WCP: Port Eynon to Llanmadoc

Wednesday 18 March 2014

Distance: 13.2 miles

Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine

I had an incentive to walk briskly today, as I have a friend who lives on the north side of the Gower and the sooner I reached Llanmadoc, the more afternoon we would have available to us to catch up. Thus, I set off at a clip … and made a complete meal of the first mile of the day due to deciding to shun the official path in order to stay closer to the coast. I eventually got back on route, but not without a bit of scrambling and more ascent than if I’d just followed the WCP to start with. Ah well, you win some…

Ascent was a minor theme of the morning. Underfoot the path was lovely and, once again, the surroundings were spectacular (particularly under the gorgeous blue skies), but it did involve lots of sharp little ups and downs.

Having rounded Worms Head (which I could have visited as the tide was low, but it would have been an out and back for no great reward, so I didn’t), I met (with 7 miles walked) the first other walkers of the day. I’m not sure where everyone was; there weren’t even dog-walkers to be seen.

Below me now was a massive expanse of beach (about 3.5 miles long and, being low tide, very wide) and, as I suspected from the map, at Rhossili I was able to access it. In so doing not only did I have some delightful sandy walking, but I missed out a few wiggles in the official path as it heads through the dunes.

There was only the smallest handful of people on that beach (really, where was everyone on this gorgeous sunny day?), and one of them was Mick walking towards me out of the haze.

Being just a few minutes after low tide when we reached Burry Holm, we probably could have continued on the beach to round the headland and the next little bay, but we took the safe option of heading up into the dunes (as it goes, looking from above we reckon we could have made it around at sea level, but it looked like there’s probably only a very small window of opportunity around low tide).

We could have stayed on the beach all around the west side of the isthmus at Whiteford Burrows, but that wasn’t on the agenda for today. Instead, inland we went to find Colin parked just where Mick had left him in Llanmadoc and soon we were sitting drinking tea and putting the world to rights at Rhian & Paul’s house. An excellent afternoon and evening was had, after a fine morning’s walking.