Day 30
Tenby to Pendine: 13 miles
Jarring Sight of the Day: A man hiking in full backpack and speedo
Reason: A larger man coming down suddenly round a hairpin turn, me looking up - not a good angle for anyone. One of us appeared unbothered.
Theme of the Day: Extreme Heat
When I mentioned in my Day 12 post that it was hot as Hades that day in Ceredigion - some followers didn't believe me. Wales isn't hot, I'm just a big baby now, etc, etc.
Well, today was even worse. And I checked and it isn't just me - last time it was around 88F, but with a million percent humidity the 'feels like' temperature was 95F ('feels like' matters because it's over 90 with the humidity calculated in where heat becomes dangerous). And today, it was 90F to start with - and with 75% humidity at least once during the day. That's the equivalent of 100F degrees. AKA way way way way way too hot for Wales.
So I started off in Tenby, bought myself some vitamin water rather than my regular water bottle, and set off. . . at 11:30. I definitely know better than to start off midday on a hot day - but the circumstances were beyond my control, as I was entirely subject to the whim of Pembrokeshire Council's chosen bus schedule.
In any case, after coffee and a cake at a cafe overlooking North Beach in Tenby, I set off at a powerful pace. Why? Well, first I'd rested because I'd faced a full on leg-revolt two days ago. Second, because I needed to catch a bus, either in Amroth or in Pendine depending on how far I got. So I hurried along.
Go Speedracer
I flew along beneath the trees outside Tenby, only stopping to take in the absolutely gorgeous view back to the candy colored houses that seemed to tumble down chaotically over the shining white beach in the distance. While the heat was a bit much, a lot of where I was walking was shaded by trees. Some of the steps (one flight had more than 100 steps) were particularly painful and sweat-inducing, but really I was moving pretty quickly toward Saundersfoot and I felt good.
Getting to Saundersfoot I debated stopping and either getting something to eat or maybe taking a quick dip, but decided against it. Hurry hurry hurry. Which was a real shame because the beach town is really set up to entertain - and there were a lot of people wandering the beach, even for a work day.
Out in the sun it was roasting, but I was still making good time, really. As I left Saundersfoot, I mentally made a note to write 'Thank you' to whoever had the brilliant idea to bore two tunnels through the headland separating Saundersfoot and Wiseman's Bridge - because not only does it make it a super-easy path, but it was actually cool inside (although pitch black at least once). Apparently they were built for tramways when this was originally a coal-mining town - but now they are just as helpful.
I flew through Wiseman's Bridge, debated stopping at the Inn, but decided to keep going. My mind kept doing calculations as to how far I'd gone, dividing by 1.6 since everything in my book is in kilometers and not miles, and trying to extrapolate whether i could make it to Pendine or whether I should just stop and take it easy. It was actually kind of annoying, and this is the exact reason why I haven't planned too far in advance for this hike - having to make it to a place by a certain time just makes the whole walk unpleasant. And this walk ended up getting way more unpleasant than this.
Goodbye Pembrokeshire
After slogging up, over and down a hill after Wiseman's Bridge, I arrived in Amroth. Not the one in Middle Earth, in case you were wondering. This one used to be built on iron ore mining - you can still find evidence of it here, even at Colby Woodland Gardens where there's a former mine. If you were wondering, this is an estate with, yes, woodland gardens. I've been wanting to go there for a while now - but again, I just kept jogging along.
Once I got all the way through Amroth, I did actually take a few moments to stop in front of the New Inn. And that's because this is the spot where the Pembrokeshire Coast Path begins/ends (depending on which way you look at it). Opened in 1970, this part of the Wales Coast Path is now an established National Trail, and if I haven't mentioned it yet, probably one of the most popular parts of the WCP. Whenever I spoke to people in Pembrokeshire and told them I was walking 'the whole path' - they always thought I meant the PCP (that's not a good acronym, is it?) rather than the WCP.
In any case, I personally started the 186 mile path in St. Dogmaels, so passing this point did feel like an achievement. I've finished the Ceredigion Coast Path (Borth to Cardigan) and the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. So, after taking as many selfies with my camera as it took until one looked ok (remember taking selfies before iPhone cameras? It's not easy), and after some thinking about whether I just wanted to stop here for two hours or whether I wanted to continue on, I moved on.
This was a stupid choice.
At this point, I should probably mention a few things - first, I'd now basically jogged 11km in 2 and a half hours. That's much faster than I normally walk. Second, Amroth to Pendine is 9km, says my book. Third, there is not a single thing between the two towns. Fourth, I had way less than half of my water left. Fifth, all I had carried with me to eat was half a cheese and onion sandwich. Sixth, it was 90 degrees out with no wind and no clouds. So all things pointed to this going great.
Looking back, I wish I had read the Rough Guide description of the first part of the Carmarthenshire Coast Path, where it says it is 'surprisingly rugged.' I don't know if that would have changed my time-pressed mind, but maybe.
My Kingdom for a Drop of Water
To my credit, I did actually have second thoughts. After half a mile of struggling up a hillside with no shade, I stopped, and started walking back toward Amroth. After ten feet I stopped again, looked at my guidebook and mistakenly decided walking back would be equivalent to walking halfway to Pendine, so I might as well keep going.
The heat was weird. It was almost like it was in pockets. Because it was still mid-day, the low bushes on either side didn't cast shadows, but they did cut off any slight breeze that may have been happening, and in places seemed to make the air entirely stagnant. So I could feel a devastating temperature and humidity rise for about 20 feet, for no apparent reason. It felt like I was swimming.
All of the running I was doing was done. On ascents I was now stopping all the time, and trying to slow down my heart rate and breathing, and just try to make sure I didn't spontaneously combust. In my mind I had had the thought 'So would you rather die of heat exhaustion, or catch a bus?' and realized pretty quickly what the answer was.
This is the worst comparison ever because I can't actually remember if it's even right or if I was just having a fever dream - but I kept imagining I looked like Chevy Chase in one of the Vacation movies. I have a vague memory of a scene with him staggering over a dune or hill with his shirt or pants or something over his head after a car broke down. I felt like that was exactly what I was doing, and what I took from this was the idea that I should pull my shirt back over my head. Every time I came to that conclusion I then remembered I was wearing a baseball hat, and that fashioning a shirt hat would take up way too much energy.
You might notice I have almost no pictures between Amroth and Pendine. Again, I was at the point of trying to conserve every ounce of energy I had. Besides eating my cheese sandwich and taking tiny sips of my water, I was trying not to move my hands that much. Also, my palms were sweating. I'm not sure I've ever had that happen before, but my palms were dripping sweat.
I kept having to go up and down and around and up and down in absolutely relentless sun, with absolutely no wind. Then, on one particularly tortuous hairpin track cutting it's way painfully up a hill, down pops Sid, the Speedo guy. If I recall right, Sid is probably 65-ish, extremely tan (no tan lines!), with a large belly and a big black hat. Also, he is of course wearing only a black speedo, a pair of shoes and a large hiking backpack.
Seemingly quite happy to have surprised me from above, Sid jollily says something incomprehensible that sounds like 'way too steamy for walking today, right?' 'Yes' I spit out, rueing the fact that the only person I'm going to walk past today is the one person I'd never in a million years ask if I could have a sip of their water, given how happy he seemed to be to have surprised me.
I really wanted to take a picture of him - but too much energy, and also I didn't want to invite any more of his attention. When I stopped farther up the hill and looked back, I was happy I'd kept going. There was Sid. He'd either completely taken off his Speedo and was wearing a black thong under it, or had given himself an intentional wedgie. Or I was hopefully halleucinating his butt-crack into an item of clothing and he was actually naked. In any case, I was happy that if I died at least I'd die laughing.
When I got to a small forest, I realized how much of the trouble was the actual sun - in the shade, I was fine. Well if not fine, I wasn't afraid of actually dying, and felt like I could walk like a normal person. But the respite was brief. The path wound up and down and up and down and I kept throwing myself into any foot-wide puddle of shade I could find.
When I came to the last valley, I kid you not, I almost started crying. The path wound straight up a ginormous headland. I started to plod up it, stopping all the time. Then it was like I was in some horrible funhouse - every time I thought I was at the top, more hill showed up. When I finally came out to the other side, and saw Pendine Sands stretching along for miles below me, and a village that would give me life giving water (I'd had the last of mine at least an hour before), I yelled out 'Oh thank god', and practically nosedived down the 260 stairs to the beachfront cafe.
When I got down, I quickly ordered a water, and after seeing the look on the cafe guys face I made a nominal effort to wipe the sweat off of all of my body parts. Of course that just meant I smeared my sweaty face with an even sweatier shirt, so I don't think it did much good.
Anyway, there's a happy ending here - I somehow, even though I was basically crawling, managed to make my bus - by two minutes. And I nearly passed out from exhaustion as I silently watched actual piles of salt form on my arms as the wind from the open bus windows slowly dried all the sweat.
So yeah, great day.
