Coast Walking (Wales): Newgale to Little Haven 12 June 2015

Staying at Haroldston Hall, we took a taxi north to Newgale where we had finished in 2014. The tide was out and we could walk comfortably down the beach southwards for just over a mile. Most other people were dog-walkers, of which there were many. This was a very flat sandy beach with sparse shells, mostly Donax and Pharus legumen. The northern half was below banks of boulder pebbles, thrown up by past storms, the southern half below gradually rising cliffs of the Coal Measures, which included some tuff from the Armorican Orogeny.

Where the sands changed to rocky foreshore, the OS map shows a footpath going up the shale cliff to the coast path along the top. This had unfortunately been mainly washed away and it was only with a substantial struggle, and the help of other walkers trapped in the same way that we were able to get up the smooth rocks and piles of scree. When we got to the grassy path we found a sign saying that the path no longer existed.

The rest of the day was essentially along the top of steep, but not terribly high, cliffs. Waysides inland were pink with red campion and foxgloves, but banks nearer the sea were richer in colour, the blue of sheepsbit dominant, with white ox-eye daisy, sea campion and English stonecrop, yellow cat’s-ears, kidney vetch and mouse-ear hawkweed, creamy burnet rose, pink thrift and wild thyme. Bluebells and cowslips had all finished flowering and there were few spring squills that were not already in seed. The variety of plants, however, was not large. The orange fungal galls on the burnet rose of the rust Phragmidium rosae-pimpinellifoliae were everywhere and provided even more colour. We descended from time to time, making the walk more energetic, whenever the line of cliffs was broken by a major cove – Nolton Haven, Druidston, Broad Haven and Little Haven. On the cliff at Nolton Haven we saw the rare pink form of burnet rose. Rock stacks out at sea were colonised by gulls and jackdaws, while we saw a cormorant with a young one standing on a small rock. At Druidston stood a solitary hotel, which had a wedding party that night and the following day, but we enjoyed the chance to get a cold drink.

We walked up to a short section of paved pathway along the cliff. The path, and a small car park, provided disabled access, and was well equipped with log seats, one of which we used to take our lunch overlooking the sea. Mainly overcast it was a warm sultry day and quite of lot of butterflies and beetles were active. The former included many common blues and painted ladies, plus the occasional wall, tortoiseshell and red admiral, while the latter included brilliant green tiger beetles and thick-kneed flower beetles, the latter especially common on the yellow flowers. At one place a lizard was sunning himself on top of a pile of dried grass. Gorse bushes had sparse flowers, but some had been made totally bare by lackey moths, being stark brown branches still covered with webs. We walked a short way down the beach at Broad Haven, but the tide was well in preventing us from rounding the headland to neighbouring Little Haven, and so we had to follow the road over the top. At Little Haven the cliffs show dramatic folds in the Coal Measure shales and sandstones, which had prevented much mining in the area being difficult to follow the narrow coal seams.

From the centre of Little Haven we took the coast path again out to The Point and continued for a few hundred metres more, as far as the small car park close to a caravan park at the far end of Little Haven, a handy starting point for our next walk. As we sat on a seat here at the end of this section, a blackbird stood on top of a tall bush and serenaded us with a powerful song to celebrate our achievement. On this short section we also saw Bordered Straw moth (an immigrant like the painted ladies) and southern marsh orchid. We were now about 4 kilometres from Haroldston Hall and had plenty of time left, so we walked back through Little Haven, Broad Haven (where we got coffees at the Galleon Inn) and up the road to West Haroldston, arriving at the B&B just as the threatened rain began to fall. In the evening we returned to Druidston Hotel for a bar snack (the restaurant being fully booked), this time by car because the rain had now become persistent. Although the drinks and food were fine, the atmosphere was naturally very noisy and crowded.