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From Stackpole Quay, a short inlet formed by a geological fault-line,
we walked east over old red sandstone cliffs with frequent coves and thus
many ups and downs. The soils were
acid and there was little remarkable about the flora. The edges of arable land sometimes had
field pansy, corn spurrey and field woundwort. As usual the cliff streams were lines of
white from the hemlock water-dropwort plants dominating them. There was a view-point named Lundy View,
from which we could see Lundy (Devon). After Trewent Point we descended to
Freshwater East beach, which had only scattered shells, although some very
large barrel jellyfish. The dunes
behind added a few more flower species – lots of pyramidal orchids, sea
bindweed, and ivy broomrape but only a few plants of sea holly and sea
rocket. The cliffs continued more or
less the same as before, but a little less arduous and a few more flowers,
like Smith’s pepperwort. We saw a group of white common centaury plants at
one particular bare rock site shared with English stonecrop, which was very
evident on some of the cliffs, making them completely pink from their stems
and calyces, even though many of the white petals had now fallen, replacing
the thrift which is nearly completely over.
Trailing and, particularly, slender StJohn’s-worts were increasingly
common beside the path, where we saw our first ringlet of the season, a large
glossy rose chafer on an umbel of sea carrot, and that real denizen of coast
paths, the bloody-nosed beetle. Few
birds of note were seen, although it was pleasant to witness the whitethroats
singing from the tops of bushes and sand martins commonly sweeping along the
cliffs. The path eventually descended
to the beach of
Manorbier (pronounced
“manner-beer”).
Here we ended
our walk just after 2pm, a short day, and walked up the road past the remains
of Manorbier Castle to the centre of the little
village, where a good coffee did not seem to be available, but we could get
large helpings of local ice-cream from the café and catch a bus to
Pembroke. We found the only bus to
Stackpole would have been over an hour wait, and would go the long way round,
taking an hour to get there, so we ordered a taxi back to Stackpole Inn.
Tonight we
stayed at Penally Abbey, a hotel in the centre of Penally near the church and
incorporating some old abbey ruins in the grounds. We shall walk past Penally tomorrow, but
not into it.
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Slender
StJohn's-wort & common catsear
Hemlock
water-dropwort delineating line of stream
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