Coast Walking (Wales): Cardiff to St Brides Wentlooge 30 May 2016

We took a taxi to St Brides Wentlooge and walked this section in reverse. There is a useful car-park at the bottom of the road to the shore, at Lighthouse Inn, although we were not aware of this at the time, and walked down via footpaths from the village through long wet grass soaking our trousers and boots. The only advantage to this was recording of more wetland plants, including the tallest Celery-leaved Buttercup we have ever seen, over a metre high (the maximum in Stace is 60cm). Once at the shore we mounted the embankment of what is now essentially saltmarsh at the edge of the Severn Estuary, with North Somerset and Avonmouth visible in the grey horizon across the water. This continued for miles west all the way to Cardiff. Near Peterstone Wentlooge there was a low stone wall called Peterstone Great Wharf just beyond the embankment which seemed to have once enclosed a channel of water. Beyond it there was grassy saltmarsh that may once have been enclosed as fields, before some later sea invasion. There was just one diversion, because of construction of a higher embankment to protect a disposal site for hazardous waste situated just behind the embankment (how did this get through the planning department?). This work was supposed to have been finished last September, but it looks as though the money ran out half way through. This meant more long wet grass and a complicated route, so that having just dried out we were soaked again. The embankment flora was the usual rough wasteland plants like docks, Hemlock Water-dropwort, and Hoary Cress. There was however one colony of Austrian Yellow-cress, the first time we had encountered it. Unfortunately it was not quite in flower; the lower leaves, however, are only toothed rather than distinctly lobed as in the otherwise similar great yellow-cress. Insects included Sloe-bugs, the red-and-black bug Corizus hyoscyami and Red-headed Cardinal Beetle. There were few birds of note, only an occasional Heron, but a large colony of Lapwings on the green saltmarsh fringe before the outer mud. One group flew up in noisy agitation, flapping around wildly, as we saw a Hen Harrier flying out of the melee and across the embankment inland. We also saw a Kestrel and a Buzzard. When got to the former rubbish tip of Lamby, preventing further progress along the shore to the mouth of the Rhymney River, we had to turn inland up the eastern side along a new-made canal with a wide path, beside which we were surprised to find some Sea Clover. There was also a lot of Pale Flax and one early Bee Orchid in flower. After a mile we met a road, Lamby Way, with a path beside it continuing westwards, across a bridge over the Rhymney, to a roundabout where a path came off going south down the west bank of the river, just away from a road. Nearby we saw a number of plants of Helleborines (not yet in flower) we assumed would be Broad-leaved. In an area of wasteland there was a flowering shrub of Quince. As the path reached the shore once more we found ourselves passing the Pengam Moors settlement of traveller families that had opposed the siting of the coast path across the head of their beach. Whether it was a mark of revenge or whether it had always been so, the path and beach were hideously strewn with rubbish such as the remains of washing machines and burned-out cars and much other miscellaneous waste not bearing too close examination, the by-product we presume of their scavenging work. There was also a collection of crowded hen-coops at one spot and dogs continually barked from behind a fence separating the housing and caravans from the track. It was an experience redolent with history, conflict, class division and culture clash. From this beach a track rose up a hill created out of a former rubbish tip, past a factory and sewage works, over a stream and along roads through a mile or more of industrial estate that was suddenly left behind as we reached the residential area where we had finished on the previous day. From there it was the same walk to Jolyons, stopping off for coffee and roasted peppers at Bar 44 in Castle Street. This evening we ate at Bully’s, a French restaurant. It had been a fairly warm, initially sunny, later cloudy day, which brought out a smattering of insects, but no great quantities. Most noticeable were the Thick-thighed Flower-beetles Odemera nobilis on the blooms of Ox-eye Daisy. While most flowers attracted some insects, it was noticeable that nothing came to the flowers of Hemlock Water-dropwort, despite its abundance.