Day 104
Llanystumdwy to Porthmadog: 9.5 miles
Regret of the Day: That I didn't stop at Dylan's for a cocktail
Reason: Because I ended up getting poured on regardless. At least if I'd stopped I could have been wet with a cocktail in me.
So, this is starting to get weird
So this is getting weird - I'm starting to hike through places I've actually been before again. When I first left from Aberdyfi(what seems like ages ago but was actually less than 4 months ago), and headed south, it was strange to be staying, for example, in Aberystwyth - which was definitely close enough for me to commute home.
But now I have a different sense of things, and it feels weird in a different way. Having been gone for four months, it feels not just like I should be returning home every night because that's what I did when I walked here before, but it feels like I've already walked this part of the trail. Although I haven't actually walked almost any of the Coast Path, as I intentionally avoided it during pre-border hike walks, I've walked enough between Criccieth and Aberdyfi that I feel like I recognize everything.
And more to the point, my mind is somehow telling me that because it seems to be familiar with this area, that there's nothing new to see here, and thus that I should probably just skip it and go home because it's all old hat anyway, we can just call it a day. I'm not kidding, having walked for nearly 15 weeks, and with only one week left to have completed the Wales Coast and Offa's Dyke Paths, and my brain is telling me it's cool to just call it so I can go to sleep in my bed in Aberdyfi.
Of course, there's another part of my brain that is laughing hysterically at that idea. And no, of course I'm not going to quit now. But somehow the idea of having 'Only a Week Left' is not nearly as motivating as I thought it would be.
Especially not here
What is motivating me is that since I've been here before, I know that it's one of my favorite parts of Wales (even having seen literally the entire rest of the Welsh border, I'll still stick to that) and that I haven't, in reality, seen the landscape from the coastline in the past. So now is the time. Although I hope that the weather clears up for at least some of this walk - because today ended rather horribly, leading me to question why, when I last saw P and he said 'Do you need to take your rain pants?' I'd quickly said 'no'.
But I'll get to that later. First things first, I started off in inland Llanystumdwy, and the trail immediately made for the coast, passing through farmland (complete with an unexplained stone circle) across railroad tracks, and along a picturesquely sited duckboard over a sort of pond. The path continued for a bit along the Afon Dwyfor, eventually going through some houses and a hedgerowed path where, with Criccieth castle on it's picturesque promontory in the background, an older gentleman stopped me to talk to me about North Korea.
Because really, what every American hiker wants is nothing more than to have their accent recognized, and immediately have the other party launch into question of foreign policy and nuclear arms. Needless to say, I think this gentleman (who was very well-intentioned) was expecting a conversation where he said 'Well Trump will solve the Kim Jong Un problem' and I was supposed to respond with a catch phrase I myself would also simply be parroting from my favorite left, center, or right wing periodical or news program. What he probably wasn't expecting was an extensive philosophical response of whether it was ever possible to 'solve' international problems, and whether they weren't, in reality, actually problems to be managed rather than solved, what 'fixing' the world's problems would look like in reality, and whether those who didn't know about world affairs didn't simply use the positions of the particular domestic political party they favored to argue emptily back and forth without really understanding or caring whether solutions were (or even could be) found, whether in reality that kind of fake point scoring actually made any sense when you're talking about entire other countries over which your own country has limited to no control peopled and led by actual people with their own actual desires and interests, the estimated death tolls of nuclear strikes, the use by militaristic leaders of tough talk to quell dissent domestically, the security of South Korea and Japan, this entire argument being made interlaced with comparisons to other situations such as those of China, Russia, and the European Union, which I probably could have tried to footnote or provide a bibliography for should the gentleman have been interested. That, I would say, he wasn't expecting.
I eventually ended the conversation with 'Well, I guess I've had a lot of time to think about this since I've been walking by myself for four months around the entire border of Wales. But anyway it's probably going to rain and I have to get going.' Because, to be fair, he actually seemed like he wanted me to keep going. Which is odd, because if I'm being honest, I'm not sure I've ever even had anything to do with North Korea. But I guess that wasn't what I was talking about.
After leaving the wilds of North Korea (actually, sidebar, a beach in South Wales was used for filming the James Bond movie with Halle Berry in it) I came upon Criccieth castle, and the very pleasant, very touristed little bay with mountain views that I'd visited in January when I came here to hike Craig-y-Garn nearby. The rather vivid description on the panel entering town describes the different welcome you get now, from when the Welsh and English 'were at each other's throats, their blood staining the rocky promontory'. Yikes.
So apparently Llywelyn ab Ioreth built the castle in the early 13th century, and it was further built upon and used by the princes of of Gwynedd as a residence and administrative center, until the English occupied it at the end of the 13th. In later years, the Welsh unsuccessfully laid siege to it, until Owain Glyndwr captured, sacked and burned it in 1404 - and it's lain as a picturesque ruin overlooking the town ever since.
Anyhoo, having visited it in January I skipped going in today - the clouds were clearly consolidating on the horizon, and I'd heard that it was supposed to downpour in the afternoon, so I really wasn't lying earlier when I said I wanted to get going. As testament to that, I similarly bypassed Dylans, the restaurant I visited in January (actually the entire reason for the visit) since which time I'd promised myself when I went through I'd stop in at least for one of their delicious looking cocktails. Well, apparently desire to beat the rain pretty much wins over everything else these days.
The path continues past Dylans along and over train tracks out of town, and up a small hill. It was at this point that my ability to beat the rain started to fail. When I started walking round a bend in the road overlooking a caravan park, all of a sudden I was getting his with big, fat raindrops. I quickly put my rainproof jacket on over myself and my teeny tiny hiking backpack (thanking myself quietly for having gotten it when I went through Cardiff), and I continued long to where the path went back down toward the beach at Black Rock Sands.
By the time I got to this gorgeous, wide beach with views across to the Merionydd coastline, the rain had entirely stopped and it was warm again. But when I looked out to sea, there was an absolutely massive black storm cloud with rain pouring down on the horizon - and honestly, it wasn't that far on the horizon. But it looked like it was going closer to Penrhyndeudraeth, which is just east of Porthmadog so I took my jacket back off, marveling at how there were still people on the beach even with giant stormclouds on the horizon.
Although there weren't as many as there probably usually are - given that the beach is used as a parking lot and there were very few cars on it. But there were enough that by the time I'd forded a small stream that cut across the beach, and turned the rocky promontory of Ynys Cyngar, I'd really been saying 'hello' and waving to people fairly constantly as I went along.
With an eye on the storm cloud to my right, I rushed fairly quickly through a cute little boat filled cove at Borth-y-Gest, at this point in my newly comfortable shoes practically jogging past people at my new ridiculously quick pace. And I'd just hit the edge of the harbour in Porthmadog, and had just begin to think that maybe I'd missed the worst of it, when out of nowhere, the sky turned black, the heavens absolutely opened up and giant fat raindrops started coming in sideways. The reason I know they were falling sideways is I was able to find shelter by standing beside a building that had absolutely no overhang. But after five minutes, even that stopped being useful because the roof was overflowing with water, and so I ran through the deluge to a small Welsh tourist shop where 30 other people were crammed under an awning to get out of the rain.
So I went inside and stopped myself from purchasing a bunch of dragon-patterned gear on the basis that if I bought it I'd have to put it in my backpack and it would get soaking wet, and eventually went back outside when it started to ease off. I'd been in Porthmadog once before, when we came here to take the Welsh Highland Railway to Caernarfon in April (it was awesome, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to write about it at the time as I was preparing for this hike). But that time we'd really just seen the narrow gauge rail station (for the Welsh Highland Rail and the Ffestiniog rail). Today I walked through town to the regular train station, and if it hadn't been constantly threatening rain, I would have enjoyed looking around more thoroughly.
As it turned out, I simply passed through, not stopping in at the pub with the giant Purple Moose Brewery ale sign painted all across the front of it, and instead thinking I was dutifully just going to wait at an empty train station to while away the 45 minutes before my train to where I was staying. Unbeknownst to me, the train station at Porthmadog isn't actually a train station (or the train station was certainly well hidden anyway) - it was a pub on a train platform. Which conveniently had Purple Moose on tap anyway.
So I sat at a tiny table near the slot machine, next to a window that was right over the platform, nursing a half pint of local ale until my train showed up, watching the rain all the while. Porthmadog is nothing if not convenient.
