Criccieth to Talsarnau 27/6/2013

 

Saltwort   Moon jellyfish   Buff-tip moth

East from Criccieth (the castle still a dominating landmark) the coast path is beside the railway until the latter bends inland, when we had to negotiate the hill of Graig Ddu and go a little way inland to get back to the coast via a caravan site above a sandy beach and heavily used dunes.  Despite the human pressure, the head of the beach had lots of both saltwort and frosted orache, occurring together just like yesterday.  The dunes, however, only yielded sea sandwort and sea spurge.  Shells, apart from Donax, were thin on the ground but there had been a mass stranding of moon jellyfish.  Both necklace-shell Polinices catena and its semi-circular egg-case collars were are also present.  A heron was fishing in the surf.  Cars are allowed on this beach virtually all the way to the end, some 3 kilometres.  At the low crag of Ynys Cyngar, a river (a tributary of the Glaslyn) descends and we had to climb over the hill and drop down beside a golf course and continue eventually along the west bank of Afon Glaslyn itself, which creates a large estuary here.  The trail led to the neat harbour at Borth-y-Gest, where we got a lunch in a café before continuing through boatyards up the river to Porthmadog to the A487 road-bridge over the river.  This brought us to the station for the Ffestiniog steam railway, where we might have been tempted to take a ride instead of the road-walking to come, but we had just missed one train and the next was not for 2½ hours.  So we walked beside the railway across a wide saltmarsh, the occasional steam engine passing by with its far-sounding whistle.  Although we tried to take footpaths coastwards of the main road, we found these closed, and had to continue alongside the A487 through Minffordd (past the road to Portmeirion) and as far as Penrhyndeudraeth.  Here we went left along a minor, though still busy, road by the station and over the wide marshes of the Afon Dwyryd, made more difficult by roadworks for almost all the way and a narrow bridge with no walkway.  This led to Llandecwyn railway station, which we was our intended destination, but we were now thoroughly wet with rain that had become increasingly heavy, and there would have been over an hour's wait for a train back on a cold windy platform, so we decided to continue walking. The footpath led through a farm and over another knoll, over the railway and then along an embankment above a wide saltmarsh, from which we saw more herons, as well greylag and Canada geese.  We followed this to a track leading towards Talsarnau railway station, with only 20 minutes to await the train back to Criccieth.  We drove to Portmeirion where we are staying two nights in houses attached to the hotel.  We ate just above the village at Castell Deudraeth, all part of the same commercial complex, which is served by a complimentary minibus so reminiscent of “The Prisoner”.  On our house door was pitched a buff-tip moth looking like a small twig with a cut-off end. Borth-y-Gest View of Portmeirion from our room