Day 25
Pembroke to Angle: 11 miles
Favorite issue of the day: Top 11 lists
Reason: Because I couldn't just keep it to 10
While Pembroke and Pembroke Castle were interesting to explore, I don't have all that much to say about the power plant and the refinery/jetty of the rest of the walk. So allow me to awkwardly segue into a quick 'Top 11 things I've learned on the Wales Coast Path', after a quick rundown of Pembroke Castle.
* Most of the pictures in the text are NOT of Pembroke to Angle, unless otherwise noted. See the end for pictures, and tomorrow's post for more of Angle *
Pembroke Caste
So we went to Pembroke Castle, which had been recommended highly to me - the coast path goes right around it. It was a great place to explore, and for me three things stood out.
1. That Henry Tudor, founder of the Tudor dynasty, eventually King Henry the VII, and ancestor to the current royals, was born here in the 15th century. The castle itself dates to the 11th century, when it was built by Roger de Montgomery, but I'll be honest that I couldn't for the life of me follow the short movie explaining succession and control of the castle and area. It was like Game of Thrones, except everyone kept invading Ireland and I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
2. That there's an awesome cavern underneath the castle that's definitely worth a visit. It used to connect the castle to the sea. While it's kind of slimy and dark and you have to go down a spiral staircase made for tiny elf-sized feet, it was first inhabited at least 12000 years ago. It was then fortified by the Normans and used as water access.
3. Our visit coincided with something called 'Knight School', which was a very clever children's activity where actors in period dress teach children how to act like a knight, which apparently includes very specific details about how to chop off someone's leg. It seemed to involve a horde of small children in what looked like Knights Templar over-frocks running around after two large actors with swords.
The best part of Knight School IMHO was something only P saw so unfortunately there aren't pictures. At one point the large knights came 'riding' through the gates on pretend horses, followed by the tiny knights, also 'riding' pretend horses - and followed, hysterically in my opinion, by a third large adult knight who was, I kid you not, making clip clopping noises by banging two coconut halves together. Who knew the Brits would hold to such a strict interpretation of Monty Python.
In any case, that was Pembroke Castle - since I didn't have much else happen on the rest of the hike - and since with this hike I'm about 20% through my full trip, I thought a lot about what I'm doing here. Specifically, I thought about the Top 11 things I've learned on the Wales Coast Path. Not all of them are mind blowing - in fact I'm not sure any of them are. But these are my top 11 (because 10 would be too easy).
Top 11 things I've learned on the Wales Coast Path
1. That Wales is beautiful. OK I've known that since I've moved here. But how beautiful in how many different ways, I had no idea. There are beautiful rolling hills with farms, but also mountains crashing into the sea, sheer limestone cliffs, and the water can take on the full spectrum of the color blue.
2. That many different geological formations can be called 'a beach.' Not all involve sand. A surprising number involve churches. Many are impossible to reach without a boat. All different, all gorgeous.
3. That my mind will aimlessly wander and focus a lot of energy on identifying multiple different kinds of animal poop. There's a lot here to (unintentionally) look at, so my brain is well occupied. Also that my mind when allowed to roam will come up with theories as to why different animal poops from the same type of animal are nonetheless different - i.e. sheep breed, different grass diet, spring poop vs. winter poop, someone stepped in that before I got here, and/or somebody's cow must be very, very sick.
4. That there are many, many different kinds of gates in the world. Along the same lines, I've also learned that I will take great pleasure in figuring out a new kind of gate opening mechanism. 'Oh, what's this here? Am I supposed to push this? No. Hmmm. What about pulling this here? No. Oww. Crap. If I lift this bar and. . . Huh, no, that doesn't lift. Maybe I'm going to have to climb this one. No wait. What if I push and pull and up and to the left and this button and shove. Oh yay! Well, done sir! A tip of the cap to the farmer that created this one!' It's a true sense of achievement.
5. That guidebooks and informational pamphlets don't always measure distance accurately. Or rather, someone should create a better system to indicate additional distance traveled where there are ups and downs, as the Pembrokeshire Coast Path alone has the cumulative vertical gain equivalent of hiking Everest.
6. That blogging every evening is harder than walking, considering I'm coding this from the ground up rather than using a web-template. It's harder than hiking without a backpack anyway.
7. That I have strong negative feelings about my backpack. I don't even like having it next to me in the tent right now. I feel like I want to turn my back on it and shun it until it loses weight.
8. That you can find better places here in Wales to eat, to stay, to visit, by driving around and asking locals, than you can find by doing an internet search. This is a place where you can't get a mobile signal everywhere (or most anywhere) - and where there aren't enough people clicking to make the major search engines take notice and give you good results. Asking people, however, often also gets you a history lesson and/or a story about when the person you're talking to last visited the United States (usually it's been Nashville for some reason - I guess I've also learned Welsh people love Nashville.)
9. That when you do do internet searches, they send you to the places everyone else has gone to, thus creating giant black holes of information about less discovered places. And for the most part, these places in Wales are awesome.
10. That I love fish and chips. Served to me at the Shed in Porthgain. This may not seem like a big deal. But I've always intensely dislike fish.
11. That cows may actually dislike me as much as I dislike them. Either that or I may be their Queen. Their recent behavior around me is just baffling - they've started following me everywhere.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll learn more as I go along (and I'm sure I'll also do a further Top 11 Things I've Learned About Wales in the future - if you're disappointed that part of what I learned has absolutely nothing to do with Wales itself - don't worry, I've got nothing but time here, I'll write that eventually.
