Day 6
Aberaeron to New Quay: 6.25 miles
Food of the day: Raspberry Cream 'Donut'
Reason: I don't know when someone in Wales decided that a donut was actually a cardamom laced hot dog roll filled with home made sweet cream and raspberry jelly, but I have to say eating two of them in my tent at 7am while still in my sleeping bag and it was raining was something else. I think I may be the only person who starts walking 6-14 miles a day and gains weight.
So, today I tried something different to see if it would affect my hiking - I left my bag in the tent, planned a walk to New Quay which wasn't that far away, and checked the bus schedule to get back. This was basically because everyone - and I mean absolutely everyone - who saw me with my backpack basically said I was crazy in the nicest way possible.
You see, at home many of the long distance trails are truly in the middle of nowhere, without towns or facilities for miles, and wild camping is the norm. Here, the entire difference is that there are towns and facilities (albeit small towns and in some cases minimal facilities). And so that exact thing is what you can and should take advantage of in coming here. In other words - you can hike into a place, pitch a tent, and stay there for two or three nights, and each morning pick up the trail where you left off the night before.
Anyway, I just wanted to see what it would be like, walking all civilized and without my backpack. And basically I went twice as fast as the day before, and was in a much, much, much, much better mood when I got there. I even had time to drink a little Brains (which is a Welsh beer, which when P asked politely 'how do you pronounce this' the bartender looked at him like he was an idiot - 'Like it's spelled. Brains.').
Stopping to smell the roses
This was only a 6 mile hike, and you could see New Quay out on it's promontory most of the time. It actually took me nearly an hour to get out of Aberaeron. Basically, I think the Aberaeron harbor is particularly beautiful, with it's brightly colored boats and surrounded by jarringly bright orange, yellow, green, blue, purple buildings. So of course I took a picture every two steps (very few of which came out because the sun was wrong).
This is a 19th century planned harbor at it's finest. At the beginning of that century, after an Act of Parliament encouraged port development, a local reverend dredged the harbor in an effort to make a mid-Wales port, spending all his wife's inheritance in the process. Then the village itself was built around it. And now, well, let's just say that with the superb restaurants here with upscale decorations, methinks it caters to the British equivalent of the 'I summer in Nantucket' set (which is very, very different than the 'I live in Nantucket' set, in case you were wondering the same local/tourist distinctions clearly exist here).
But I can't fault people for loving beautiful construction, good food, and sailboats. So anyway I dragged my heels and slowly made my way up the hill. Where I found an orange, I hesitate to call it Italianate, mansion of some sort. It seemed rather out of place on the coast of Wales, what with it's Roman statues around the outdoor pool, palm trees that appeared to lack palms, fountains, and stone porches with stone tables around which were seated heavy carved stone chairs. Then I noticed that in addition, in the middle of this complex, there was a two story high free standing church-style (i.e. pointed top) stained glass window, edged in stone, but not attached to any wall.
I don't know what this building was, if it's someone's home or serves some other purpose, but aside from the church-like stained glass window, it reminded me more of the kind of place where you wake up screaming with a horse's head at the foot of the bed. No offense to whoever built this place or potentially if it's there for a good reason.
But I meandered past, and up and down, and through fields, taking pictures of every single flower I found on the way. I even bent down to take some of these pictures - an act which I would have had a harder time taking on with my pack on after a certain point of walking. I was practically skipping.
St. Ina's and New Quay
On the edge of New Quay's lengthy beach, I stopped into the tiny and picturesque church of St. Ina's. This church was originally built, the story goes, by a Saxon King of Wessex (later St. Ina) whose boat sank offshore, and who was rescued and cared for by the locals (the Saxon's not being much in favor in the area, it's a strange place to find a Saxon church).
The original church was lost to coastal erosion, and what's here now is a later iteration. It's one of the smallest churches in Ceredigion, seating only 80. And since there were signs up saying visiting was fine, I went in, and even sat down at the chair provided and signed the visitor's log. It was such a cute church only steps from the beach in a lovely setting
And when you take those few steps to the beach you're greeted with one of the loveliest picture-postcard views I've seen so far on this walk - New Quay's brightly painted houses, plunging in rows down steeply graded streets toward the harbor. The beach I was on broadly runs in a crescent east-west, with New Quay itself nestled on the end of the promontory facing north and east, and a scoop of bright blue sea in between. Wow. And it wasn't even sunny out (of course it got sunny as soon as I got to town).
Anyway, I made my way to town, stopping every two seconds to take a picture. Then made the final steep ascent and equally steep drop into the harbor area.
Full of tourists, the setting still does justice to Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood a "play for voices" somewhat derived from his time in New Quay. If you don't immediately recognize his name, if I say he's the Welsh poet who brought you "Do not go gentle into that good night, but rage, rage against the dying of the light", I bet you'll know who I'm talking about. He's considered one of greatest Welsh poets, and so as soon as I got to Wales I picked up Under Milk Wood and read it in one go. Not that I'm a literary critic, but it was a lovely, charming story full of odd personalities and vignettes of small-town Wales life.
And although modern New Quay has moved on to become more of a seaside destination, there is still that small town quirky neighborhood feel to it. For example, when I went to ask at a random boat hire kiosk where the visitor information center was, they told me it was closed. They then proceeded to find out what I was looking for (a place to stay the next night), described local B&Bs to me, picked one, looked it up online, called them and booked me in.
These people may as a general culture, literally be the nicest human beings I have ever met in my entire life. Maybe it's because they aren't all lugging around backpacks everywhere.
