Coast Walking (Wales): Barry to Cardiff Centre 29 May 2016

We took a train to Barry Station and followed the coast path down through the docks, with numerous ruderal plants such as White Mignonette, Viper’s Bugloss, Hop Trefoil and a great many Pale Flax. The remains of a pump house here, with a square tapered chimney, are part of a restoration and regeneration project for the dockland area. Near Barry Dockland Station was an imposing red-and-white building, which is Barry Town Hall, built at the beginning of the C20th. The railway goes through a cutting which exposes strata of the Blue Lias, most easily seen from the train. After this the path passed industrial and business estates, dusty and fumy, dull and unpleasant for several miles. At the far eastern end of the industrial area (which entirely cuts off the coast, as so often in this walk) the official path backtracks through more of the same to come down to Sully Bay at the farthest west accessible point, but it is far easier and more pleasant to go east along the B4267 for 200 yards and then take an easy footpath at the edge of Sully village straight down to the head of the beach, which as usual is grey boulders. At first the path along the top of the beach is on shingle, but after the village it is through a sports field (car boot sale on this Sunday morning) and then along a road that is right on the coast to a caravan park that forced us inland again, through fields, only briefly back to the coast again and then round more caravans until we reached the Severn Estuary coast going due north to Penarth at Lavernock. The route then is along an easy track with hedge on the seaward side, so that, as on the earlier section, one gets very few views of the coast and little coastal feel. There was an Ivy along here with very narrow lobes to its leaves, making a pleasing contrast with the heart-shaped leaves of trailing Black Bryony next to it. We stopped at the side of this path where there was a seat (still with a hedge obstructing most of the view) to have a little lunch. Being hot there were numerous butterflies, Common and Holly Blues, Large White, Orange-tip, Speckled Wood, and one Red Admiral (first of this trip). The path went uphill to a grassy space on the edge of Penarth, where a road came from inland and went north up the coast taking us beside it. It was downhill along the front of Penarth to its pier, this being a surprisingly pleasant seaside town, very busy given a sunny Sunday on a Bank Holiday weekend, despite its lack of a sandy beach. Near the pier is a former several-storey beach shelter that now houses Fig Tree Restaurant, where we had an excellent lunch on our day off the day before. It was then that we not only noted the Fig tree growing on the south side of the restaurant, but also naturalised French Sorrel growing in the flower beds below the main balcony. At ground level there is an ice-cream outlet that provided us today with very refreshing mint and lemon ice-cream, while we had a short rest. We continued north to the end of the esplanade and then by roads and walkways up Penarth Head above where the Afon Eily debouches into the sea. We passed a group of handsome Victorian buildings which are now a school for special needs children, but were originally built in 1868 as Penarth Hotel by the then Taff Valley railway company. From 1921 it was a National Children’s Home nautical training school until it was recently bought by Action for Children and renamed Headlands School. Down the other side of the headland we descended to the Cardiff Bay Barrage, which provides a walkway across the mouth of Penarth Flats (except when the bridge is temporarily raised for a boat) and into the Cardiff Bay development. This is a pleasant and popular walkway past lots of modern buildings and visitor attractions (not least the Dr Who Experience!). The gravelled flower beds especially provide a chance for some unexpected botanical visitors, including Variegated Horsetail, Sea Holly and another (non-native) Eryngium species, planum, or Blue Eryngo. Behind a fence preventing access to an area of wasteland was a substantial colony of Green Figwort. A small pond had Yellow Iris, Fringed Water-lily, Water Mint, Monkey-flower and, on one edge, a massive growth of Toothed Medick with its large coiled and hooked spiny seed-pods. Most of these plants had been here in June 2014 (and in the same places) when we joined a BSBI visit to the same area. Looking back cross the barrage we could see Penarth Head, with the outline of St Augustine's Church against the skyline, another Victorian construction (1866, architect William Butterfield). We came to a number of displays of Cardiff's industrial heritage, including a huge lump of coal and an old coal wagon. After a coffee break, we passed the old Norwegian seamen's church, now a museum, and the red Pierhead building. We turned north away from the front beside the Welsh National Assembly building and a working replica of an old-fashioned roundabout, to proceed through a plaza (Roald Dahl Place) past a statue of Ivor Novello (like Dahl, a Cardiff native, real name Davies) and fountains. Outside the Wales Millennium Centre was a light installation called "Field" by the art collective Squidsoup, where each of 923 lights, or "poppies", represents a member of the Royal Welch Fusiliers who died in the First World War. The white globes shine red at night when illuminated. The front of the Millennium Centre, used for the performing arts, is dominated by a bilingual inscription in huge letters composed by the poet Gwyneth Lewis: "Creu Gwir Fel Gwyder o Ffwrnais Awen" (Creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration) and "In These Stones Horizons Sing". We followed the coast path east to the south end of Atlantic Wharf, where there were Mute Swan, Cormorant and Coots nesting, one brood well advanced and grey-downy, the other smaller, still with red beaks like moorhens. In the pavement of the walking area beside it was lots of Ratstail Fescue. At the north end of the water we left the coast path and, passing through the centre of Cardiff which seemed to be a series of crowded bars, headed for our hotel Jolyons on Cathedral Road near Bute Park. On the way we passed over a canal with River Water-crowfoot and then watched in horror as a lone duckling (no parent anywhere in sight) crossed a busy intersection with double lanes. Just as it nearly reached the opposite pavement, for some reason it changed its mind and headed back across the road. It was sickening to hear the crunch. We ate out at night at the Purple Poppadum, very superior Indian cookery, and one of very few restaurants open on a Sunday evening.