Mid-morning, on Friday the thirteenth (I refuse to be superstitious), we parked Eileen at Whitesands Beach and walked out to the craggy tip of St David’s Head. It was a shorter walk than the previous day, but equally scenic. Standing out on the farthest point, looking out across the ocean towards Ireland, certainly makes one feel very small, yes even me. On the walk back, we stumbled across Coetan Arthur, a Neolithic burial chamber dating from about 4,000 BC.
It was a lovely spot with fabulous views out to Ramsey Island, but the highlight of the walk was still to come. Above one of the bays, a walker was staring down at the beach below. We immediately spotted what she was looking at; a fluffy grey seal pup. In the water, close to the edge of the beach were two adult seals, both moving very slowly and not travelling very far. The lady said that the pup hadn’t been there earlier and as it still had a yellow tinge to its white fur, it must have only just been born. We also hadn’t spotted the seals when we walked past an hour earlier and as seal pups are born on land, she could well have been correct, and we must have just missed the birth.
We stayed for a while, all three of us, watching in wonder at what we were seeing. We finally said our farewells and walked along to stand above the next beach where another, larger seal pup was alone on the beach. The waves kept coming in and touching its nose and every so often it would wriggle a bit and call out. Apparently grey seal pups are only weaned by their mothers for 4 days and are then left to learn how to swim and eat on their own, which seems a little sad, so this one was obviously a few days older. We were just about to leave and head back to Eileen, when the seal starting wriggling with a bit more effort and managed to get itself in to the sea and we watched (me with tears in my eyes) as it slowly managed to move through the waves, get around a small rock, and then slowly swim out to the deeper water. It was a wonderful thing to see and I’m so excited that we had such a lovely experience.
We ate our lunch in a car park overlooking Fishguard Bay, both of us still talking about the seals and then continued further north. Just before reaching Felindre Farchog we took a very narrow road up the hill, following signs to Pentre Ifan. Made from the same stone as Stonehenge, (Pembrokeshire blue stone, from the Preseli Hills, 257 kms from Stonehenge) Pentre Ifan is assessed as more than 3,500 years old and is the most impressive megalithic monument in Wales. The capstone is nearly 5.1m long and would weigh about 16 tons and somehow it balances on just three stones.
We re-joined the main road just before the village of Eglwyswrw; neither of us can pronounce that one! The road took us down past Cardigan and I appropriately put one as it was getting a bit chilly. The rain was also getting more persistent, so we pushed on through villages with names that could be brilliant when you’re a bit short of a vowel in a game of Scrabble, like Plwmp and Llwyndafydd. We checked in to the Cardigan Bay Campsite at 4pm and set Eileen up while the rain continued to fall. We didn’t need to go out again though, as we had a moussaka and salad to whip up for dinner and hopefully the sun will come out again tomorrow.
