Trefor to Morfa Nefyn 20/6/2013****

 

Looking back down to Trefor     Bitter vetch     Nefyn beach

It was straight uphill from the car-park in Trefor by lane and track to the col beside Yr Eifl.  We were in typical acid heath where dominant plants were heath bedstraw, heath speedwell, tormentil, hard fern, bracken, pignut, heather and bilberry, with stars of English stonecrop, occasional cross-leaved heath and bell heather.  At the top boggy streams had star sedge, bog pondweed, round-leaved crowfoot, lesser spearwort, creeping and tufted forget-me-nots, lousewort and butterwort.  Wet heath harboured harestail cotton-grass and mat-grass.  Typical birds were linnet, stonechat, hedge sparrow and goldfinch, and we saw silver-ground carpet and heath moths, and snipe-flies Rhagio scolopaceus.  At a car-park we went down a zigzag road through dark conifer plantations, where wetter spots had New Zealand willow-herb.  This led to Nant Gwrtheyrn, a new conference centre and café on the site of a derelict ancient settlement dating from prehistoric times, with remains of hut circles and medieval field systems.  Signs of later quarrying and mining activity also remain.  The ruins of an old farmhouse showed a simple one-room structure.  The site is very isolated between the hill we had traversed and the coast.  After coffee we descended to the pebble shore, where an old spoil heap included some basic rocks, as carline thistle and fairy flax grew just there and nowhere else.  Acid rocks had clumps of parsley fern.  We climbed up the steep cliff again through bracken and sheep-grazing, passing bluebell, ramsons, spotted orchids and bitter vetch.  We passed through low windswept woodland of pedunculate oak and hazel.  At the top, beneath the farmhouse of Ciliau Isal, we sat on a turfy bank to have lunch with a view of the sea, before continuing to the disused quarries at Penrhyn Glas headland, where we saw a pair of choughs.  From here we gradually descended through old fields with stone-wall enclosures for folding sheep.  There was a little trailing StJohn’s-wort.  By Pistyll Farm was an old chapel and cemetery.  We continued to a road where the official coast path we had so far followed went inland up another hillside, but we kept to the coast by following the road a few hundred metres until a small path by a caravan park provided access to the beach.  Below banks of shingle there was plenty of sand for easy walking.  This was Porth Nefyn, which had a good variety of shells, including such species as Arcopagia crassa, Gari fervensis, dog- and smooth-cockles.  The beach is very flat and high tide must reach the cliffs, as bathing-huts at the top were raised on stilts with ladders to the doors.  Towards the middle, however, a slipway descended from Nefyn village, providing access to cars that must sometimes pass along to holiday cottages at the far east end of the beach, as there is no road access there, and cars were parked on the top of the sands near the little jetty.  We left by the only exit, a cliff track beside the lifeboat station, to rejoin the coast-path.  This went round the headland of Penrhyn Nefyn and above the beach of the next bay, Porth Dinllaen, although there were no paths down to it.  We ended up where steps led down to a road and the beach, at Cliffs Inn in Morfa Nefyn.  Here we contacted a taxi-driver who lived near Trefor to take us back.

Lousewort   Heath moth   Celtic cross, Nant Gwrtheyrn   Arcopagia crassa