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?

Towyn Farm Again

The DB’s enjoying Andy’s paddle board.

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.

The Unattended Moment

The Bay from Castlebarrow, late evening.

Millennium Bridge over The Lune, Lancaster.

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.

Tide is High

Arnside Tower.

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 and Mynydd Cilan

Serious surfers. 

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.

Turnstones on Roa Island

Male Eider.

Turnstone (non-breeding plumage).

Edible Crab.

Sea Spider.

Butterfish.

Broad-clawed Porcelain Crab.

Chiton (possibly Lepidochitona cinerea).

Starfish…

…walking.

Snot?

Herring Gull.

Juvenile Herring Gull (probably).

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.

Towyn Farm – Early Morning Strolls II

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.

Towyn Farm – Early Morning Strolls I

Our days in North Wales sound found a regular rhythm – late to rise, leisurely breakfast, a few hours on the beach, back for lunch, return to the beach late afternoon, late tea, late to bed. This seemed to work quite well and the kids slept in OK, but once the sun gets on the canvas I inevitably wake and want to be up and about. So I added my own quiet prelude to each day – a solitary stroll along the coastal path and the lanes. We had bikes with us and sometimes I used my bike to extend the range of my short excursions.

The first of these walks began with blue sky overhead and mist all around. Mist bedecked webs glittered all along the fence. I assumed that the mist would soon burn off, but instead it would clear only to roll in again, the view appearing and disappearing with the whims of the mist.

One of the delights of these walks was the abundance of bird life, mainly sea-birds and ‘lbj’s. I’m not very confident with identifying either. Is this, for example, a juvenile greenfinch as the sturdy beak suggests (but where’s the greeny-yellow wing bar?) or a female house sparrow? (but if so why is such a gregarious bird all alone?).

There’s certain wildlife I’ve come to associate with our trips to the Llyn Peninsula. One is the choughs which we saw on the grassy ‘cliffs’ when we were on the beach. Another is the labyrinth spider Agelena labyrinthica. We’d seen webs, but not spiders, on the gorse bushes on the lower slopes of Carn Fadryn, now I found many more webs on the gorse bushes on the cliff-top.

I have an idea that this rather round bodied spider is the female and a more skinny body…

…might belong to a male. But I don’t know why I think that.

The mist flagged up the extent to which the gorse was blanketed with gossamer…

…with orb webs as well as the labyrinth type…

Incidentally, the mini-Fuji in the background is Carn Fadryn.

At the end of the peninsula Yr Eifl and its neighbours stood out above the mist…

…but was soon curtained off again.

Meadow Brown

Another lbj…

…a sedge warbler?

My friend J, (the Adopted Yorkshirewoman) a gardener, had asked me about the abundant purple flowers in the hedgerows, or actually more often in the ditches. “Purple-loosestrife” I confidently told her.

But I wanted to be sure that I was telling her right, so I took photos of leaves and stem for identification purposes and discovered that the stem is square sectioned and hairy with a red rib on each corner…

..which pleased me at least.

I’ve subsequently discovered that…

Close examination of the flowers shows that although those of any one plant are the same, they may differ from plant to plant. Different plants may have any one of three sorts of flower, which vary in the position of their male and female parts (stamens and stigmas). The stigma may project beyond the sepal tube, it may be level with the tips of the sepals, or it may be hidden inside. Each of the two whorls of stamens also vary in position. A bee feeding on nectar of one sort of flower will receive a dusting of pollen on two parts of its tongue from the two whorls of stamens. This pollen will be in the right positions to be brushed onto the stigmas of the two other sorts of flower when the bee visits them. This arrangement makes sure that the flowers of one plant are fertilised only by pollen from another of the same species, ensuring the vigour of the species.

..which is also rather wonderful.

This bird….

…led me a merry dance, hopping about at the back of one of the local broad humped ‘hedges’.

A whitethroat?

..and his mate?

Dry dock!

Another lbj. This one surely is a sparrow, which must make the first a greenfinch?

Another plant the AYW asked about was this small blue flower, sometimes forming quite dense clumps and providing lots of colours in the hedges. I couldn’t put name to it at the time, but after some fairly torturous research I’m now confident that it’s sheep’s-bit.

It’s common in the South of England and Wales apparently which is perhaps why, resident in the red and white rose counties, the AYW and I are not familiar with it.

Another gatekeeper.

Red admiral.

Bindweed.

 

I think that this little corker might be a cinquefoil, but I far from confident, and if it is I don’t know which.

I thought that I might dispense with all of my early morning strolls from Towyn Farm in one post but clearly I had forgotten just how absorbing that first walk was.

Agelena labyrinthica

Last week we were in Wales, a fourth holiday at Towyn Farm campsite on the Llyn Peninsula, but I took very few photographs – chiefly because we spent much of our time on the beach and I’m not sure that my camera is robust enough to survive days on the beach. In the rock-pools we found fat green blennies, a thin black shoe-lace which turned out to be a fish, a couple of flat fish and lots of crabs and shrimps. B found a dead spider-crab floating in the surf and he and I found a mermaid’s purse, a shark’s egg-case, in a large rock-pool. One evening we saw a well-preserved dog-fish washed up at the tide-line, and every day the beach was littered with jelly-fish.

We were camping with friends and one morning we set off to climb Carn Fadyrn. The lower slopes of the hill are a purple and yellow patchwork of heather and low-growing gorse. The gorse was covered in webs, each one silvered with rainwater, and each having in the centre a tunnel with a resident labyrinth spider – agelena labyrinthica. Labyrinth because, apparently, down in the central tunnel there are actually several tunnels where the eggs are concealed.

The kids all coped admirably with the climb, even S who I had had my doubts about.

A snack and a rest en route.

We lunched together at the top…

…and enjoyed the fabulous views…

Looking down the peninsula.

Before the boys’ determination to clamber over every rock they could find…

…prompted a return to the cars below

We eventually headed for the beach when most people would have been thinking about leaving. There was virtually no wind, and only tiny waves, and the sea was incredibly clear. It was full moon, or there abouts, and the tide was very low. Some of us swam out round some exposed reefs of rock. A friend lent me a mask and snorkel and I was amazed at the variety, number and in some cases size of the fish I saw.

As the tide came in we had a barbecue on the beach and watched the sun go down over the sea.

Later in the week, when numbers had dwindled, we drove west to the end of the peninsula.

Looking out to Bardsey Island.

My camera helped to confirm that the small flock of corvids we saw were indeed choughs. (Poor photos, but clearly red legs.)

Tintagel

On our drive down in the car we had listened to tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table so an early visit to Tintagel seemed appropriate. Our visit to began with a picnic in the garden of the old post office, our second picnic in the garden of a National Trust property that week since we had stopped at Mosley Old Hall on the way down. The ‘old post office’ is actually a 14th Century farmhouse. We really appreciated the sheltered garden because there was a very bitter wind blowing.

There isn’t a great deal left to see at Tintagel Castle and what there is, is medieval; so very old, but not far enough back to be the birth place of the legend, although there was something here before apparently. The setting is fantastic though.

The tide was in, so we didn’t get to visit Merlin’s Cave which disappointed the boys who I think fully expected to find a dragon in residence.

The Castle Garden.

 

After two years of fruitlessly waving my camera around and taking photos of empty sky, I finally caught a bird in flight!