Day 90
Rhosneigr to Malltraeth: 12 miles
Highlight of the Day: Near-complete Camera Collapse
Reason: Who needs beautiful pictures of a sunny day on a lovely coastline? Surely not someone who's putting together daily blog posts.
Today's weather was absolutely beautiful - blue skies with small wisps of cloud, warm but not too warm, a little windy but generally pleasant. For a walk that's full of small coves, inlets, a picturesque church on an island, a sprawling estuary, a massive dune system all with the backdrop of the mountains of North Wales - you'd think I'd have great pictures from a day like today.
And yet, I do not.
The reason being, that a camera that was previously sort of kind of being difficult, is now almost fully fledge broken. When it's fully charged the zoom lens will half pop out, but won't focus properly. I know I shouldn't (because it will only make it worse), but I've been treating the automatic focus like it's an old manual and simply pulling and pushing the focus ring until the photo seems relatively in focus. Since, like I said, this is an automatic zoom camera, well, the camera is resistant.
And then there's the problem that when the battery is only half charged, the thing won't open at all.
So basically, what pictures I have took me about 5 minutes to focus properly. And they aren't great, and ultimately - basically just a bit after Aberffraw when I was traversing the giant beach of Traeth Mawr, turning into a massive dune system and then getting hopelessly lost on backroads inland to Malltraeth - it stopped functioning entirely.
So that part of the walk you have to really leave up to your imagination.
From the quiet side of Rhosneigr to Barclodiad y Gawres Burial Chamber
So I started out on the south side of Rhosneigr, and after the number of people I saw on the northern beach yesterday today this beach seemed relatively peaceful. Which is really saying something about how crowded it was yesterday, because apparently I'd showed up just before high tide. And from what I gathered this must be a good time for surfing here on Traith Llydan, because there were more than one surf school and also lots and lots of independent surfers making their way to the beach.
Even so, it had charming views as I walked toward a few small houses, and then around a small point. I hadn't been paying much attention to my guidebook, because it felt like i pretty much stumbled upon a giant burial chamber at Barclodiad y Gawres, which was clearly marked.
That said, this was still a pretty cool find. As I've mentioned a few times, Anglesey is home to the highest concentration of ancient sites in Wales - and this burial chamber is a pretty cool example. It's basically still set up as a hollowed out mound with one entrance way - though the mound has clearly been reconstructed, and there's a gate inside the entrance which you can only get past on weekend guided tours. But really you can see in just fine.
Apparently the name - Barclodiad y Gawres - means 'The Giantesses Apronful', as according to the legend that's how the chamber was carried here. In reality, it was built 5000 years ago as a place for burying the dead - and has carvings and organization similar to tombs in the Orkney Islands, western Portugal and Spain, Ireland, and Brittany. That's because at that time (the Neolithic) the people in these areas had enough understanding of the sun and stars to navigate across the water, and shared their carving and tomb building styles with each other. Pretty impressive when you consider how long ago it was (also just pretty impressive views in general).
Ancient capital of the Kings of Gwynedd
After continuing past the beach at the inlet of Porth Trecastell, which used to be renowned as the British side of the first telegraph line to Ireland, the trail got decidedly emptier. Possibly that's because I spent the next mile or so skirting a very loud car racecourse - the Anglesey Circuit - which I never actually saw.
But eventually I got to St. Cwyfan's church, which I'd been really looking forward to. This is an early 6th century church that's really wonderfully sited - it's on it's own island, and sits up on a giant stone breakwater to protect it from the sea. Only accessable at lower tides, and set against the backdrop of the mountains of North Wales and the sea, I was really glad this is where I told P to meet me because this is where my camera decided to die entirely. So using his mobile I managed to snap a few semi-satisfactory pictures and we headed up to nearby Aberffraw for lunch.
It was a lovely day so we decided to have lunch outside at the local pub - where we walked into a small space where everyone was speaking Welsh (not something that's actually happened all that often). What we didn't realize at the time is that Aberffraw, currently a relatively small fishing village, was actually the ancient capital of the Kings of Gwynedd, and for hundreds of years Celtic Britain was ruled out of the royal court located here.
Unfortunately not much is left to speak to this history (which is possibly why we didn't realize it while we were there, although we didn't visit the church or information center in town where this probably would have been mentioned) except St. Cwyfan's Church and possibly a ruin or two in town itself. But this is one of those things that really makes you think about how over time things can change so much for places, and that nothing that you understand to be a certain way has been that way forever.
And the rest of the day. . .
P drove me back to St. Cwyfan's - which was pretty stupid of us to have stopped there because the trail actually goes through Aberffraw. Anyway, he drove me back, and while I was getting ready to go, a car full of older English people was busy getting extremely mad at us for having stopped in such a way as they couldn't turn around exactly where they wanted to (we'd been trying to park out of the way so others could take the few actual parking spaces). P pointed this out to me, so I decided to go over to them and ask them what exactly their rush was, since there was plenty of space for them to turn around elsewhere and really we were making them wait about 30 seconds.
Anyway, if you're reading this and your English grandmother recently told you a tale about how she was terrified by an angry swarthy Sicilian-American lady wearing a Welsh flag headband, I'd say I'm sorry, but, well it was their fault, and I was perfectly nice about it. . . Look, it was her son who swung the back door open so said swarthy Sicilian lady had to tell backseat grandma in steady, low, but possibly to a non-confrontational British person seemingly threatening foreign tones that P was just dropping me off so if they could just wait a second they'd be able to turn their car around exactly where they wanted to.
And as they were trying to formulate a 'thank you' to my unexpectedly forceful politeness, I stomped off on my way, around a very pleasant headland, back up a tidal riverbank to return to Aberffraw, over a stone bridge, back down the other side of a tidal riverbank, and finally down a long beach with views toward the mainland in my sights. All of these things I wish I had pictures of.
After making my way inland through some lovely sanddunes, I got to where the path met up with the road. And as I followed the Anglesey Coast Path signs along further roads, I noticed this was very obviously not matching up to the description of the path in my guidebook - i.e. that I should be going through at least some gates and fields. But since there were very clear path signs, I decided to just stick to the road and hopefully I'd eventually end up at where I'd told P to meet me in Llangadwaladr - incidentally, the 7th century resting place of King Cadfan and thus the oldest royal tombstone in Britain. Not that I saw any of these things because actually P ended up meeting me on the road between Hermon and Malltraeth - the path I was on having not gone through Llangadwaladr at all.
Luckily, he'd realized when looking for a place to park that he couldn't find the path anywhere in Llangadwaladr - and so decided to just basically drive around until he found me. Which was luckily for me, given that I at that point had entirely lost track of where I was.
So I guess the path has been moved. . .
