Day 14
Pwll Deri to Trefin: 10 miles
Song of the day: Raspberry Beret, Prince
Reason: It was on when I got to the lovely Mill Art cafe in Trefin. Seemed quite a departure from the tiny village outside said cafe.
Not much on the agenda today
I'm not going to lie, I feel like I don't have a whole lot to say today. I talked about the beautifully set Pwllderi hostel yesterday - and today it was just as beautiful as I walked away from it. I could slowly see the contours of the entire landscape open up around it, until eventually both the hostel and Strumble Head were in view - lovely, lovely, lovely, and just the best set hostel I've ever seen.
It was a bit grey - but that didn't stop people from going to the beach - there were kite flyers, dog walkers and even swimmers out for the day. The one thing I've definitely noticed is that there are more people here. It's apparently school holidays this week, but there are just a lot more people on the trail - and you know it's different when not everyone says hi. I even ran across what was clearly a city-worker huddled against a corner fence pole yelling into his mobile phone, not moving much and clearly trying to maintain whatever cell signal he managed to find out here.
Next stop, Abercastle. Make that Trefin.
After walking an hour or two coming onto Abercastle felt like it was going to be a charming little stop. Like much of the coast it has a National Trust area associated with it (an ancient cromlech in Longhouse), it's narrow but lengthy green bay had kayakers and other boaters in it, and the surrounding houses looked adorable. Then I took the 2 minutes to walk through to the town and couldn't find any kind of food or otherwise, outside of a sign that pointed to a pub in Trefin.
After stopping for a minute to talk to two German women from the hostel who, while very nice people, I will forever remember as 'the two German women who opened the curtains in the hostel before everyone had gotten out of bed', I decided to book it on to Trefin, in hopes that they'd still be serving food when I got there.
In fact there were two places serving food - the Ship Inn, and the Mill Cafe and Art Gallery. First, I went to the relatively traditional Ship Inn and got some really tasty Irish Sea mussels, a cider (you might have noticed a common theme here) which I sat out in the beer garden and enjoyed. Then, not wanting to miss the opportunity, I also went to the Cafe for dessert, where I was greeted with Prince singing Raspberry Beret, among other classics, walls covered with interesting artwork for sale, and a much hipper vibe than I'd expected on coming in. In any case, the brownie was lovely.
After that, I realized I still had two hours to kill before the bus came for St. David's, where I'd decided to stay for a little while as I walked around the peninsula. So I wandered over by the town's hostel, where I again saw the Germans who told me that unfortunately the hostel was full, so they had to move on. They also asked me what I was doing in Wales - 'Some sport? Running yes, you are running the path?' To which I said that ever since I decided to not carry my backpack with me, it certainly felt like running, but I was just walking kind of fast. They were walking under very heavy backpacks, I couldn't help but notice, but in any case I don't think they understood me very well.
But apparently I'm going much faster these days.
So I wandered around the village of Trefin, and ultimately found a convenient bench. Actually, there were two benches and a low wood table, in an area that looked like it used to be a convenient 'watch the people walk by' tiny center of town park, but was now overgrown. I sat there contemplating whether anyone ever sat here anymore, and why sitting and staring at people was no longer such an occupation as it used to be in most parts of the world.
Since I'm talking about what I sat on a bench and thought about in a tiny village in Wales, I also decided to try to figure out the old layout of the town. It hadn't been obvious before, but there was an old hand waterpump across the road in what probably used to be something of a teeny tiny town square. I always like to see how towns grow and change and guess what they used to be like.
And then, I took a short outdoor bench nap. No one seemed to mind. If anyone reading this blog came to this post today looking for an 'adventure' post, well, bench napping. Sport of the future.
When I woke up, I relived the moment for selfie purposes (selfies being much harder when one doesn't have an iPhone let's remember), and for the second time in a few days thought about how much of travelling is really just waiting for busses. But that's often the good part.
