Pirouetting on the path - the joyous approach to the Wales Coast Path

North Cardigan Bay is the second in a series of ten booklets each describing ten circular walks on the 870 miles of the Wales Coast Path. It’s highly practical, pocket-sized and has a sturdy cover with a handy fold to bookmark your page.

A great selection of walks makes it into the top ten. Portmeirion combines fantasy and escapism with a walk across the Cob, perfect for steam trains and what must be the ultimate view of Snowdon. A mile south at Ynys is the start of the next walk, down the estuary and back through the churchyard, with the grave of Richard Hughes of High Wind in Jamaica fame. (If you want a bit more background on this area there is an article titled Aberdwyryd.)

In between those two walks is of course Maentwrog-on-Sea which for the time being is an honorary coast path resort; being the lowest point at which you can officially cross the Dwyryd until the new Pont Briwet is built.

The tenth walk is down my memory lane from Borth halfway to Aberystwyth. In 1960 I think ours was one of only two caravans in the village and the sun shone all through the summer. In subsequent student days the walk along the coast was a popular Saturday evening prelude to sampling Borth’s pubs before catching the last bus back to Aberystwyth.

At £4.99 it’s excellent value .... that’s less than 50p a walk!

The other booklet currently available covers Llŷn

An example of coastal squeeze described by Ivor Rees

On a recent walk with Geoff along the section of the Cardigan Bay coast north of Barmouth, I was struck by the visible evidence for past changes in this low-lying coast. Whenever forecasts of sea-level rise come up for discussion, “Coastal Squeeze” of natural habitats gets mentioned. Though usually applied to salt-marshes in front of sea walls, it may also be used in other situations where intertidal habitats cannot roll-back as they come up against artificial structures or steeper land. Cardigan Bay is famous for evidence of change in coastal alignments. The place where these interactions were obvious was along 2km of coast north of Llanaber halt, on the Cambrian Coast railway line.

For about 1km north of Llanaber rock armour protects the railway, but more natural conditions prevail beyond this, with a shingle storm beach defining the coast line. On the landward side of this beach there is an elongated triangle of Phragmites marsh and willow scrub. Below the storm beach we saw one of the most extensive exposures of peat to be seen on any sandy shore in Wales. Continuity over time between the peat on the shore and the marsh as the shingle ridge has migrated landward is obvious. Unlike some of the other submerged forest peat beds on Welsh beaches, this one has few tree stumps. Peat tends to persist where it has been covered for much of the time by sand. Perhaps there are old photographs of this shore before the rock armouring was installed?

Ivor Rees