If you love being by the sea and going for coastal walks, you will love the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. It is Britain's only coastal National Park and the Pembrokeshire Coast Path National Trail snakes around the edge for 186 miles, taking in some breathtaking scenery. As you know, we want to experience something in each National Park that makes that place special, so walking at least some of this Trail was a no-brainer. The question was, which part to experience?? There is so much of it to chose from and it covers a wide variety of landscapes, from award-winning beaches to clifftops to sheltered coves where seals like to hang out. In the end we settled on a walk that skirts around Dinas Island because a) I like high up walks and b) we were amused to discover that the peak is called Pen y Fan, which is the mountain we climbed up in the Brecon Beacons last month! Pen y Fan roughly translates to 'top of the hill/mountain', so not actually that surprising to find another place with this name, but we took to it be a sign that that was where we should go. We have become big fans of the National Trust's walks as the routes are always well considered and well described and they helpfully provide information about where to park and local facilities - I really recommend checking out their website the next time you plan a walk. On this occasion, we followed their Dinas Island trail (www.nationaltrust.org.uk/strumble-head-to-cardigan/trails/dinas-island-spectacular-walk), which is a circular walk starting and finishing at Pwllgwaelod. (No, I don't know how to pronounce that!) First thing to say about this walk...there are toilets at the start, in the car park at Pwllgwaelod - yay! And they were reasonably clean - double yay! I know, I know, I am obsessed with toilets but when you are hiking with kids, you really need to know they are available at the start and end of a long walk. Peeing outdoors is not a favoured activity of ours, except in direst circumstances. The second thing to note is that the first section of the walk is quite steep but it does ease off quite quickly and the second half of the route descends gently and is pretty easy. Jay declared about a third of the way round that he was tired and wanted to turn back, but being a circular walk I could happily tell him that we were already heading towards the car park! My third piece of information is advice and a plea - check the weather before you head out and please, please don't do this in strong winds. The route takes in a high, steep, exposed clifftops and I imagine it would be pretty easy to get blown over. Wind speeds were predicted at 60-70 mph the day after we went and I don't think you could do the walk safely in conditions like that. It was already quite windy on the day we went out and we unintentionally littered when Jay opened his Yo-Yo Bear fruit roll on the summit and the wind whipped the collectible card out of the packet and blew it away. We stopped for lunch at Cwm-yr-Eglwys and sat on a windy bench facing the sea. The ruins of a chapel located here are a Pokestop so we took this opportunity to pick up some items. (In case it's helpful to know, there are some public toilets near here as well, but we didn't use them so I can't rate their usability!) After lunch we said goodbye to the coast and the rest of the walk back to the car park was flat and easy. We finished our walk back at Pwllgwaelod and as the tide was out when we arrived, we took the opportunity to go rock pooling. I will write about that and share some photos another time.
Best wishes, L,S,E&J
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