Day 40
Landimore to Llangenith: 6 miles
Dedication of the day: To P
Reason: I know I've been making fun of you occasionally. But you are also driving me all over Wales, carting my bags around tiny bridleways and carrying my water bottle and setting up my tent when you're here. Thanks for that. But I still have to amuse myself a little with this post.
Diversions, diversions, diversions
Today was one of those days where I had to check the tides in order to make sure I didn't have to divert inland where a walkway would be impassible at high tide. Unfortunately it turned out the tide was coming in when I planned to be there, but it looked good for making it across in time.
So I had P drop me off amongst the marsh sheep, and he drove to Llanmadoc, where he was going to park, walk back down the trail and meet me wherever I happened to be. I set up a spot to not go past without having met me so he wouldn't go too far.
Nothing much happened besides a continuation of yesterday's fighting my way through a million bleating sheep on a rather gray day by the salt marshes. I got to the bridge crossing and realized I had made a stupid mistake - I'd told P we shouldn't go past the point on the other side of the crossing that I'd just come from. But since I hadn't passed him yet I figured I'd just wait on the farther side, because the tide was coming in and it was stupid to wait on the pre-crossing side where I'd get stranded.
So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. 30 minutes later I wondered what was going on, but decided that since I hadn't seen him yet I'd go up the trail a bit and maybe I'd run into him, but not to go so far that I couldn't see the spot I stupidly said we should meet.
About five minutes up the trail I found a problem (later I found the notice on the Coast Path's website and really I could have avoided this by doing it earlier) - the seawall had broken and the path was diverted from both sides. However, I couldn't figure out why P still wasn't there because really it should have diverted to a path that was not that far out of the way, that I could see from where I was standing.
So I stood around for another ten minutes. Then I saw him.
Of course he was standing in the spot I'd told him to meet me, looking bewildered from afar. I yelled but he was too far away to here me, so I walked back and horse whistled indicating he should cross back over the crossing before the tide came all the way in. Apparently he just made it as there was less than an inch of crossing above water.
Apparently the diversion on the top didn't have a proper map like the one on the bottom. Not sure where it would take him or what it meant at all, he decided to walk directly back to where I'd said to meet by going way far inland and back out by road. So it took him a while and I didn't see him.
Since we consistently tease each other for lack of navigation skills, this is what I started to do. So when we walked around to the other side of the diversion that he had started at and . . .
You know what, I'm not going to go into the actual discussion we had and how we ended up going clockwise around a north facing peninsula that we were approaching from the east at 3 o'clock. (if you slowly visualize it you'll see why it makes no sense).
Sufficed to say, 15 minutes later several people on a holiday outing approaching the peninsula's nine o'clock position found me collapsed and rolling around on my back on a giant sand map I'd drawn with my walking stick with my hands covering my face yelling 'Oh my god what are you talking about! Are you saying reality is wrong because it doesn't match what's in your head?' over and over again while P's answer of the century was 'No, look. All I'm saying is that reality is poorly signposted' and in a close second was 'Really, if you think about it, you shouldn't have let me win if you knew where you were going.'
I guess we're lucky we get along because in the moment I found that statement more hysterical than infuriating. So I proceeded to make fun of him for the remainder of the hike, noting that it was interesting that it could be my fault for him being wrong, complaining that we were walking into a fierce, rainy headwind that could have been a fierce, rainy tailwind, and also writing a lengthy sand-letter of concern over his navigation skills for the world to see.
Of course, 'the world' in this case consisted of about 3 walkers, several dead leviathan-sized extremely windswept jellyfish, and the only remaining iron lighthouse in Europe, so I don't think my complaint was taken up by too many people.
In any case, in normal circumstances I don't think it would have been problematic - but walking every. single. day. means that you want to conserve as many steps as possible. In this case double tracking the 15 minutes at the bottom of the loop was going to be annoying - especially considering the hill that you'd walk up in the end.
And so, it was under these circumstances (oh, and also being chased by a wild stallion) that I left the north coast of the Gower behind, and moved onto the west coast. Luckily, even though the weather wasn't great, I was staying in a particularly scenic campground - set behind the dunes of Hillend, with a cafe set on the hill behind the campsite giving dune and beach and ocean views. Even in the rain, coming back to the serenity and remoteness of that beach and that campsite was recharging.
So I lived to walk another day.
