A Cliff Walk.

A dry day with a touch of blue in the sky.

As I wasn't going out for the group walk off I went on my own to walk along the cliff path. My plan was simply to walk for around an hour and a half before turning back. 

The first stage was up to the War Memorial which I managed without stopping or getting out of breath. That's progress for me. Then down the other side to Aberwennol. I quite often end up there when I only intended to go to the memorial. There's a track leading back from the beach to two of the caravan parks which must be handy for the holiday makers.

There are few flat sections along the coast path. It's either very steep up or very steep down which makes for hard going. In the photo below that small blue blob is a chap running up the 72 steep steps. I know because I counted each one as I climbed them slowly and carefully. The return journey was a lot easier as most of the steps were on the south side of each dip and going up the slopes on the way home was made even easier by the strong wind pushing at my back.

Eventually I passed the point I had got to on my previous longer cliff walk and cut 10 minutes from the time it took to get there. That's an 18% improvement which I'm very pleased with. Up and down I went until I reached Wallog, a grand house now standing empty and owned by the university. There are several interesting features about this site. The most noticeable is the gravel spit extending out to sea. Although it looks man made and is linked to the legend of the drowned kingdom of Cantre'r Gwaelod it is in fact moraine left by the last ice age. It stretches 11km out to sea and is a hazard to local ships.

In front of the house at Wallog is a lime kiln where lime was produced by the landowner to spread on the acid soil of his fields. This video shows the internal structure of the kiln.

I carried on a little way past Wallog to the next high point hoping to catch a glimpse of Clarach beach but as one of the people I met today said 'it's a coastline that keeps on giving' and I had to admit defeat. Time was getting on and I needed to think about turning back.

To give an idea of scale if you look closely (or click ) at the top of the path, the tiny dark mark is indeed a figure.

At last the memorial and Borth were in sight.

I had been walking without a break for nearly three and a half hours so it was a bit disheartening to work out from this new signpost at the start of the path, that I had probably only walked three miles each way. But on the good side if it's just five miles to Aber I can now plan that walk. One way only. I'll catch the bus into town and walk home, possibly with the wind pushing me along.