Day 15
Trefin to Abereiddy: 3.5 miles (i.e. not very far at all!)
Apology of the day: To all the fish in the world
Reason: I used to say I hated the way you tasted. I just had no idea you could be so delicious.
For such a short walk, I really feel like I had a life-changing day. People keep telling me that walking around Wales, I'll have some kind of spiritual epiphany. Well, I have. And it has to do with fish.
I doubt that's what they were talking about, but I don't care.
Lazy Days in St. David's
As I mentioned yesterday I came to stay in St. David's for a whole week because I've heard such wonderful things about the area, I wanted to spend more time here. Living in North Wales means this part of South Wales is just far enough to be too far to reach easily.
So today I looked outside at 8am and immediately decided I would not be pushing my way through this morning - the weather was grey, drizzly and damp, and since I have a week with good transport to the trail, there was no reason for me to get out there early except if the bus schedule requires it. So I got back into bed for a little while, and made a plan for the afternoon.
Since I'd left off in Trefin, I had to start there. But after Trefin there are two villages on the shuttle route that are relatively close (Porthgain and Abereiddy), and then one, Whitesands, that's another 10 miles on. My AirBnB host had absolutely raved about the restaurant in Portgain, saying it had the best fish and chips ever. She seemed really excited about it, and so I didn't want to bring up the fact that I don't really like cooked fish. But she was so emphatic about it, I thought maybe I should give it a shot - my other has always told me I probably just don't like fish the way she cooked it when I was a kid, and if I tried it now, maybe I'd like it.
So thinking why not, I decided to return to Trefin in the early afternoon, hike the arduous mile and a half to Porthgain, stop in for fish and chips, and then see if I could make it the full two miles on to Abereiddy, where I could catch the bus back to St. David's in the early afternoon.
Not exactly a tough day, but I'm not supposed to be here to set a land speed record, I'm trying to actually see Wales - which is a lot harder to do if you're always running to the next stop.
Surreal Porthgain
I made it to and back out of Trefin without a hitch, finding myself instantaneously on a path that cut through an ancient stone circle that apparently isn't even worth mentioning in the guidebooks. I mean whatever, another stone circle, I guess?
The views back toward Abercastle and Pwll Deri where I'd come from yesterday were lovely when I turned around - but it still was a bit grey. It then got distinctly greyer, and had just started to rain when I got to Porthgain - so I was very happy I was about to go inside.
But coming into Porthgain itself is awesome. You can see a tall white pillar along the edge of a promontory for a while, but then all of a sudden you can see into the Porthgain inlet, and it's like walking suddenly into an atmospheric ruin in the Roman forum.
There's a giant crumbling brick structure on the opposite side of the bay, that seems to be tumbling down in stages. Of course, this is a relatively recent ruin - up until 1910 this had been a slate, then brick, then road surfacing processing plant. But it's effectively terraced down the hill toward the water, and the former associated plant buildings have been redone (with European Regional Development Funds, as signs point out on nearly every re-construction I've ever seen in Wales) and turned into a small restaurant and some services.
I knew I liked the restaurant - called The Shed as soon as I walked in and immediately thought 'This could be in Maine.' Lobster traps, rough stone, unfinished wood, random red and white table cloths and it smelled slightly of fish - Maine. Anyway, I sat upstairs as the place was clearing out, and looked at a rather lengthy choice of fish for my fish and chips. Even with the helpful separate card explaining each type of fish, not being a fish eater, I don't even understand what 'meaty' or 'flaked' means in fish terms.
So I ordered the one type of fish I've ever even slightly liked in the past - monkfish - though in that case it was heavily flavored and cooked with peanuts and noodles in a London Vietnamese restaurant. Anyway, I know enough to know most fish and chips aren't made with monkfish, but I didn't really care - it was on the expensive side and I wanted better odds at being happy I spent the money on stupid fish that I usually hate.
I also asked the waitress to just choose a locally brewed beer for me, which she seemed to appreciate. She came back with a Bluestone Brewery IPA. Not only is it from water filtered through those famous Preseli Hills bluestones that make up Stonehenge (I've been there too) but, and only my friends in DC will appreciate this, but it has hints of grapefruit. . .
(My friends in DC will remember when I used to work in a wine bar, I sometimes forgot the wine descriptions. One time someone asked me about a wine, and I'd mistakenly said it had hints of grapefruit - which had been the description of the wine we'd served the day before. The woman unfortunately thought that sounded wonderful, and ordered it. When I came back later to shamefacedly ask how it was, she said 'Oh, I love it, you can really taste the grapefruit!') Anyway, this beer actually had hints of grapefruit, and I don't think I was imagining tasting them.
But when the fish came, my first thought was 'This is the most gigantic serving of anything ever. How am I ever going to eat all this, and it's fish? Ick.' Then I took a bite, and immediately decided I wanted to be shrunk down so I could tunnel my way inside the fish and do nothing but eat my way out for the rest of my entire life. I feel like I literally may have just been shoving giant hunks of delicious fish into my mouth with my face an inch from the plate. I don't even know what happened. I may not have been breathing. I got so full my stomach started to hurt, but I basically refused to stop eating until it was gone.
I even took before and after pictures, because no one in my family will probably believe I even tolerated a piece of fish, nevermind really, really liked it.
So yeah, it was good. I like fish now.
So Abereiddy is Maine too?
I walked out in a pleasant food coma, climbed out of the fantastical Porthgain, inspected some further brickworks and a quarry on top of the next ridge, and relatively quickly made it to Abereiddy, and only a little rained on. This looked from above like a charming stone beach in a very long inlet, with the tiniest town ever behind the beach. It was a very cute, again very Maine-like (but that might have been the fog and the chill) scene.
I wandered around, found the ice cream truck, and checked out a few of the paths I'd missed before, since I had an hour and a half until the bus came. And then I found out where all the people at the beach actually were - as I turned a corner and found the Blue Lagoon and the small horde of people probably responsible for keeping the neoprene people in business.
So, Abereiddi was a slate quarry which sent it's slate to Porthgain, until 1910. The Blue Lagoon - a very deep, very turquoise, and apparently very cold body of water set into the hill - is the result of having blasted the channel that connected the quarry to the sea, allowing the sea in. And now, it's apparently a favorite coasteering spot. As it was the school holidays, there were many, many young people clad in wetsuits jumping off of the dark black structures into the bright turquoise water, some doing flips, some just diving straight in.
It was really an interesting sight to come across when you don't expect it, in particular the striking black of the slate. Many of us who grew up in small towns in America may at one time or another have gone swimming in a quarry, but I don't ever remember it being a sanctioned group activity that you bring tours to. Though thinking about it now, it should have been.
Anyway, I walked back down to the beach, and watched all the beach activities taking place - two girls digging a giant hole, kite flying, body surfing and hammering rocks (ok, that last one was a first for me). Then I tried to figure out whether it was even over 60 degrees out, and realized exactly how dedicated to spending time at the beach these people must be. Once again, the only thing I could compare it to was in Maine - where I once went to Acadia National Park and was walking on the beach where everyone was lying out in bikinis - in fog that you couldn't see further than ten feet in. Dedication to the cause.
Long story short, it was less than a 5 mile walk, in the rain, and I loved almost every second of it. So I think I like Pembrokeshire.
