We had a late start about 10.30am because we were catching the bus back to Poppet Sands and had hoped to lay on a bit longer than usual. The rain eased about 8.00am and we decided to try and pack up early while it was off. No sooner did we have everything out in the open and on the ground sheets for packing, tent empty and ready to collapse, than the heavens opened and torrential rain of biblical proportions fell. It was 'cats and dogs' stuff. Almost in seconds everything was soaked. Fortunately, as the worst of rain pummelled down, the ladies on the next pitch let us drag all our stuff under their shelter or it would have been a complete washout. As it was, if we were to catch the bus (Poppit Rocket) we had no option but to pack the gear wet and hope to dry it at the other end.
A couple of miles on from Mwnt ('w' in Welsh is like a 'u' in English), there appears to be a path from Traeth Bach on the coast up to the hostel where are staying but we have no idea of the state of the path after the torrential rain this morning. As it is in a river valley the chances are that the walking beside the river might be very muddy and risky. To be safe, we will avoid the coast path by taking the track from Mwnt, past Ty Gwyn campsite to the road junction below Bigni, turn left and go cross-country to the hostel, walking parallel to the coast. The weather forecast is not good and we expect to be rained on once or twice during the day. However, it will be a bit of a momentous day for us becaue we will finish the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path when we pass through St Dogmaels, another coastal path completed to add to our growing collection.
Currently, the Anglican parish church of St Thomas the Martyr (or Apostle), built in the Victorian era (1848-52), sits next to the abbey and contains among other memorial stones the Ogam Sagranus Stone, a 5th century pillar-stone which is inscribed with both Ogham (the earliest known written form of Gaelic and used to write in the Irish language) and Latin inscriptions 'to the memory of Sagranus, son of Cunotamus', thought to have been a local chieftain and of Irish descent.
The Ceredigion Coast Path turns inland here for a short cross-country section, re-joining the coast just before the Pen Tew headland. The alternative, if it is an alternative, is to walk on out on the coast to the Careg Lydan headland where there is no route onwards to Pen Tew that I can see on the OS map. The risk is that you go out, only to have to come back again and take route 1. We opted to go inland on what felt like a long haul up the hill in the village, before turning off to the left and in to the countryside again. If there had been anywhere open at this point we would have stopped for coffee but we could find no open facilties.
The section from Gwbert to the coast was fairly open grasslands and fields where the walking was okay. As we walked the skies above us cleared and pretty soon we were walking under welcome blue skies. At the coast, we were directly above the uninhabited island of Cardigan, which lies in the estuary of the River Teifi, just two hundred metres off the mainland. Rising to a height of over fifty metres it has a wide variety of bird life and bottle-nose dolphins and grey seals are known to frequent the waters round the island.
We met three Welsh walkers at Pen Tew (two were schoolteachers) who were training for a forty-two mile charity walk starting from Machynlleth. We walked together for a short distance but as they were only carrying day packs we could see we were holding them back and they eventually put down the accelerator and moved ahead. Moving on from Pen Tew we enjoyed clifftop walking with arable land inland and lovely views out over the sea. Both sky and sea had taken on lovely colour in the afternoon sunshine and with the landscape full of green, interspersed with colour from wild flowers and flowering shrubs, it was a lovely section to walk. To the front of us the horizon was dominated by the hill of Mwnt.
It was a couple of fairly bedraggled walkers who arrived at the hostel. Fortunately, they had a drying room for our clothes and boots and there was a barn where we could set up the tent and groundsheets to dry out. Final bit of luck was that we were booked in to two separate rooms. As we arrived a family decided to leave a night early and we were able to take the larger room and to be together. All's well, that ends well.