Day 49
Llantwit Major to Barry: 13 miles
Dedication of the day: To St. Illtyd
Reason: Yet another saint I haven't heard of, he was a soldier of fortune turned abbey professor. I imagine him as a cross between Lara Croft and Indiana Jones.
After having seen Welsh Hogwarts (i.e. St. Donat's) yesterday I'd cut back inland to Llantwit Major so I could catch the train back to Barry (where I mentioned I was staying with a fabulously fun AirBnB couple), and so I started well inland from the trail again today.
Even though it added a mile or two to my walking time, I'm glad I did. Although Llantwit Major didn't seem like a town with more than a series of row houses, there's actually a very sweet old part of town. And as I later learned - that old part of town is in fact the site of the first center of learning in Britain - at St. Illtyd's.
Around 500AD Illtyd (thought by some to be Sir Galahad) set up a monastery here where he educated young men, on the site of a Roman college (the oldest college in Britain) that had been set up a century before. Two of his students were St. David (the patron saint of Wales of course) and St. Patrick. Something I'd never heard before (though I'm of course not Irish - or Nigerian, did you know St. Patrick is also the patron saint of Nigeria? Also Monserrat. I guess there are a lot of snakes in the world) is that this is the spot where Irish pirates kidnapped St. Patrick and brought him to Ireland to become a slave. Although to be fair this fact, while found in one history, is disputed by others - he may also have been kidnapped from Scotland.
Anyway, what St. Illtyd's has now is a lovely church, that is actually two churches joined together - one from the 11th century and one from the 14th. And it also has several very impressive Celtic crosses and stones. These range from the 9th to the 11th century, and are lined up in the rebuilt Galilee chapel. The lovely Houelt Cross - a largely intact wheel cross - is the central piece on display, and it's flanked by several other carved stones. A walk around the rest of the chapel reveals several other carved stone tombs and tombstones set into the floor. Altogether it's a peaceful and historic place.
Hitting the southernmost point in Wales
But I had a fairly long walk planned today - so I decided to move on. After a lengthy walk back down to the beach, where the main occurrence was I saw some cows doing some interesting things in fields, I set off for Barry. The immediate walk was fine, views back toward cliffs and largely through fields. After a while I got to Gileston which looked adorable and according to my hosts had a great pub, but decided I'd spent enough time in Llantwit Major that I should move on rather quickly.
And so for the next few hours I found myself walking around a power station. The views toward England were fine, and included a little stone building out in the water that maybe was something nice. But the power station itself - it was a power station. And it was again hot with only a little cloud cover, and the trail was largely concrete. And also there was a sign about police drones that scared me. Not that I was doing anything wrong. But I feel like that's literally the start of SkyNet.
So trying not to move too quickly so as to escape the notice of our future robot overlords, I trudged through coastline, and holiday parks, and narrow ledges between the water and giant quarries; and I may have mistakenly bypassed part of a safety diversion along a cliff, to ultimately find myself at a small stone circle that marks Rhoose Point. Which meant, of course, that the rest of my walk would all be north from here as this is the southernmost point in Wales.
So I think that means I've hit the westernmost point and the southernmost point - can't wait for the easternmost and northernmost points!
On to Barry, the town, not my parent's next door neighbor
The walk then continued through Porthkerry Country Park and ultimately the seaside resort of Barry and Barry Island. Which I kept having a hard time saying because my parent's have a friend named Barry, and it's hard to equate his name with a town that has a lot of arcades and a really busy Weatherspoons pub rather than with him.
Regardless, Welsh Barry sits on a hill covered in terraced houses with views to the water, over Barry Island. Barry Island of course being connected to the mainland by a causeway and a train, in the 60s you could find a giant holiday park with enough chalets to accomodate 5000 people. That park went out of business in the 90s, but the seaside amusements are still here - the promenade and string of arcades and rides front on a giant family friendly beach with giant numbers painted behind it. My hosts explained to me that this was because Barry sees the second highest tidal range in the world (after Newfoundland) and children going into the water are told to remember what number they'd been sitting in front of in case they find themselves very far out at low tide.
It not being school holidays yet (that's not until late July), it was still relatively quiet. I had a nice walk around the island, and then spent the evening having a simple Weatherspoons (that's a chain pub) dinner where I did my best to try to not appear as absolutely disheveled as I was. It didn't work very well, but I did get a good burger out of it.
