Pembrokeshire Coastal Path Day 10

Distance 15 miles
Ascent 750m
Weather sunny spells
Buzzard, chough, peregrine, grey seals, wheatear, stonechats, linnets, swifts, kestrel
People who can't speak Welsh 4 (including me)

After a slow start involving breakfast, buying lunch and getting the coastal bus to St Justinian, we were ready to go about quarter past ten. We had a bit of a chat with a chap from one of the boat companies who told us there'd been a tornado in Pembrokeshire yesterday, somewhere further south of us.

The path started fairly gently around too Whitesands and then headed up onto St David's Head. It was really rocky, more like mountain terrain than the cliffs we've been on. There's a burial chamber, marked by a propped up rock and lots of flowers, including orchids. At the rocky cairn at the top of St David's Head we reached the dizzy heights of 65m.

We saw a meadow pipit (it sounded like a meadow pipit and it had pink feet) and a wheatear. Lunch was had on some conveniently shaped rocks on Penlechwenn, and then we walked around the headland, the terrain more rugged and rocky. There was a cooler breeze, although when the sun came out it was warm.

Rob asked me about some of the pink flowers by the path, so I pointed out some of the things growing along the way, until he told me to stop. The last couple of days, perhaps because it's been so warm and dry, the flowers have been almost finished flowering but today they were in full bloom. Orchids, pink and white campion, ox eye daisies, cornflower, saxifrage, tormantil, hawkweed, bird's foot trefoil, kidney vetch (not to be confused with vetch which is purple), bluebells and even primroses.

While looking at the flowers we also saw at least three grey seals watching us from the water below. And coming around a particularly rocky section at Carn Penberry a peregrine falcon flew around a couple of times and landed on the cliffs just out of sight. The high point of the day was about 120m.

The coastline is really rugged with lots of geology (volcanic rock jutting out from the older Ordovician shale...) covered qith pretty flowers and little birds.

We saw a happy seal balancing on a rock and had very good ice creams while sitting on the beach at Abereiddy.

The last section pd today's walk was more grassy over flat headlands, with much evidence of bygone industrial activities.  Porthgain has a big brick works (dis) down by its tiny harbour, guarded on both sides by white stone pillars. There was some canoodling going on by one.

Coming into Trefin we added another twenty minutes on to today's walk to make tomorrow's a tiny bit shorter, as it going to be a long one.