From Borth Station we walked south down the main road,
passing many houses that had been flooded and damaged during winter storms
and were still under repair. The head
of the beach was comprised of mounds of large loose pebbles and hardly
possible to walk. A single pot
marigold emerging from the pebbles seemed a sign of regeneration. At the south end a path ascended a stiff
hill Craig-yr-Wylfa, topped by a war memorial, and continued along cliffs all
the way to Aberystwyth, occasionally descending to valleys and small beaches
of sand or fine shingle between cliffs of banded rocks, such as at
Wallog. These beaches yielded
relatively few shells, mostly of the winkle and Venus families. The acid soils of the cliffs supported a
flora dominated by heath groundsel, wood-sage, and more colourful foxgloves,
English stonecrop, sheepsbit, birdsfoot trefoil and some betony. Sometimes fields of white clover scented
the air with their honeyed fragrance.
Occasionally dark green fritillaries came past us, while the gorse had
linnets, stonechats and whitethroats.
The small beaches had the main common shells, still accompanied by the
odd washed up jellyfish. The last bay
before Aberystwyth,
Clarach
Bay, was occupied by a
holiday village and the path from here became wider and more used over the
final steep hill. It was precipitous
from here down into the town, alongside a cliff railway, the highest it is
said in
Britain. We passed university buildings, some
showing storm damage, along the main beach promenade full of holidaymakers
and bikers, and rounded a headland underneath the castle ruins to the long
harbour where the river Rheidol enters the sea. We ended our walk for the day at the first
bridge over the river and walked from here a few streets to the railway
station for a train back to Borth. T
here we found an excellent modern coffee shop which also
sold local artworks.
No comments:
Post a Comment