Coast Walking (Wales): Oxwich to Pennard Cliffs (Foxhole) 19 May 2016

This was a short day as a welcome interval between the hard walk of yesterday and the longer one coming up tomorrow. This was fortunate, because persistent rain set in just after noon and the temperature only reached 11°C. From the car park by the front at Oxwich we entered the dunes and meandered through the central slacks, slightly seaward of the official coast path. There were many patches of Southern Marsh Orchid, Twayblades, Yellow Rattle, Hairy Rock-cress, sometimes Bluebells, Heath Dog-violets, Common Milkwort, Cowslips and Southern Polypody. Among masses of Early Purple Orchids were rare variants with very pale pink to white flowers. In the shade of willows was a large patch of the leaves of Round-leaved Wintergreen, a few of which were just starting to flower. The variety of plants was remarkable and the spring a great season for colour, but we did not find any of the dune gentians Gentianella uliginosa that we had seen on these dunes in August 1982. It is likely that they had not yet come up to flower: they have a wide flowering period from May to October. Given the weather there were no butterflies; even the bees were somnolent. We eventually merged into the coast path and followed it to a bridge over the wide stream coming down from Oxwich Marsh, where there were Mute Swans on the lake and Herons hunting. We continued along more dry dunes into the edge of woodland above Nicholaston Burrows, where we saw Yellow Pimpernel, Ivy Broomrape and Opposite-leaved Golden-saxifrage, and disturbed a Cream Wave moth. We climbed up the slope to continue along the upper edge of the coastal sand “cliff”. It became rockier as we passed below Little Tor and the acid land of Great Tor, overlooking Three Cliffs Bay where the much-meandering Pennard Pill descended lazily to the sea through a wide sand plain. We eventually came down sand slopes to cross the river and its marshes by bridges and stepping stones to reach Pennard Burrows. We diverged left from the coast path in order to visit the scant ruins of Pennard Castle, well outlined on the skyline, a hard climb up shifting sand, along paths made even looser by many tourist feet seeking this feature. The walls were a good habitat for rock plants like Maidenhair Spleenwort, Rustyback Fern, Fern-grass and Pellitory-of-the-wall, but most notably Yellow Whitlow-grass, whose cushions of narrow hairy leaves and tall stems of large oval seed-pods were very evident and numerous. This site is probably the easiest place to see this plant, which is distributed otherwise only on the Gower cliffs from Oxwich to Rhossili and difficult to find from the coast path. On our way we passed plants of Isle-of-Man Cabbage. After visiting the ruined castle we tried to find the coast path, but it was not properly signed and a profusion of well-worn paths and horse-riding trails meant we missed it and went up the south side of the golf course instead of along the cliffs of Pennard. We then had use the main street through Pennard to cut down to our destination at Fox Hole, or Pennard Cliffs. A stray cow we met at the golf clubhouse also walked down the street, now and then feeding from bags of grass cuttings put out for waste collection. We last saw it passing beyond the car park at Pennard Cliffs, as we stopped here for respite from the weather at a coffee-house-cum-shop-cum-post-office. We had expected to catch a bus back to Oxwich, but this, apparently, only runs Sundays and Bank Holidays! So we obtained a taxi number from the all-purpose shop and took this transport back, at a cost of £20 for quite a short journey.