Coast Walking (Wales): Dale to Milford Haven 16 June 2015

We walked up through Dale, north beside the estuary to an embankment partly cutting across it called Pickleridge. On the left hand side of the road were the remains of a series of lime-kilns, which we had seen frequently last year around Solva and so on. We collected a number of shells from the beach below. At the end of the embankment, across the saltmarsh, is a low metre-wide wooden foot-bridge over the river, which can only be crossed up to 3 hours before high tide or the same time afterwards. Fortunately the water (high tide at 7am) was just out enough for us to cross.

We then walked the rough pebbly mud-flats with sea club-rush on the other shore of the estuary until houses began above and there was a path up to a track behind them. This led to the cliff-top path. The vegetation today, however, was rough and dominated by false-brome, bracken and gorse, proper heath vegetation being very limited and localised. We were mostly again on the acid red sandstone we encountered on earlier days. Just above Monk Haven stood remains of a ruined Victorian watchtower right on the cliff-edge. Ravens regularly patrolled the cliffs below and the occasional fulmar passed by. Beyond a small headland were Watch House and Lindsway Bays, the second having some sand. Volcanic intrusions and folding were visible at Gray Rocks. We were cut off from the end of the next headland, where we had to walk behind a radar station. As we walked the next cliffs we passed some fields of beans with a few arable weeds, including field pansy, field madder and, most notably, field woundwort.

We had to turn north beside the next large estuary of Sandyhaven and the path passed through half a kilometre of shady moist woodland with sweet chestnut, ferns, primrose, although no ancient woodland indicators. From this we descended to another wooden bridge crossing the river or “Sandyhaven Pill”, also unusable at higher tides. Crossing the mudflats we ascended along a slipway to a path along the top of the cliffs again, although we later discovered it is possible to walk along the mud to the far end of Sandy Haven and to come back up by steps in the cliff there. The path then ran through more scrubby heath, with plenty of birds like warblers, robins, dunnock and especially wrens, often conspicuous singing strongly, tail erect, from a high bush, or chirring their annoyance at our passing from within the dense cover of sloe. (Some of the sloes had “pocket plum” galls, while others had abundant green fruits; most were draped with grey lichens.) We passed one young tree of wild plum also with green fruit. All day, being mostly overcast, we had only brief glimpses of most butterflies, but speckled wood were abundant.

We soon passed below fences of a fort and then industrial oil installations. From one small bay (which still yielded four more sea-shells) a pipeline went out to a mid-channel jetty. The buildings of the oil refinery across the water at Pembroke Dock were also clearly visible, making a wholly industrial scene. After passing below a belt of old cypress trees and some new houses (where a mown lawn bank had some prostrate Soft Storksbill – or at least this was as close as we could get with Stace’s key, but the hairs were not glandular), we descended into Gellswick Bay, which was mostly mud and shingle, with a tiny belt of sand along the top in places. From here the docks and marina prevented regular shore access and the coast path goes uphill and into town via a footpath that emerges by a school and straight on via several streets to the side of river of Hubbleston Pill and the traffic hub that included a large Tesco store and garage, plus a major bus-stop. We caught up with a bit of shopping, but even after this there was over an hour to go before the bus left for Dale, so we took a taxi back from the rank near the garage. Accommodation in the Milford Haven area is very limited and we stayed inland at Johnston, in a small motel.