Morfa Nefyn to Ty-hen 21/6/2013**

 

Beach rocks, Morfa Nefyn   Thrift and sea campion   Stream near Towyn

From the National Trust beach car-park at Morfa Nefyn we went down cliff steps to the beach, which was sandy and with a variety of shells.  By the Ty Coch Inn at Porth Dinllaen we returned to the cliff-top and walked to the end of the peninsula, mostly taken up now with an extension of the Nefyn golf-course, despite it being a botanical hotspot because of unusual geology.  The whole north-west end of Lleyn is based on pre-Cambrian rocks formed by volcanic action in a deep sea trench which has agglomerated and metamorphosed rocks into an olistostrome or mélange, creating a fascinating variety of forms and colours represented in the beach boulders.  We were able to explore the cliffs, which were colourful with thrift, English stonecrop and sea campion.  We saw sea spleenwort, sea mouse-ear, spring squill, rock spurrey and common centaury in a compact dwarf form.  On sea-rocks there were gulls and cormorants, while guillemots fished the sea.  Having spent excessive time we had to hurry along the cliff-edge westwards, but this was less flowery because we were soon back on acid granite-based soils, while rocks at Porth Dinllaen had the look of serpentinite.  The best parts of these cliffs were the frequent wet gulleys with many marsh plants, including lots of ragged robin, round-leaved crowfoot, hemlock water-dropwort and common spike-rush; occasionally brookweed and brown and hairy sedges.  In several places primroses were still in full flower on midsummer day, a month past their usual latest date.  Some bluebells were also flowering, sheltered by the bracken.  These beautiful streams created frequent coves that necessitated paths going up and down steeply or circuitously round the edge, making progress slow, while huge flocks of sheep also eroded the paths and made them more difficult to walk.  We did not descend to the pretty little sandy beach at Towyn, as no exit was shown on the map, but there is in fact an informal way-up at the end which we only discovered too late.  This coast is very isolated and we saw common seals laid out on rocks at the sea-edge at a couple of places, 12 in all, including pups.  A small flock of common terns was diving for fish.  A change from cliff-walking was Traeth Penllech, a long sandy beach where we could get down just after the east end and walk the length of it.  We only saw two people and three dogs.  At Porth Colmon, a possible stop, we decided to carry on to relieve the length of the next day.  This stretch is so remote that you very rarely come across a road or community.  We followed the coast path where it turned inland beside a stream at Porth Widlin to a lane about a kilometre back from the coast.  We followed this lane another kilometre south to Ty-hen farm, where we could meet a taxi.   Ty Coch Inn Traeth Penllech from south end