Day 98
Towyn to Porthor: 8.5 miles
Fun Fact of the day: You can in fact still walk on shoes that are ripped in half.
Real Issue: When they start to smell particularly offensive, you start to question whether you want to.
My Sneaker Saga
So, if you've been reading the convoluted history of my sneakers, you've possibly thought I was using hyperbole when I said they were 'falling off my feet'. You were entirely correct - while I had been duct taping them because of the holes on the bottoms and the sides, mostly it was to just try maintain some semblance of the shape of the original shoe, and to keep the water out. While the side holes meant that my toes didn't have much support, they still had some support.
Well, today, all my hyperbole caught up to me when I realized two things have happened. First, the sides near the toe further ripped off the uppers. This means that really the front of my feet (where all my weight is now distributed due to the fact that I'm wearing additional heel support - let's be honest, that's probably why the soles and the uppers separated so quickly) really have almost no support.
This might have been ok, except for the other problem. Which is, that the inside layer of the sole has ripped through (again, probably because of the tension of the supports, plus, you know, the fact that the rubber sole is ripped). What this means is that, without the additional sole support thing inside the bottom of the shoe - I can basically poke several fingers through the bottom crack in the sole of my shoe and have them come out through the top. So without repair, and without the supports, the balls of my feet will basically be on the ground. And I'm sure very quickly the rest of my foot will be as well.
Enter, duct tape. If the duct tape of my youth could hold the rusted parts of my father's old truck on for several years, I figure that surely I can just strap myself into my shoes with it. Combined with some very basic sewing skills wherein I stitched the inner sole together in hopes that it might last a mile or two before snapping, I basically spent the better part of the morning just attaching my shoes to my feet. Ultimately, I'm considering just duct taping the removable supports to my feet, pulling off my flip flop bottoms and duct taping the duct taped feet and supports into the flip flops.
But, you know, I'm not quite there yet. And yes, I know I could get new shoes, somehow, somewhere. But really it seems like a stupid thing to do when I can't have more than two weeks left. Plus I just really don't want to have to think about it - in particular when I'm really out in one of the most isolated parts of my entire walk.
Salt Smuggling and Whistling Sands
While once again, my pictures kind of suck due to the continuing deterioration of my camera (I'll stop harping on it when it stops being annoying), today was a pretty nice hike. The Coast Path wove in and out of cove after cove, largely staying to the cliff's edge but also with occasional beach hikes.
That said, I'm actually not entirely sure whether I was on the trail the entire time or not. While I had an OS map, the map, my book, and the trail markers did not all seem to be in any form of agreement. While one would tell me to drop to the beach, the other would tell me the path went along the cliffs. I tried to stay faithful mostly to the trail markers, since I assume they are usually the most recently updated - but more than once I felt like I was walking along a giant beach when I was supposed to be in the cliffs, and once I'm nearly certain the trail went inland and instead I followed a very narrow, very steep cliffside path with ridiculously sheer drops to the sea.
But regardless of whether I was exactly where I was supposed to be, the walk took in some very lovely views. First Porth Towyn with it's several charming soft sand inlets, followed by a really interestingly shaped peninsula covered in caravans. Then more rocky coves, sheep paths, and a headland with some building remains on it. Followed by some more coves, rock formations (including at least one rock arch that I could find), and a particularly long beach.
Just after this beach the trail climbed upward again, and after a cute little house where I saw a tractor pulling a boat out of the water (which seems to be a regular use of tractors here) I saw a sign giving some fun Porth Colman history. Namely that apparently this beach's claim to fame is that in the early 19th century four men were arrested for smuggling salt (men after my own heart). Salt was needed for preserving food, and since it was heavily taxed at the time it was also heavily smuggled.
These four men were then put in jail for several years. One of them - William Williams, got so skinny that he escaped by simply slipping through the bars. According to locals, his mother then hid him in her butter churn. He then laid low until he was able to buy passage to America - which he accomplished by pretending to be a woman so he wouldn't get caught on his way to Liverpool. If anyone reading this is a Welsh-American with the last name Williams, I really think you need to look into your geneaology, as this is a pretty great coming to America story.
After Porth Colmon, I skirted some more lovely sandy, rock formation filled coves (which may or may not have been on the actual path) until I finally got to Porthor. Here, the path actually went behind the lovely long beach, straight to the parking lot. After realizing it wasn't actually dropping down to the beach itself, I decided to go down anyway.
And that's because Porthor is one of the more well-known beaches on the north side of the Llŷn Peninsula - and not just because it is one of the longer sandy beaches of the north side (as opposed to the many craggy or rocky beaches which the north coast boasts). But it's also because of a property of the sand itself. A sign attests that in the 19th century a traveller wrote about the sand's supposed unique sound properties - and since then the beach has also been known as 'Whistling Sands.'
Basically, when the tide's out and you walk across the sand barefoot in a particular manner, it makes a squeaky noise due to the type and shape of sand particles on the beach. Now, having been on many a beach in my life, I have to admit I've heard this happen many times and never thought it was a unique sand-shape related property. But unfortunately for me, I'm still not entirely certain whether this is an entirely different, special type of sound that you can only find at Whistling Sands. And that would be because I couldn't make it work.
It's not that I didn't try. I did. I went out on the sand and tried all kinds of different walking positions. But the problem was, as it has been recently, the fact that I had duct taped my shoes to my feet. And the fact that because of that, I was rather unwilling to try to take my shoes off, since I still needed the shoes to be attached to me in order to finish the day, and taking them off (which would necessitate taking off all the duct tape) would make that difficult. So, although squeaky sand beach seems to require being barefoot, I was trying to make the noise happen with shoes on. Which clearly doesn't work.
To be fair, however, I made a mental note to send P back here when I next saw him, with instructions to video himself walking barefoot on the sand so I could understand what this whole thing was about. And despite trying every conceivable position on all different parts of the beach (it's supposed to work after the sand dries out more) he couldn't do it either. Though I do believe it's a thing, it was just something the two of us are apparently incapable of. Kind of like how I'm just never going to be able to touch my toes.
The Party Bus
So, one of the great things about hiking the Llŷn Peninsula is that they have a particularly convenient hiking bus, that's also basically a taxi. Basically, it runs from Nefyn to Pwllhelli and has regularly scheduled pick ups and drop offs at various points along the trail. Even better, you can call to reserve up to the day before to come get you if you're in one of the particularly isolated areas (these are all marked on a map).
Unfortunately, the bus is only available four days a week (around weekends), and further unfortunately (for me) I have had neither readily available internet access nor phone access with which to book said bus. Also I haven't really entirely been sure where I'll starting and ending each day - until after office hours the day before. This, combined with the lack of available accommodation, and the particularly cold forecast and my torn back muscle making my tent camping seem like a horrible idea, is why I have for the first time kept the car with me, and have been making use of the regular bus system here (which, by the way, is really, really, really, spectacularly sparse in terms of number of buses).
But today at Porthor the only available bus back to my car (which was currently in a farm yard where I'd paid for parking with many, many five pence pieces I'd found in the cupholders) was the regularly scheduled hiking bus. Unfortunately one had come just as I arrived at the beach, but at least there was a small cafe and outdoor seating area to rest my weary feet. After waiting an hour an a half for the next arrival (which arrived at a time that might have been within 15 minutes of one of the two different schedules I'd seen as possibilities) I got on one of my favorite bus rides ever.
Why it was my favorite is that it was full of locals speaking Welsh to each other. And not only did they first compliment my Welsh headband and show me the various dragon gear they were also wearing, they kept up basically a constant half Welsh half English dialogue for me for the entire ride. The two drivers and the rest of the bus would speak to each other in Welsh - and what was weird was when they translated for me into English I half knew what they were talking about anyway (since it was all relevant to what I was doing there, it gets kind of obvious).
The one thing I felt a little bad about is that I was suffering from my post-walk semi-non-communicative tiredness - and after telling them I was walking all the way around Wales, and someonen asked the obvious question 'Why?' I couldn't come up with anything better to say than 'Well, it seemed like an interesting thing to do.' Which to be fair, is actually the answer. I'm not raising money for charity, raising awareness for a global problem, or anything else in particular. Really, I lived here, and I had a free summer, and it seemed like a cool place, and something people didn't know anything about outside the UK, so, here I am.
But regardless of my super-lame answer, I got a lot of helpful pointers about the next few days on Llŷn - including the fact that tomorrow it is apparently going to be an absolutely torrential downpour, and might be a day I want to just sit out. Which really sucks, because it's also the last day this bus runs for the week.
What is that smell though. . .
When I got back to my camping pod, I started pulling the duct tape off my shoes because I had to reapply it again tomorrow. I was pretty happy that my shoes did manage to hold together. I'd managed to duct tape them so that the tension of walking actually kept the shoe on my foot, rather than pulled it off - so I finished the day with the duct tape still relatively intact on my foot.
That said, I am starting to notice another unexpected problem. . . I couldn't figure it out at first, since, well, after walking for 98 days one does have a tendency to go a bit noseblind, including of farm animal scents that others would notice in a second, and so at first it was just a vague smell of pee, that I thought maybe was in a nearby field.
Then I took my feet out of my shoes, followed by the supports, and I realized that no, in fact it was a smell of animal pee that was actually attached to me. So it seems that if you have shoes that are ripped in half, duct tape can only protect what's inside them so much, in particular from elements that might be picked up when walking through vast tracks of farmland.
So while my feet had remained relatively dry, the supports have a little tacky gel component corresponding to the balls of one's feet (facing down). As I walked, tiny bits of sheep and cow leavings made their way through the duct tape, through the hole in the sole, and through the rip in the inside of the shoe, ultimately finding this gel, at which point they decided they loved it and wanted to hang out there, pretty much for the rest of eternity. Long story short, the round gel part on the underside of my shoe support inserts now are yellow, and smell like super-concentrated sheep urine. And it won't seem to come off at all.
Which is awesome.
