|
Fishguard mosaic
Strumble Head
Preseli bluestone?
|
From the centre of Fishguard
we walked along the quaysides on the west of the harbour, past a mosaic
celebrating connections with Moby Dick and Under Milk Wood, and west along
the top of Goodwick beach near the A-road.
The beach yielded a few of the commoner shells. A dead-end road then leads past the
entrance to the ferry terminal and gradually uphill. At the end of the road a path continues
north to reach the cliffs. The path
along the cliffs was wide and grassy and we made good progress for a while
until it started to become more zigzag and up-and-down. We saw two grey seals hauled out in one
cove. The vegetation is very heathy
with heather, bell heather, western gorse, great woodrush, saw-wort,
goldenrod, betony, tufted vetch and sheep’s-bit prominent. Rose chafers provided flashes of bright
metallic green on the hogweed umbels.
After the bay
of Aber Fellin the path
descended to a shady stream where opposite-leaved golden-saxifrage and
wood-sorrel were common. On the path
up out of the valley we came across a basking adder. Regaining the top, the path led to
Carregwastad Point, where there is a monument erected in 1897 to the landing
by “the French” in 1797, an event and unlikely location which went
unexplained. (It turned out that this
was the occasion of the last invasion of Britain
during a war with France,
although the invasion force was repelled.)
Rocks had the uncommon lichen Ramalina
subfarinacea. West of here the
vegetation became more varied and orpine appeared from time to time, heath
spotted orchid (almost all now in seed), slender St. John’s-wort, bitter
vetch, and lousewort (with its conspicuous swollen calyces in fruit), while
spring squill seed-heads became increasingly frequent. A colony of elecampane was a surprise. Four more seals were seen in another cove,
Pwll Bach. A small path side boggy
flush had a great assemblage of bog pimpernel, brookweed, yellow sedge,
slender bristle club-rush and many-stalked spike-rush, while a bright green,
turning purplish-black, liverwort living on decaying sphagnum here was bog
germanderwort Riccardia latifrons. A golden-ringed dragonfly pitched
freshly-emerged on a swaying grass-stem.
The Irish Ferry came by for Fishguard and later we saw it return. We stopped for lunch on rocks at the top of
Pen Capel Degan, with a fine view over the sea and Strumble Head, watching gannets
flying back and forth. We noticed a
blue-green rock intruded into reddish surrounding rocks that appeared to be
of volcanic origin, probably a form of dolerite common in this part of
Pembrokeshire and known as Preseli bluestone.
These seemed typical of the geology of Strumble Head (itself composed
of pillow lavas), which we walked round after lunch. The rocks seem quite fissile and leave the
path full of stones of miscellaneous size and shape, rather uncomfortable for
walking. The path also crosses rock
exposures. With increased sunshine
more butterflies began to appear, including dark green fritillary, wall and
grayling. At the NW corner a white
automatic lighthouse was flashing its light on top of a small island
connected to the mainland by a bridge, with a few even smaller islands off
its tip. At this point the path
briefly joined a road leading to a car-park.
We continued south through more broken rocks and past a sea-stack with
nesting fulmars, seeing many islands off the headland between the scenic bays
of Porth Maenmelyn and Pwll Deri. The
path goes up by a farm at the NE corner of Pwll Deri and joins a small road
for a while, past a lay-by for a standard view-point and then a monument to
the poet Dewi Emrys. A path led off
eventually to the cliff-edge, but we had reached the end of our day and
continued down the road towards the cluster of houses known as
Trefasser. Along this roadside were
many fine plants of orpine. We managed
to call a taxi (with difficulty because of the lack of a mobile phone signal
in most places) to meet us at Trefasser Cross to take us back to Fishguard,
there not being a bus for over a couple of hours. The driver, one of two brothers operating
Fishguard Taxis, was very amiable and we had an entertaining trip. In Fishguard we ate at Peppers, a newish
restaurant based in the West Wales Arts Centre in West Street.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment