Day 21
Skomer to Skomer: 5 miles (that don't count)
Martins Haven to Marloes: 1.5 miles (that do)
Award of the Day: Goes to all puffins everywhere
Reason: You are adorable little endangered doofuses
Things I never thought I'd do in life
So, it's P's birthday - and due to my total lack of bitterness from yesterday's events, I'd planned for us to take a trip off-trail to Skomer Island (though to be fair I'm really adding additional coast path to walk around, since we walked around the coast of the entire island, really I'm overachieving here). Also, to be honest, his birthday's tomorrow, not today. But Skomer Island the largest bird reserve in southern Britain and thus is an outdoor kind of thing involving a boat, and since it's supposed to rain tomorrow we decided to go today.
And that's how I found myself, after getting 3 hours of sleep, waking up at 6:30 in the morning to go wait in line for tickets to go walk around with puffins - there are many parts of this scenario I didn't ever think would happen in my life.
You see, there's no pre-booking for taking a day trip to Skomer Island - so even though the first of three boats doesn't leave until 10am, if you want to be on it you have to show up at 7:30, when they make the decision based on the weather and tides as to whether they'll be making the trip. When we dutifully got there around 7:30 there were at least 20 people already in front of us. Bird watchers seem to be an eager, early morning type of crew.
Anyway, it was chilly and so I found myself declaring my New England heritage wearing both a giant Patriots hoodie and a Red Sox hat. I actually looked a little like a really skinny, very tan, very tired Bill Belichick. Unfortunately our weather was actually borderline enough that they didn't make a decision about going or not until closer to 8:30 - but eventually they thought it was safe enough, and we paid the first of two ticket fees (the second being collected on the boat), and we went down to the bay where I promptly fell asleep in the fetal position on an extremely uncomfortable beach made of fist sized-stones.
Because of the non-bitterness.
My those are large waves
At 10 o'clock we were boarded and seated on the back of an open small trawler type boat that I would have called a lobster boat at home. They basically seat 50 people hip to hip, tell you how to put a lifejacket on, and point out the exits (i.e. overboard). Besides there being a lot of people, it reminded me of once when I was young and my family went to Matinicus Isle in Maine in what I seem to remember being a relatively small (but covered) lobster boat. It reminded me of that visit even more when we pulled away from the dock and cove, and started to go up and down some rather mountainous Atlantic waves.
I unfortunately have pretty much zero fear of the sea - which is pretty nonsensical of me considering I'm afraid of cows which are far less likely to kill me - so going up and crashing down like that made me smile. When I looked around there were not many other people smiling. In fact most people were determinedly making an effort to not look out of the boat at all, I assume in an effort to pretend nothing was happening and/or convince themselves that they were not actually on a boat at all. Whereas I was asking P if he thought it would be a problem if I threw my arms up rollercoaster style and started yelling 'Whhhhheeeeee!!!!' He didn't think that was a good idea.
Anyway, the thing that Skomer is known for - puffins - it almost immediately delivers. As the boat 'pulls into' the dock (I used quotes because you more smash into some tires), they are already shooting over your heads with mouths full of little silver fish to feed their hatchlings (which have just hatched). There are also thousands and thousands of other birds around - the sea in this area is a very good feeding ground, so can support a diverse amount of wildlife.
We climbed the large flight of steps and were given a talk by an island ranger (actually, she wasn't called a ranger, but I can't remember the word they used and at home she'd have been a park ranger). We learned all about the birds we'd see, although I unfortunately missed most of the talk because I was distracted by the awkward black and white bullets tipped with orange that were regularly zipping over our heads.
What I did hear was that there were 25,000 mating pairs of puffins on Skomer Island, which is a lot, but unfortunately the number is dwindling. While conservationists are trying to find out why, the current thought is that with global sea temperatures on the increase, what the puffins normally feed on is dying off - and so are they. They didn't paint a very hopeful picture of whether puffins would still be around in 50 to 100 years time, in fact.
But on a cheerier note, she described the many walks around the island, the hostel (should anyone want to stay in the future - you obviously have to book in advance since it is only for a few people), and also the requirement that you stay on the path at all times. The reason being that the puffins and other birds live in burrows, often coming right up to the edges of the trails. Stepping off them, dropping your bag or sitting could collapse the burrow and kill the bird inside. Obviously no one wants that to happen and I have to say everyone seemed exceedingly cautious about staying within the lines of the path - making it very hard to pass keen bird watchers in narrow spots.
After hearing all about the various routes around the island, the 50 people hurriedly set off up the island. Eighty per cent all seemed to go the same way - immediately left toward the largest puffin colony. The other 16% went straight toward the middle of the island where there's a farm house with a visitor center and bathrooms. The remaining 4%, consisting of P and I, went right, toward a ancient standing stone that was just sitting there waiting for someone to view it.
We figured the birds would be there in the extra 10 minutes it took for us to take a look at 'Harold's Stone'. Apparently, Skomer is actually littered with old hut circles, it has an ancient stone circle, and there are old defenses everywhere. This particular Stone that we went to is from the Bronze Age, and it sits in a spot with great views of the island. Anyway it was P's birthday and he wanted to see the standing stone.
After our brief birdless sojourn, we continued back towards all the other people, and were immediately awash in birds. First, there were a lot of seagulls, which I'd previously named 'The Bastards of the Sky.' The effect of this name is best felt while shaking one's fist at a seagull flying quickly past them.
Lest you think I have another irrational hatred of a totally unoffensive animal, let me explain. The town of Aberdyfi, where we live in North Wales, is a seaside resort town that is overrun by seagulls. And when I say overrun I'm not exaggerating - you see and hear them absolutely everywhere. Which would be fine - except of course when you're trying to sleep. I wear earplugs to bed - and still they would wake me up at dawn, their screeching cutting through my earplugs way worse than any rooster. And, well, let's just say slate roofing material and seagulls getting up to all kinds of apparently very loud business on your bedroom roof with their webbed feet scraping against slate while several seagulls scream in unison - it's not a pleasant way to go to sleep either.
So the first bit of the walk involved a lot of fist shaking.
But the seagulls were interspersed with hundreds and thousands of other birds, and there were also carpets of flowers everywhere to make it even more scenic. And then, of course, we spotted a few little puffins waddling around in the grass near the seagulls. And the first impression of any human being with a heart is inevitably to make little cooing gurgling baby noises at them and say 'Oh, but you're so teeny and adorable! Oh my goodness, aren't you cute!'
Because you see pictures of puffins, and you think they're probably penguin size. And they are if what you mean are those teeny tiny little mini penguins that are just a few inches high. They were like a quarter of the size of the seagulls. It was like seeing a little waddling forest elf pop out of the tall grass.
After more waddling and cooing and about 200 pictures, we moved on, saw some more scenery, caught a glimpse of the island's giant rabbit population (non-native, the rabbits were brought to the island 700 years ago where they were raised for profit), and after 10 or 15 more minutes, found the main event - the puffin colony you could carefully walk right through.
I would also describe this area as the world's highest concentration of unbelievably-nice camera per square foot of ground. People had lenses as long as they were tall. I, of course, had my Nikon Coolpix which I contest takes perfectly acceptable photos - although getting the adorkable in-flight dangly-legged puffin photo was unlikely.
Anyway, you walk through the colony beside a cliff, by following a roped off trail. the puffins just do their thing on either side of the rope, while (very courteous and cautious, I have to say) photographers smile and take picture after picture after picture after picture. Which is how I ended the day with 562 pictures.
The puffin whisperer
I learned that I could speak puffin-ese. This teeny tiny little puffin came dropping into the non-cliff side of the proceedings with some fish in her mouth. She went into her burrow and presumably fed her chick. Then she came out and waddled around in a particularly adorable way. She seemed like she was pacing back and forth, and eyeing me and the guy beside me. At a certain point, I told P to back up the trail, because I thought what she wanted was to cross the human-path, but she couldn't do it if we were all bunched up.
And so apparently I have a puffin mind-meld going. Because we backed up, and the puffin eyed us a little, walked back and forth a little more, dipped a toe on the path, ran a few steps back, back and forth once more, then stared at me, then I took another step back, then she took another cautious step forward on to the path, stared at the other guy, he took a step back like I did, and she shuffled onto the middle of the path, waited a minute to see if we were dangerous, and then continued along toward the cliff. All the while all the humans were madly taking pictures like photography maniacs.
After taking a million more pictures, we moved down the path a little and watched the whirlwind of puffin-bullets and chasing gulls circle around the beautiful cliff scenery. The puffins almost frantic but persistent flapping with their little orange legs dangling awkwardly off them at all angles makes a strange contrast with the smooth and almost graceful (though evil) flight of the seagulls, and it's kind of mesmerizing.
But eventually we dragged ourselves away. We wandered slowly around the rest of the island, seeing all kinds of other birds whose names escape me (gannets maybe, and the island is known for having 200k Manx Shearwaters but they only come back in the evening), bunnies, and also a colony of seals.
Although it was almost a magical day on the island - we were happy to be the first group off (it's a first on, first off policy) because the beautiful, sunny morning had turned grey, and then it had turned grey and cold and rainy. A little group of puffins on a rock watched us pull away from the island - and really, I'm still trying to get over how many birds were everywhere, even as we left.
Anyway, it had really started raining when we got into the boat, so most people had their heads down as we made our way back - which was probably a good thing because I swear to you at one point we drove straight into what looked a lot like a for real whirlpool, and I think I was the only person on the boat who would have enjoyed that knowledge.
Of course, although we had circumnavigated Skomer, we hadn't gotten any further on the coast path. Since we'd cut out early yesterday, I decided to get off the boat and walk the last segment that I'd meant to do yesterday - Martins Haven to Marloes. Although I knew I'd get wet, I hadn't thought about the 3 foot high plants on either side of the trail also being wet - and creating a nearly impassible cliff walk with barely a trail to see, where I ended up entirely soaked below the waist - and worried in fact that I was going to lose my bottoms because they were so waterlogged they were falling off me.
But I didn't even care - because I'd spent all day with the most adorable puffins on the planet.
