Day 94
Caernarfon to Pontllyfni: 11 miles
Novelty of the day: I have blisters on my feet again
Reason: I tried wearing the new footpads I bought, as well as too thick socks. I also duct taped my shoes again. I think I ripped some of the inside lining out of my shoes, which in turn decided to rub up against my heel the entire way - so I have two new giant blisters.
Besides my feet, and my camera being a complete disaster, today wasn't too bad. Leaving Caernarfon via the swing bridge with views of the castle and Anglesey was pretty nice, although it was too grey to really take great pictures.
Speaking of pictures, like I said, my camera is falling apart. After waiting for a bus at Llanfair PG for like an hour and a half two days ago, when I fiddled with it with nothing in particular in mind, it actually seemed to have fixed itself. Then today it barely wanted to open. To focus at all I had to zoom, until something looked kind of focused.
Like I said, it wasn't a great day for pictures anyway, but then there were the mountains. . .
What's this now?
The first really interesting thing I saw on (well, in this case, sort of off) the path was St. Baglan's Church. Isolated in a field with a mountainous backdrop, and surrounded by a stone wall, this church looked interesting enough for a visit. And it was, in an eery way. Most of the churches I've been into have been relatively well-kept, done up for churches. This one had been abandoned in the 20th century and was being kept up by the Society for Forgotten Churches, or some organization like that. So when you went inside, you got a good sense of what these churches probably looked like when they'd gone a bit downhill. And since it hadn't really been modernized the whole thing had a good sense of history - there were boxes for the local wealthy families, engraved with names and dates, and benches for everyone else. Of course there was also a 6th century engraved stone that had been repurposed into an outdoor window sill, and other architectural features that make you wonder how someone just left that there, abandoned.
Anyway, it had a great atmosphere, kind of dark and broody and isolated, with waves crashing outside. Nice.
Moving on, I noticed that nearly all of the walk was on roads - some with sidewalks, some without. Those without, well, it's always fun to try to figure out how to make sure cars see you as they're flying around blind corners with 10 foot high hedges on their way home from a Bank holiday weekend. I suppose that was the real problem (though the size of the roads doesn't help) I think everyone in the UK was currently on the road, and the Welsh side-roads just aren't made for traffic. And certainly not when there are hikers on them. You practically have to dive into the hedges every time a car goes by.
So after some fun times imitating Frogger, I walked past a small airport, and arrived at Dinas Dinlle beach. As I turned left, I realized I'd finally fully returned to West Wales, where I started. Although not Cardigan Bay yet, the shingle storm beach led south to some tremendous mountains of Snowdonia, falling straight into the Irish Sea.
It was at this point that I thought "Shit, I'm going to have to climb those aren't I?" Not that I hadn't realized it, I'd always known the highest point on the Wales Coast Path was on the Llyn peninsula, and I'd even been here before. But seriously, I literally just finished hiking what felt like a (very lovely) 120 mile detour around an island off the coast. I was just starting to feel close to home, again, and then here are these giant mountains in front of me.
After a short tussle between optimist me (those will be beautiful walks) and pessimist me (my shoes are literally being held together with duct tape, I'm going to end up hiking those barefoot), I decided to call a truce with myself (possibly because I thought I might be driving myself insane). And so on I walked.
And walked, and walked, and walked. Along beachfront roads, hedgerowed roads, and highways. The hedgerowed roads, in addition to worrying me about the constantly passing cars, also had a significant portion that went through cow pastures. Normally cows behind hedges are fine, really they are - but today there were. . . noises. I'm really not sure what was going on back there. At one point I walked up to a fence with no hedge, and a giant bull began to slowly saddle up to me from way way way across a field, and he sounded like he was growling. The other noises were more grunty screams. If I've learned one thing on this walk - it's that cows have a much wider range of noises than I'd ever realized.
When I finally got to the highway, I was glad for having a sidewalk - though my feet were getting banged up enough that I really just wanted to find a bustop to take me to my car. Luckily I'd managed to plan the whole thing right - despite it being a bank holiday, I found the one bus that ran along this road and timed my hike so I was an hour early for it. The only problem I encountered was that the bus stop I found was infested by giant spiders - a sure sign of a much-used bus stop.
Anyway, after zoning off into space for a good 50 minutes while thousands of holiday makers whizzed back home past me at 70 mph, I caught the bus, got to my car (which I had taken with me to be able to get around spots where there isn't public transport for the next few days), and switched residences to a homemade pod in a field on the sparsely populated Llyn peninsula. But maybe I'll tell you about that later.
