Dragon Rambles

A couple of weekends ago, the sun was shining, I didn’t have to go in to work, had no previous engagements either, so I finally got to go back to the Gower. It was an early start as I had a 50 min train ride to Swansea, then about an hour out to my start point by bus.

I got to Oxwich Castle where I’d planned to start, had a snack and was ready to start my trek by 10:45. I knew my destination was Mumbles Head, specifically the pier at Mumbles but I had no idea how far it was in distance or in time. I figured that since it doesn’t get dark at the moment until after 9pm, that I should have plenty of time.

The trek started with a walk down to the sea and as I was starting up on a hill, I got tantalising glimpses of Oxwich Bay through the trees.

To get out to the coastal track I had to walk through a reserve that in no way looked like it was on the edge of dunes. Of course a lot of the dunes were completely overgrown with grasses, so they didn’t much look like dunes either to begin with. But eventually, I saw the sea, and the start of the coastal way I would be taking.

The start was deceptively easy getting around to the end of Oxwich Bay and facing the first cliff I had to climb. Don’t worry, there were tracks up behind the cliff face, it’s not as if I had to scale the rock face itself. But given what I could see of the steepness of the path and that most of it was sand underfoot, I knew it would be a hard slog.

And I was not wrong! But, oh the views from the top.

Once on top of the cliffs it was a nice easy walk along the top until having to clamber down to the next bay and up on top of the cliffs again. Here are some pics of the dreadful scenery I had to keep me company, what a bore

I passed a golf course, on top of a cliff with an almighty drop…

wonder how much of a penalty you get if it knocks out a sunbather.

And of course because the UK has plenty of history, there were ruins to admire.

Of course with any walk where you’ve never been before and when you keep the map in your pack and decide to just follow the paths that seem to go in the general direction (hey, I figured if I kept the sea to my right I couldn’t go toooo wrong), there will be the odd folly. Like in the picture below. I’d come down off one cliff, climbed up a very steep path from the bottom left corner, up to that  big white structure just below the middle of the saddle and down the path that ended on the bottom right corner. Now if I’d bothered to check the map, I would have known where the path went and I could have just waded across that streamlet.

Next I had to get back up to the top of the cliffs, and here’s the way I chose. Now, looking at the map, there were about 3 ways I could have chosen. This one was the hardest. And not even marked on my map as a path. Of course having just discovered my previous folly, you’d be excused for thinking I would check my map to see which way to go. Of course I didn’t! So there I went, and I am quite sure any of the beachgoers who looked up must have thought I was mad. But it wasn’t that bad. Sure the whole way up was on sand so it was a tad slippery. And yes a large portion of the ‘path’ was at  over a 60 deg angle. And I often felt like I was going to start dune surfing down. Minus the board.

And you can see by the picture why I tried it.  It really doesn’t look that steep from the bottom

But despite all the picking the hardest paths to take I got to my destination in one piece, and in just 7 hours.

If you want to see any more pics, I’ve uploaded some that I took here.

Halloween marked the start of a weekend away that I had been looking forward to for weeks. Two friends from work and myself were heading off to do some walking in Dartmoor. We stayed at Jo’s house Friday night and got a reasonably early start on the 1st. We got dropped off in the middle of Dartmoor somewhere before starting the walk back to the town where we had left the car. I think the walk was to be about 12 miles. Yes, I’m talking miles people. I’m learning to go with the flow ? For those still living in the metric world, I think 1 mile is about 1.7 km – do the maths yourself

When we got started the wind was cold. It pretty much just got colder. Although after a few hours we changed the direction we were walking in, so it wasn’t an icy wind straight into the ear anymore. We had lunch sheltering in the middle of a collection of very large boulders to try and get out of the wind. Didn’t work. I have to say it was the shortest lunch break I’ve ever had during a walk.

And because we were walking the first few hours off the trail, following some slightly vague directions, we got lost. Andreas managed to figure out where we were though after we climbed to the top of another great big hill so he could take out height on his handy little GPS and look around at the landmarks. Yay, we were saved! Hehehe.

You may be thinking at this point that we didn’t have a good day. You’d be wrong. I even had fun of walking through all the boggy ground. Jo and I fell over a lot, while Andreas with his walking poles had a much easier job of walking through. At one point either Jo or I were falling down almost every 2nd step. Sometimes we were laughing so hard we just couldn’t get up.

The views were so stark and lonely and often it felt like we were the only ones up there. We walked past ancient iron mines (or rather the spoil mounds that are left of them), ruins of ancient settlements and weird looking wildlife. Ok, ok, so cows aren’t quite wildlife, but they were black with a big white band around its middle. Never seen anything like it.

As we were coming to the end of the trip ready to walk back down off the moors, we were gifted with a gorgeous sunset. Of course like everything else I didn’t get a photo of this as the cold tricked my camera into thinking the battery was flat. I plan to get copies of Jo’s photos off her.

And finally, as we walked through the gate off Dartmoor, we stopped being cold. For the first time since getting out of the car we were no longer in the icy wind. I’d love to go back to Dartmoor again, but I think I’ll wait til Spring. Or Summer.

The next day I had very sore legs. From all that springy walking through the bogs. Before we headed off on the drive back to Cardiff, we stopped at Plymouth to have a walk around. Here are the photos that I took that weekend.

In a bid to start to meet more people outside of work I decided to go along on one of the Tiger Bay Ramblers walks. Jo came along too. We went to the Brecon Mountain Railway where we started our walk. It was a great day and I met some nice people. I think I’ll be going on another one, just not sure when yet. I took a few photos – just not as many as I thought I had.

Another weekend walk for Jo, Andreas and myself. This time we signed up and went with a group, so we had a guide. It was a bit different, as I’m not used to walking through villages. And the walk was very easy. We three were out the front for most of it and easily chatting the whole way. But it was still a good 4-5h walk. Here are the photos.

Before I started work I went with a couple other post-docs: Jo and Andreas. Here are the photos.