With the UK government’s ridiculous foreign travel policy appearing to have no end in sight, even with a high vaccination and low death rate from Covid, holding out for an overseas trip was just depressing me. Every time I thought I might be able to escape to somewhere in Europe or that one of my tours might go ahead, the government just put another obstacle in the way. So I had decided to come to Tenby in South West Wales for a break instead.
This afternoon I was expecting my friend, Alan, who has featured in one or two of my other posts, most notably the Pingo Trail in Norfolk, to arrive in Tenby to join me exploring Pembrokeshire for a few days and this afternoon we were going on a walk along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path.
The Pembrokeshire Coast Path is 186 miles long and if you hike it all, the ascents and descents along its length mean you would have climbed more than the height of Everest! The plans for my hike along the trail were slightly less ambitious. The 5 mile coastal stretch between Tenby and Saundersfoot takes you along clifftops and through woodlands and fields.
The Pembrokeshire Coast Path is clearly signposted with an acorn. We started above Tenby North Beach and followed the road until we got to a lane pointing towards a campground and once at the campground gate the sign pointed off to the right and we were on the hiking trail.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that a path that boasts you will have climbed higher than Everest if you walk the whole thing would have a lot of hills, but that fact didn’t seem to have really sunk in until now. We started climbing through the woods and I rapidly got very hot in my down jacket which I was wearing on top of a fleece which I had on over a teeshirt. The down jacket came off and was stuffed into my rucksack as we climbed higher and higher. In some places it was just a hill, in other places steps had been cut into the trail.
The other thing that I had completely failed to take into consideration was the condition of the trail. I only need one word to describe it. Mud! The short, sharp, sudden downpours that had come down over Tenby in at least the last couple of days had soaked into the footpath and turned it into a mud bath. At times you could skirt round it, at others you had no choice but to basically wade ankle deep through this slippery mess. The bad news was my trainers are not waterproof and were rapidly getting covered in wet mud, the good news was my trainers are brown, so the mud was really well camouflaged.
After a long and fairly steep climb, we came to a gate and when we went through it, we were in a field and from the field was a fantastic view back over to Tenby. It was very pleasant walking through the field, even though we had to climb yet another hill and then the trail went along the cliff path for a while, once again with marvellous views back to Tenby.
We walked along the trail which was now following the edge of the cliff and enjoyed views of the beautiful coastline as made our way towards Saundersfoot. The hiking trail wound its way back into the woods and there were more steps taking us up and down as we made our way to our ultimate destination.
Unfortunately, the deeper into the woods we got, the deeper the mud got. It seemed there was no respite from it, as soon as we started to relax because the conditions were getting better, we found ourselves in another swamp. This 5 mile hike was now turning into a slog through a never ending sea of slippery mud. Even the steps were extremely muddy, and you had to be really careful not to slip as you stepped downwards. Some of the steps were also very deep and a bad shoulder meant that I couldn’t use my hiking poles which were my normal stabilisers on a trail where I was in danger of losing my footing. Alan became my stabiliser instead, helping me down the steeper steps so I didn’t fall. Alan has the advantage of being much taller than me and therefore having much longer legs which made it easier (although still not easy) for him to negotiate the steps down.
The mud was unrelenting and the walk was now becoming unpleasant. I felt that this trail was in desperate need of some maintenance from Pembrokeshire National Park, as a good portion of the Pembrokeshire coastline that the Coast Trail runs through is incorporated into Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. This part of the trail was actually quite dangerous in its current state, in my opinion, although I do appreciate that with the Covid pandemic, trail maintenance may not have been possible because of the lockdown rules over the spring months. I now couldn’t wait to get to Saundersfoot to put an end to this miserable trudge through deep mud.
We kept getting a tantalising view of Saundersfoot in the distance, but it never seemed to get any closer as we waded through more and more mud. A little girl wearing wellies passed us with her mum, I commented it was a good idea wearing wellies. Apparently further on it got even worse. Worse than this? I recalled being told about the North West Circuit on Stewart Island in New Zealand where you spent about 10 days wading through mud that was usually knee deep and could sometimes be waist deep. That wasn’t a hiking trail! It was madness! I wouldn’t even contemplate a hike like that, I know that I would spend the entire 10 days in abject misery.
There were a couple of detours down to beaches, but there were plenty of beaches along the coast, so we pressed onto until we reached Saundersfoot. Saundersfoot looked like a very nice town, but quite frankly I’d walked almost 16 miles today already and I wasn’t particularly keen to add to it by exploring the town. We could come back here on another day.
We had both agreed that there was no way in the world we were going to walk back to Tenby on the coast path. Spending another two and a half hours wading through a 5 mile mud bath was not an appealing prospect. It was possible to walk back to Tenby on an inland trail which was half the distance of the coastal trail. If I had been on my own, I probably would have walked, but Alan gave me the perfect excuse to jump in a vehicle which would get us back to Tenby in less than 10 minutes, so I accepted this gratefully.
We were dropped off in Tenby town centre and I walked back to my guesthouse to get myself tidied up before going out for the evening. Tenby was busy and it was very difficult to get a restaurant reservation with the limited capacity due to the social distancing rules still in force. I wonder if I will look back and read this in the future and wonder what the hell I lived through. My biggest fear is reading this in the future and things still haven’t got back to normal. But that’s another issue.
I travelled to Tenby in May 2021.
I stayed at Hammonds Park Guesthouse in Tenby, a 10 minute walk from the town centre with free parking and breakfast included. A large double room with a four poster bed and sofa and bathroom with bath and separate shower and a sea view cost approximately £55 per night. I booked through Expedia.
The Pembrokeshire Coast Path is a 186 mile trail that follows the coastline in South West Wales. Much of the trail is within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.
Read about my other adventures in Wales