The Walk Begins...

The Walk begins....

So it's Monday, we're up at about 8.30am on the sands of Cei Bach Beach - The sun is out and the wind has dropped, the sea is like a millpond and a lovely colour of turquoise blue - it gets like this sometimes in Wales, hard to think so but it does. The temperature is picking up and looking to head towards the 26 deg c mark. We pack up the tents, shaking out the sand and pack up the rucksacks, we're now going to walk over to New Quay (Cei Newydd) and grab some grub before hopping on the T5 Bus that will take us to Cardigan town centre...well thats the plan.

We start walking across the beach but realise once we're past Llanina Point, there's no worth in trying to walk across the beach, the tide is going out but not quickly enough. I make the executive decision that we'll take the road route instead, which should stop someone breaking an ankle on the pebbles. The road to New Quay is quite steep and does add a mile or two onto our destination. This is where the idiots amongst us realised that the rucksacks were in fact too heavy. We stopped a couple of times as the heat was building up, eventually we got to the top of New Quay just as The Seahorse Pub was opening up....that was about 10.30 am ....they didnt serve food so we were going to walk down the hill to the food places. It's quite a steep walk and I'm already not looking forward to walking back up. We end up getting some Bacon & Egg Rolls and sit on the wall overlooking the North Beach looking out to sea. If you get lucky you can see Dolphins popping up in the bay here.

New Quay was the setting for Dylan Thomas' play "Under Milk Wood" and you really do get the atmosphere if you walk the back streets up the hill, like we did. Apparently New Quay is now over 70% holiday home occupancy and the likes of Reverend Eli Jenkins & Polly Garter have long since disappeared and New Quay is the worse for it but we strike lucky though, as two local elderly ladies out on their front steps start talking to us, they're looking at the heavy rucksacks and wondering what we're up to. I started to speak to them in my limited Welsh Lingo ....they enjoyed that, me making a fool out of myself....and I must admit they lost me once they really got going, "Chwarae Teg" they said to me, for trying...which means Fair Play. We bid good day to the ladies and continued our ascent up the hill. The plan was now to work out what time the T5 bus to Cardigan would arrive. As we're still in Covid times, the Buses are only running a Sunday Service which means there's one every couple of hours. So we think there'll be one coming at 2pm - which is very handy as we're about 300 yards away from the Bus Stop and somehow the gravitational pull of the Seahorse pub has got us in it's orbit. We've got an hour and a bit to wait it out - so it would be rude of us not to support the local pub industry.

An hour later I get a phone call from Brother Dill - "How's the walk going?"

"Er...we're still in the pub in New Quay..."

"Oh, that's the way, well give me a call if the bus doesnt show up and I'll drive you down in the van."

So we had a few ales whilst we waited for the bus. By the bus stop we met a guy from Cardigan Town who'd come up by bus to walk the Aberaeron to New Quay stretch of the Coastal Path. I silently did wonder why he just didnt walk the Coastal Path from Cardigan.....we would find out why later on. Anyways the bus didnt show up and I called Brother Dill to see if his offer still stood, it did. But ten minutes later and over an hour later than scheduled the T5 bus did indeed show up, so a quick call to Brother Dill was made to let him know his services wouldnt be required after all. So we're now running a bit late, this was 3pm and really we're 2 hours behind schedule. The bus ride will take over an hour to get to Cardigan.