Day 47
Margam to Ogmore: 13 miles
Surprise of the day: Kenfig Sands was actually a pretty pleasant, secluded, lovely beach
Reason: The reason it's a surprise is one end of the beach is a steelworks. But it's backed by a secluded nature reserve full of sand dunes and birds.
Bridgend Coast Path
So today I basically walked the Bridgend Coast Path - from the Kenfig Nature Reserve to Ogmore. With the day starting out like it had ended yesterday - walking by steelworks and other industrial sites - I didn't have high hopes.
But it got much better. As I waited to cross the 7 railway tracks owned by the steelworks as train after rusty train carrying god knows what passed by, I didn't think that it would. But after the point on the trail where I found giant concrete Legos (seriously, I have no idea what they could possibly be used for), the path turned to sand. While by itself this actually kind of sucked, it also meant the scenery turned into sanddunes. Giant, grassy sanddunes as far as the eye could see, with only birds to keep me company. There used to be a town and a castle in the dunes, but the shifting sands forced them to relocate - if you wander around long enough, you can still find some of the remains out there.
As I slogged through the sand I definitely at one point started singing out loud - which I only do when no one's around. Of course I then managed to scare some giant hawk-sized birds (possibly hawks, but I'll never know as I scared them off with my singing) off from near a picturesque bridge over a small river covered in reeds and flowers. What was weird about this is that I knew the steel works was just over one set of dunes. But out of sight, out of mind I guess.
This is where I met P and we decided to walk on the beach. We again found a shipwreck of some sort - but beyond that the only other things on the beach were dunes, shells and maybe two other walkers coming from the other direction. After the street walking in Port Talbot and Margam, the walk on the beach was inexpressibly nice - though quite long. Also, walking away from a steelworks brings on an entirely different feeling than walking towards one.
Eventually we reach went back behind the dunes and walked past the Sker House. Originally built as a monastic grange in the 12th century, it has been continuously inhabited ever since. It's also supposed to be haunted - there's a book called The Maid of Sker that was inspired by the true tale of a young woman locked up in the house, in a room without windows. Yikes. You can only see it from afar since economic historian Niall Fergusson has disallowed public access since he bought it in 2003 - but from a distance it looks very nice - despite its haunted past.
The same cannot necessarily be said for the giant Victorian building you pass as you walk past the golf course. Although it might be called 'interesting' to me it looked like a cross between my high school and a haunted house, and leaning definitely more toward the haunted house side.
Porthcawl - the Old Orchard Beach of Bridgend
The rest of the walk to Porthcawl was pretty scenic - rocky coastline with the seaside resort drawing ever closer. P and I had already stopped here for Indian food once where we shocked the waiter by not ordering poppadoms, and today we stopped for a well deserved cider. Sometimes I find that my mind wants to keep walking even if my body is very obviously suggesting that I stop. Forcing myself to sit down by doing something concrete and rewarding - like having a cider at a pub - is actually a good way to stop and rest my legs.
So, better rested and full of cider (on my part) P headed for Ogmore and I set off on the path. First I walked further down the prom, and found a cute tourist seaside resort full of restaurants, bars and hotels. It's actually quite cute, and once I passed the point I saw there were people in the water. Then as I kept walking, I drew closer to the fun fair side of things. Set behind Sandy Bay is, basically, the Welsh equivalent of an arcade at Old Orchard Beach. Rides, cotton candy ('candy floss' here), games and hot dogs were everywhere. The only real difference I could see between here and home was there were way more women in saris here than you'd ever find in a beach in New England (that number in New England is zero, by the way). Everything was very bright.
But after passing the Coast Guard station, the trail passed through mobile home world. Which, as I've said before, is not as terrible a world as some make it out to be. Yes, there are hordes of mobile homes. But they're all just so well kept, organized, gardened and painted that I have a hard time being concerned.
After the caravans of Newton Point, the path again opens up to sand dunes and beach. Before human habitation, this was part of a stretch of dunes that went all the way from Ogmore to Gower - but all that's left is this portion (Merthyr Mawr) and the Kefig Burrows I went past earlier today. This part of the Bridgend Coast Path has a very interesting claim to fame - the Merthyr Mawr dunes, the second largest in Europe, were one of the locations for filming Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. Because Wales easily doubles as the Arabian desert.
If you're confused because the dunes clearly have green on them - that's because sea buckthorn, originally planted to stabilize the dunes, has become an invasive species and basically run wild pushing out the native plants. Fun fact is that seabuckthorn actually makes awesome tea - at least in Kazakhstan. So a solution to this problem could be someone opening a seabuckthorn tea concern in the area. It would certainly solve my personal problem re: complete lack of seabuckthorn tea in this country.
But if you ever walk this way, the main thing you'll notice is the sand is too [insert favorite expletive here] soft. It's unbelievable, and makes for very difficult walking. On the beach you sink a few inches in wherever you go. On the dunes you're basically walking on really thick pillows, which sounds nice until you realize why sidewalks aren't paved with pillows. Because they suck to walk on.
Finally understanding the quicksand scene from Lawrence of Arabia - all I wanted was to be done with this walk. It was absolutely exhausting. When we finally got to the end - where path hits the parking lot for Candleston Castle, I couldn't even enjoy the thatched roofs and flowered gardens of the picturesque hamlet of Merthyr Mawr. I was just. so. tired. of walking. in sand.
