying LBJs, but I assume that this is a Meadow Pipit. There were quite a few of these about, but I’d only managed to get some very distant photos, before this one decided to pose for me on a fencepost, with a wriggly green grub in its beak.
Meadow Pipit?Porth Gwylan, the hills in the background are Yr Eifl and its neighbours.Pipits?
Back at Porth Ysgaden, I watched several more LBJs hopping about on the rocks. Because they were on the rocks, I naively assumed that they were Rock Pipits, but it now seems likeliest that they were more Meadow Pipits. A lovely interlude. Next time, which will be next summer, all things being equal, I need to make it a little further down the coast. Maybe I should investigate public transport options so that I don’t have to walk out and back. Ultimately, of course, I would like to walk the entire coast path around the peninsula, that would be a treat.
As always, our summer holiday began with a trip to meet old friends at the Towyn Farm campsite near Tudweiliog on the Llyn Peninsula. The forecast for the weekend was diabolical and I tried very hard to persuade TBH that we should make a last minute booking of a cottage in nearby Morfa Nefyn, but she stood firm – we should camp. This is a complete reversal of our normal attitudes – usually I’m the more enthusiastic camper. Once again we had problems fitting our detachable towbar (to be avoided at all costs) and without B’s patient repeated attempts, I’m not sure we would have ever got it into place. At least I didn’t injure myself with it this year. Eighteen months on from that debacle, the sensation in my finger has returned, the persistent pain has mostly gone, and my nail looks almost right. We were very late leaving, as ever, but that at least meant that when we arrived, although it was dark, the torrential rain had slackened to a drizzle. We’re a well practised team when it comes to putting the tent up. We even managed the awning in the dark, which seemed wise given that the Saturday was predicted to be very wet.
Common Restharrow.
In the event, the weather could have been worse. In the afternoon we even had some blue sky.
Porth Towyn and blue sky!
Beach games ensued. I think most of us had a swim at some point too. Not Uncle Fester though, you can see he remained well wrapped up…
Mölky in full swing.
On the Sunday, the weather was a bit mixed. I had a walk one way along the coast with a small subset of our party.
A ‘secret beach’ or Porth Cae Coch.New signs…Were everywhere. A primary school project?‘Secret’ Porths.Common Restharrow again.Along the coast.Spiny Spider-crab shell.
I wonder how this empty crab shell ended-up on the clifftop?
A view to Carn Fadryn.
Later I went the other way on my own.
Porth Towyn.
I’d been warned that the coastal path in that direction was horrendously muddy. A large herd of sheep were grazing on the clifftop and, between them and the wet July weather, the path was pretty churned up.
Gorse Shieldbug, final instar nymph. And Labyrinth Spider, Agelena labyrinthica.
But I’m glad I went that way, because, as ever, I was fascinated by the Agelena labyrinthica spiders lurking in their webs on the gorse, and whilst attempting to photograph one of them I spotted this colourful Gorse Shieldbug, a new species to me. I shall be keeping my eye open for them in future, the adults come in two different colour forms, green in the spring and darker with a little red and purple in late summer.
Porth Ysglaig. (I think).Porth Llydan.
Of course, when I reached the point on my walk when I was furthest from the campsite, the weather turned nasty.
A new waymarked route.
I shall have to try this route on out next visit. I walked the northern part of the circuit, but used the lane back to Towyn to cut it short and miss Tudweiliog itself.
Porth Ysgaden.It’s a sign!Small Blood-vein Moth.
The white-washed toilet block on the campsite is small for a campsite facility, but large for a moth-trap. It’s a reliably good place to see moths. I’m usually a bit circumspect about taking photos in there, for obvious reasons, but I guess I must have had the building to myself when I took this one.
We’d survived, even enjoyed, the wet weekend, and better was to come.
Edit.
WordPress has started to suggest tags to me as I publish a post. Generally, they seem to be wildly inappropriate. Here is what was suggested for this post…
Which I offer in the spirit of a round from “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”* (surely one of the funniest radio programmes ever?): can you see the connections between this disparate bunch of tags and my tale of a wet weekend in North Wales? I had to look three of them up, and I’m still not really any the wiser about two of those.
* Funniest radio programmes ever:
Hancock’s Half Hour
I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue
Cabin Pressure
Old Harry’s Game
Round The Horne
Oh dear, a top five with no room for Brass Eye, The Day Today, Clare in the Community, The News Quiz, Just a Minute, The Now Show or Dead Ringers. I can see I shouldn’t have started this. Feel free to play along. Or not.
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?
Many people, I know, look for novelty in their holiday destinations, fresh experiences, new kicks. I’m not immune to the pleasures of variety, but I do think it’s essential to have some regular fixtures through the year to look forward to. One of the principal milestones in our year is our annual camping trip, with a host of old friends, to Towyn Farm near Tudweiliog on the north coast of the Llyn peninsula .
This year we went for a few days. The weather over the weekend, particularly on the Saturday, was pretty poor. We still got down to the beach eventually, on both days, although these photos are from the Sunday, when it did brighten up for a while at least.
Beach Kubb.
I often find myself, when writing-up our Towyn trip, bemoaning the fact that I haven’t taken any photos of the principal joys of the holiday, so this year I made more of an effort. I still somehow managed to miss the beach cricket and the kite-flying, and shamefully my photos only feature some of the friends who were with us, probably because some only joined us for the weekend, when the weather was poor. I think at its peak our group stretched to thirteen. I could be wrong, I ran out of fingers to count on. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone, that would be awful.
Edit: Beach Cricket! I did take a photo after all. We often played with a severe shortage of beach!
The Kubb game seen above was Old Gits versus Young ‘Uns. The OGs won eventually (skill will out), but the most memorable aspect of the game was Andy’s adoption of a series of bizarre mascots – shells, stones, and clumps of seaweed were all enlisted to offer us moral support. The DBs seem to be doing their Stan Laurel impressions, I’m not sure why. The third player in the youth team is A. Not our daughter A, but B’s girlfriend A, who inconveniently shares a name with his sister. Our A was off in Massachusetts working at a holiday camp, dodging bears and thunderstorms and making lots of friends. Although actually, at that time I think she was isolating with Covid.
A and B having a quiet moment.Beach Boules.The DBs body-boarding.
We usually do a fair bit of snorkelling from the beach at Towyn. This year I only went out once, at the end of the trip, and by then the choppy seas were full of seaweed and sand and it was impossible to see much of anything. I should have tried sooner, but was trying to keep a dressing dry. Usually, it’s the DBs who manage to injure themselves and require a trip to A&E, but this summer it was me: I dropped our detachable towbar on my finger, which made a bit of a mess. It’s recovering slowly, but even six weeks later is still swollen and sore. With one index finger out of action, my typing capacity is down by fifty percent!
As ever, sitting around and nattering was a big part of the trip. You can see how warm is was from TBFs swaddling of duvet and blankets.
My Dad likes to offload surplus camping gear on to me, and, during one of my recent trips to Lincoln, had given me this very handy box BBQ, which, despite folding down very small, doubled up as an effective fire-pit. Thanks Dad!
Little S, t’other A and B. The Three Stooges?
You might think that Little S has his hood up to keep his ears warm, but more than likely he was hiding his haircut. Just before we went away, he’d been to a Turkish barbers and his description of the haircut he wanted must have been lost in translation, resulting in a classic pudding bowl trim. He looked like he’d been auditioning for a part in a new series of Brother Cadfael, or for Jim Carrey’s stunt-double in Dumb and Dumber, or maybe for the part of Moe Howard in a remake of the Three Stooges.
B, the Eternal Weather Optimist, The Adopted Yorkshirewoman, the Shandy Sherpa, and Grandfather Sheffield.
We did get out on a couple of short walks (posts to follow, obviously) but the scenery around the camp-site is not too shabby.
The sunsets weren’t as spectacular as they occasionally have been in the past, but it’s still always nice to have a wander to the clifftops, or down to the beach to watch the sun dip into the Irish Sea.
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
Daffodils at Far Arnside.
High water in the bay again.
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
The view from Park Point. With added whitecaps.
Looking to Grange-Over-Sands.
Looking south along the coast.
River Kent from Arnside Knott. Lake district hills lost in cloud.
River Lune. Ruskin’s view.
St. Mary’s Kirkby Lonsdale.
The Bay from Castlebarrow.
Arnside Tower.
Whitbarrow from Arnside Knott.
The River Kent from Arnside Knott again.
The bay and Humphrey Head from Arnside Knott.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
Looking south along the coast.
Sunset from Emesgate Lane.
These last two images are actually videos. I don’t think they’ll work, because I’m too tight to fork out for a premium account. But click on the pictures and that should take you to the relevant flickr page where you can hear the sound of the wind and the breaking waves, some of the many voices of the sea, should you wish.
The photos here are mostly from the ‘leap day’ weekend at the end of February and the start of March, except for the first which is from earlier that week.
The quotations are all from ‘The Dry Salvages’, which is the third of T.S.Elliot’s Four Quartets. To be honest, I stumbled across it when looking for something about the sea – or so I thought. It turns out, what I was really looking for was that passage about ‘the distraction fit’, ‘the unattended moment’. I’m sure I’ve read the poem before, but I’ve never been struck so forcibly by this section as I was on this occasion.
I remember trying to capture something like this idea in a post way back in the early days of the blog. Perhaps, in some ways, it’s always the ‘unattended moment’ I’m writing about, or seeking when I go out for yet another walk, or crawl around taking yet more photographs of orchids, or of leaves, waves, clouds etc when I have thousands of images of exactly those things already.
It seems entirely appropriate to me that Elliot’s examples of ‘distractions’ should end with music – anyone who’s been to a gig, or clubbing, with me and watched me throwing my ample, uncoordinated frame around, grinning like a loon, might have caught me in one of those moments, if they weren’t too lost in the music and the moment themselves. But equally, they might have shared a moment like that during a wild day in the hills, when, despite, or perhaps because of, adverse conditions, our enthusiasm bubbled over into unexplained laughter and broad smiles; equally I think of a few ‘wild’ swims which sparked the same kind of happy absorption, or quiet moments around a beach bonfire. I’m heaping up examples because I can’t really put my finger on what I’m driving at, but I know it when I feel it.
Usually happens when the horns come in during this tune, for example.
Another January weekend and another three walk day. First an early circuit of Middlebarrow and Eaves Wood.
Later, Jack Scout and Jenny Brown’s Point.
Cow’s Mouth.
The tide was high, and unusually, there were even some small waves.
I remember standing behind a rock trying in vain to photograph the mass of Oystercatchers which were perched on the remaining stub of the old land reclamation wall which wasn’t submerged. Since I was using my cameraphone, that was always doomed to failure.
Although the water was still high, it had clearly been higher still and there was plenty of evidence that the salt-marsh had been inundated.
I often take photos of posters advertising events which interest me, hoping that they will serve as a reminder and spur me on to get out and attend.
In this case, Little S and I went and the talk was absolutely fascinating. S gave a short talk of his own at the start about his fund-raising for the jamboree he hopes to go to in Bangladesh in a couple of years. He did really well, and what’s more, the assembled members of the Horticultural Society were incredibly generous.
One last walk to report that day, but only up the hill to a neighbour’s house. He’d had surgery a little while before and was getting stir-crazy convalescing. I took a game with me…
…which my brother had bought us for Christmas. As ever, it was a great choice and I really enjoyed playing.
My photos from the following day, a Sunday, are all of the sunset, taken at The Cove. I assume that the weather had been poor and only cleared up late on.
Some tunes:
Maybe not what you were expecting? I remember this cover version was released as a single which was given away free with the NME. I think the other side was their cover of ‘Eight Miles High’ which is brilliant. I still have it. Somewhere. I saw Hüsker Dü at the International in Manchester. That gig has the dubious distinction of being the loudest I have ever been to. (That is, way too loud). Even louder than The Clash at the De Montfort in Leicester, which made my friend M’s ears bleed.
And then, because this maybe is what I lead you to expect…
Hell’s Mouth, or Porth Neigwl, is a huge beach in the south-western corner of the peninsula. Unlike Porth Towyn, where we spend much of our time on these trips, Hell’s Mouth is exposed to the prevailing westerlies and has Proper Surf and is therefore patronised by Proper Surfers. We were there for a walk, on a very windy day. At the sight of the large rollers, B’s eyes lit-up. Next time we visit, we’ll have to come back and let him play in the waves. To be fair, he’s not the only one who will enjoy it.
Happy Hikers.
For today though, we were making a circuit on the breezy headland of Mynydd Cilan.
Hell’s Mouth.
A hardy Painted Lady – I’m not sure how butterflies cope with the winds.
The hill on the far side of the bay is Mynydd Rhiw. One for a future trip.
Carn Fadryn and Garn Bach on the right.
At some point, we managed to get a little of the beaten path and found ourselves bashing through bracken and prickly low-growing gorse. Somebody, I think it was TBH, practically stepped on a snake. Sadly, I didn’t see it, so no photograph, I’m afraid.
I may have missed the snake, but I did spot this little chap, hurrying across the sand as we were almost back to our charabancs. I think this is the caterpillar of the Fox Moth. I’ve seen them before in the hills – for example in Greenburn Bottom after climbing Helm Crag, or on Rolling End more than 10 years ago now. But apparently they are very widespread and coastal grasslands are another of their favoured habitats.
Roa Island just keeps on giving and giving. Every visit throws up something new. This time both the wind and the water were perishingly cold and we didn’t find quite the same abundance as usual. Apart, that is, from B, who has an eagle eye for these things. Sea Spiders and Chitons are both new to me. Sea Spiders aren’t actually spiders, but do have an extraordinary resemblance, whilst Chitons are molluscs with eight overlapping plates. A found the Chiton – when she pointed it out in a shallow pool I assumed that what she’d seen was just a fragment of a seashell.
Whilst the others retired to the shelter of the car to eat their packed tea, I wandered back down to the end of the jetty and tried to capture images of flying gulls. Slightly quixotic behaviour, since the light was fading, and the gulls raced past downwind, but they were relatively stately when they flew back upwind so it wasn’t impossible.
Many of the stones we overturned were covered in eggs (or roe) of some kind. The roe, in turn, was often covered in Whelks. I couldn’t decided whether the Whelks were laying eggs or eating them. Several stones also had blobs of creamy white or emerald green…well, we’ve christened it ‘snot’, for want of any more accurate knowledge.
No doubt, we’ll be back again sometime this summer.
One morning I cycled down to the natural harbour of Porth Ysgaden and walked along the coast to Porth Gwylan, another, larger, natural harbour. Between the two, this rocky inlet, unnamed on the OS map, was home to many cormorants with two obvious, large and untidy nests and birds dotted about the cliffs.
Six-spot burnet moth.
Porth Gwylan
You can perhaps see a small speck in the water almost in the centre of the photo. It’s a grey seal. Sometimes one or two other seals would surface for a while, but this one stayed almost stationary, snout pointing upwards, apparently asleep. I went down to the shingle beach to get a closer view.
And even momentarily attracted the attention of the sleepy seal.
But not for long. I watched the seal for quite some time before heading back to the campsite.
“This is rock samphire isn’t it?” TBH asked.
“I’m not sure. It could be.”
She tasted it. “Yes, it is. You try it.”
So I did, reluctantly. It was foul – tasted like soap.
“It’s foul – my bit tastes like soap!” I said, between all the spitting and retching.
“Yep – so did mine.”
I made a special trip to photograph these tiny flowers, which I had seen several times on my way down to the beach, only to find that in the early-morning shade they weren’t open. I got them again later:
I’m pretty certain that it’s centaury, but I’m not sure which one.
Nearby another small pink flower…
…restharrow.
I think that this is a centaury again, growing much taller on the rocks where the sheep can’t get to crop it short. Judging by the rosette of narrow basal leaves it would say that it is seaside centaury, which I suppose makes sense.
Beating The Bounds 