Day 5
Llanrhystud to Aberaeron: 5.5 miles
Quote of the day: "Your reputation precedes you"
Reason: Said to me by a complete stranger who knew where I was from before I told her. And somehow not at all creepy.
Of course my first day in a tent I would wake up at dawn and freezing and ridiculously sunburnt. The former is a little bit more of a problem here because we're so far north, dawn is at 5am. People don't always realize, but if you think about it, Rome is at about the same latitude as Boston - here we're somewhere in Canada - and the summer days are lovely, but sometimes it makes it very hard to sleep.
Anyway, I was also freezing because the night wasn't just cold, it was damp, and so there was condensation left everywhere. I hadn't slept particularly well, so it was quite welcome when an hour later as I was packing up, I heard someone 'knocking' on my tent. I turned around, and there was a man there who asked me if I'd like coffee or tea or something warm. I have absolutely no idea where he came from, or who he was. I'd actually already made myself some coffee from the hot water in the bathroom sink (because I'm classy), so I said no, but it was just the nicest thing that someone would even offer coffee to a total stranger.
Off and running
My legs weren't as sore, but my bag felt so heavy as I left the caravan park of my dreams and past Llanrhystud towards Llanon. It was a pleasant enough morning, but when it's cold in a tent I typically have a pretty restless night, because my legs stay stiff all night long.
It was a hard thing to walk off. In particular when the trail led to a large stone beach that was relatively hard to walk on. The views back north were stunning though, even though I was struggling it was easy to appreciate.
After walking through more pasture next to some short cliffs that the sea clearly eats away at year after year, the trail ducks into a tunnel and you come out suddenly in Angkor Wat. Or at least that was the first thought that came into my head when I saw the giant stone structures with smallish doors overgrown with greenery and small flowers. Then my mind came back to reality and I realized these were the old lime kilns that used to be fired in this area.
I know they aren't all that old and clearly many people have been here before, but the seclusion and overgrown plants really made it feel like a discovery. Also because they just seemed to pop out of nowhere.
Llansantffraid and Llanon - say that three times fast
As I approached Llansantffraid with its distinctive church in the distance, I came upon a problem I found yesterday as well - and that is that some of the trail architecture really isn't made for giant backpacks with tents attached to them. Kissing gates in particular (where you walk into a small space at the end of a gate, swing the gate open in front of your body and pass through the open spot) can be hard when you don't fit in the little space.
After several times of laboriously climbing up the wooden slats, leaning my bag along the top of the space you stand in and then swinging the gate in front of me and jumping down, I came upon a kissing gate that didn't have wooden slats for me to stand on. I was very happy to realize that you could easily take the gates off the hinges. And with even more effort you could put them back on their hinges (important - because the gates are there to keep livestock in).
Proud of myself for figuring that out, I was less happy when someone had strung a string at waist level across the trail, that just caught the tent on my backpack as I tried to get under it, and I ended up crawling in mud. I took the opportunity of the charming churchyard with centuries old Welsh epitaphs for many, many Joneses to try to clean myself up. So many Joneses.
After the churchyard the trail divides depending on whether it's high tide or low tide. I of course had no idea what the tide was, couldn't see the water at the moment, and had no one to ask. So I went towards the low tide route and hoped for the best. Passing through some gorgeous whitewashed stone cottages in Llanon I made it to the beach - which is becoming larger as the sea eats at the low cliffs behind it - and luckily the tide wasn't in.
Continuing on, a few things happened - first, my camera decided to tell me it had a low battery and shut off. Which was a shame because I came upon a small river mini (and I mean mini) canyon with a pleasant little bridge over it, which I would have loved to have a picture of. Not for the canyon itself - but for what I think were starlings (I actually have no idea) who were speed racing along the canyon one after another. It for some reason brought to mind luke Skywalker and the Death Star - because these things were going fast!
Anyway, after sitting and watching them a bit, the second thing happened - it was getting hot, and I needed to take off my long sleeved sweatshirt which had been protecting my sunburned arms. Luckily, I am not averse to looking like an idiot, and so that is how my Welsh flag headband became an arm sock. I felt so fashionable with my giant sleeve knotted around one arm.
Please tell me that's New Quay, not Aberaeron
So I was starting to get uncomfortable - what with the soreness and the blisters and the giant bag and the sunburn. And I started to wonder whether the town I could see in the distance was in fact Aberarth, and not Aberaeron (further down the coast) like I'd thought. Because I couldn't see the town Aberarth, supposed to be before Aberaeron - so maybe the town I could see was it, and the town waaaay further down the coast that I thought was New Quay was actually Aberaeron.
I really hoped that wasn't the case, because I was hot and dying. Luckily, my map reading skills proved right - Aberarth was hiding behind a curve. And when I got to it, it was adorable. Tiny brightly painted and amazingly flowered rows of cottages that had back porches that took in sun along the river.
I was in a reverie when two women said hello to me, and told me Aberaeron was just around the corner (I must have looked like I felt). I said thank you, and she said, out of nowhere:
'Oh, an American accent. And you're from Boston.'
'Sorry, what?
'Your reputation precedes you, I heard all about you in Aberaeron.'
'But that's crazy, I haven't been to Aberaeron yet.'
'It's not crazy in this part of the world. People talk.'
Ruh roh. Well, I just hoped it was some of the good people and not the bad people I met yesterday. We chatted a little longer about how notable I was, and I staggered forward to Aberaeron.
Luckily, the campsite I was headed to - 'Stay on a Farm' - was right off the trail before Aberaeron. Unluckily when I got there, the reception was all the way across a giant field, when I got there the person in charge wasn't in, I'm not carrying a phone, and the phone box literally had cobwebs inside it and a non-working phone.
Only again through the kindness of strangers was I able to track down the owners - but it was all good news from there - lots of space, I got a deal for being by myself, and, thank heavens, I was able to take a shower and try to restore the skin I'd apparently been trying to roast off my body.
If only there was something to be done about my backpack. . .
