Hello there my beautiful blog friends! I feel as if someone has stolen the last three months from me and also that I have been cocooned indoors for too long. For obvious reasons fair enough. But I have definitely spent too much time indoors recently hiding away, eating badly, not sleeping, not 'living'. So I thought it was high time that I burst out of this routine and try to find a way out of a potentially negative situation, should it go on for too much longer. It's not what this whole year of challenges is about, it's not what 'life' is about. 'Life', is about getting out there and doing, and trying and being and living and experiencing, and breathing. Ooh - not like me to get all deep and thoughtful!
So! Time to blow away the cobwebs and start getting my 'mojo' back. And what better way to start than with the longest, so far, of our 'Weatherman Walks', the series of hikes myself and Stewart have been doing following in the footsteps of the legendary Welsh weatherman, Derek Brockway. Today's hike was our first non-circular walk, and started from Barry Docks and would end up at Rhoose. 8 miles in total and it took us just under 3 and 1/2 hours - though we did stop for a coffee and a bacon butty in Barry Island.
Barry Docks train station is where we started this walk and for the most part this was a coastal walk following a fair amount of the Welsh Coastal Path Trail. It was bloody freezing to be honest, very windy - but absolutely bracing!
From Barry Docks, we walked along the waterfront and got stymied fairly quickly. Where Derek described wasteland that we could walk across, it's now a housing development/building site which we had to circumnavigate. Thankfully, we're getting used to discovering that the directions for these walks are often out of date. Still, we managed to rejoin the route and headed across the sands of Jackson Bay. It was bitterly cold, but every now and again the light was just lovely and the sun would come out.
It wasn't too much further along this proper coastal path until we arrived at the Valleys Mecca - BARRY ISLAND! Home of a funfair, a really good crazy golf course, beach huts and also where the Welsh part of Gavin and Stacey was filmed! Today though, the beach belonged to hardy dog walkers, and the funfair was shut. We did stop here though for a bacon butty and a coffee - mainly to get a heat!
We could have stopped at 'Nessa's slots' but though the thought of spending the afternoon in an amusement arcade was tempting, it wasn't what we set out to do - maybe next weekend though!
After Barry Island, we continued mostly on beach, crossing a causeway at one point and heading towards Tower Bay. While walking across the causeway the wind picked up and kept blowing the sand in amazing ways, tried to capture but have failed, though I haven't yet seen Stewart's photos.
We passed by Barry Lido - didn't even know they had one! Derek mentions that this is where he learnt to swim, and Stewart remembered coming here when he was younger as well. After Barry Lido we were heading to a very pebbly beach. There was a wee incline beforehand when we headed up a steep footpath to the cliff top - this part of the walk felt like 'part two'. The first half was mostly coastal and along the shoreline with defined normal paths, the second part was 'up' and off the beaten track. Kind of more adventurous to be honest.
Still, once we hit this pebbled beach we were heading into the home straight and the actual goal of today, to reach Rhoose Point, the southernmost tip of mainland Wales. Also the end of our walk. There is a stone circle here which I got excited about until I realised that it's not actually ancient, it was put here in 2000 by the company who were helping with the land reclamation and landscaping of the area. The stones are made of North Wales slate. This actual part of the coastal path consisted of lots of bigger boulders we could clamber over. Which we did. And then, we headed to the train station to travel home, me feeling absolutely knackered but for once in a wholesome physical way. Look out by the way for the next of our weatherman walks - in the coup of the year we will be walking WITH the weatherman himself, oh yes, we're going to be walking with Derek 'THE Weather and the Legend' Brockway. Ti-ra for now, as they say in the valleys. x
No comments:
Post a Comment