After a very blustery night, the day dawned wet and grey. The rain cleared by late morning but the skies remained overcast for the rest of the day. Undaunted, we decided to walk around Dinas Island, just outside of Newport. Although an island by name, the last time water cut it off from the mainland was just after the last Ice Age. They have long memories in these parts. It's a walk we've done a couple of times before and it's well worth a repeat.
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| The walk circumnavigates the island: two thirds of it following the Pembrokeshire Coastal footpath and the remaining third walking along the valley that was once flooded. At three miles and reasonably strenuous, it was a good recuperation exercise after our recent illnesses. Start small, but start... |
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| Grey, grey, grey, slightly eerie conditions. Looking down on the small cove of Pwyllgwaelod, our starting point. As an observation I'm glad to say that Pembrokeshire retains an open public toilet policy. Take a leaf out of their book, Cornwall Council. If you want to attract visitors all-year round, you must provide the facilities they need. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a public loo that would be open at this time of year near one of the Cornish beaches. |
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| The conditions under foot were as to be expected after all the recent rains, wet and slippery. Funnily enough, we don't hear Tom Jones singing about "The brown, brown mud of home". He needed to get out more but, then, he was from Pontypridd and that tells you all you need to know about him. |
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| Readers of my blog will already be aware of my fascination with trig points (who could forget my joy at discovering the Vanessas on Iona and Staffa?) so you can imagine my delight as we came across S5848 on Pen Y Fan, the highest spot on our walk. A standard Hotine design and in reasonably good condition. The OS no longer look after the trig points but there is a scheme whereby you can 'adopt a trig point' and look after it. An ideal birthday present? Hint, hint! Some people think that the trig point is just a lump of concrete upon which a surveyor fits his/her theodolite and do whatever they do with this piece of kit. Not so. There is, in fact, as much underneath the column as there is on top. The actual trigonometrical datum point is located 'down below', affixed to the bedrock so that it never moves, even if the column does. The theodolite is centred on the datum point through a sighting tube that runs through the column and is accessed by removing the brass plate on the top. Fascinating but rather nerdy stuff. |
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| Dropping down into Cwm-yr-Eglwys, a small cove on the final seaward part of the walk before we head across the isthmus back to Pwllgwaelod and our starting point. |
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| Cwm-yr-Eglwys takes its name from the ruins of St Brynach's church that stand prominently at the edge of the cove. Norman in origin, the greater part of the church, and the graveyard, was washed away in a great storm in 1859. It was finally stabilised relatively recently by Pembrokeshire Council and they've made a very good job of it. It's a pleasant place to sit and gaze at the sea. |
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| Just to prove that you can have too much of a good thing, here's the flush plate from the trig point mentioned earlier. |
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