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| The view across Onwich Bay fron Penrice. |
Welcome to Day 3 of our holiday on the South Wales coast. Our destination for today was the Gower Peninsula just west of Swansea. This Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) features cliffs, hills and sandy beaches. Today we covered all three. We set out from Millwood car park, which is free, just north of Oxwich. It’s in a deep valley so there was an initial climb to warm us up, which was good as it was quite cold despite the improvement in the weather. We skirted around Oxwich village and headed straight for the castle. We didn’t go in but you can see the majority of it from the footpath and then read the history on Wikipedia.
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| The walk across the fields to Onwich Castle. |
The next leg of the journey was around Oxwich point. This
affords magnificent views of the whole coastline and probably the Devon
coastline too on a clear day. There were unfortunately some rather angry cows
on top but we fought our way through and the view from the cliffs was worth the
risk to life. The path then drops right down to just 50ft or so from the sea
before climbing back up through some woods and then back down onto the beach.
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| Walking down to Onwich Point after surviving a cow attack. |
Oxwich beach is one of those beaches that you can walk along
for half an hour without seeming to get anywhere. Chuck didn’t mind however as
he was busy making friends with Cody the Malamute. Much more fun was had
chasing seagulls as well. The beach was littered with large shellfish, some of
which were still very much alive. However they were being massacred by the
seagulls and the shellfish weren’t very good at fighting back as they were
mostly made of slime.
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| Chuck has spotted the water already. |
There is a stream that runs down the beach to the sea about
half way along. There was a bridge and everyone seemed to be heading for it.
Although the stream didn’t look big we had visions of sinking into quicksand
and thought better of jumping it. The path let into a hinterland of scrub grass
and then up a steep hill through some woods following the Welsh Costal Path. We
ditched the costal path here to head towards Cefn Bryn, a giant ridgeline
feature that runs for several miles across the Gower.
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| The ponies resident on top of Cefn Bryn. |
Despite the wind and now occasional rain, it was definitely
the right choice. The views offered were of the entire peninsular and further
towards Llanelli and the Llanrhidian Sands. We could see our entire walk. Populating
the top were wild ponies who mostly seemed quite oblivious to us being there,
although one or two followed us for a little while. After being spoiled by the
views for nearly an hour we dropped down into Reynoldston with view of going
into the pub there. A sign on the door that said ‘No Dogs Allowed’ put paid to
that. We could have sat outside but such blatant racism does not garner our
custom.
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| Chuck checking out how far home is. |
We followed the main road back down to Little Reynoldston
and down a track into Millwood. We didn’t really explore Millwood as we’d been
out a while and wanted to get back for tea but it looked like there was some
interesting stuff there. Thankfully today the winds had dropped so were able to
get home without any difficulty. Whilst we didn’t stop in Swansea I can report
it looks rather nice when the sun is out. All in all a much better day than
yesterday. This is a great walk for such a wide and varied rosta of
environments. Not sure what we’re doing tomorrow yet but make sure you come
back to find out. See you then.
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