Monday 10 July 2023 - Porth Oer (aka Whistling Sands)

On a rainy morning, we decided to set foot on the Lleyn peninsular, where the rain tends to clear first. That did happen, but not before we'd spent a couple of hours in intermittently heavy rain.

I was surprised to find that putting 'Whistling Sands' into the satnav brought a result and took us directly to a large National Trust car park at Porth Oer. This is where Walk 16 in our 'Walks on the Lleyn Peninsula' guide starts.

We then walked along the cliff top path for about a kilometre, gaining at that point the view pictured above.

After a brief exploration of the headland, we retraced our steps and headed back along the beach to the café, for welcome coffee and cake in the dry, with some other damp customers including two ladies walking the entire peninsula.

After that, a minor difficulty with our route.

We followed the closed path with care and decided that the closure probably arose from a desire to avoid erosion of the path that creeps a painful slip above the rocky beach. But with no signed diversion, and no explanation for the closure, that's just conjecture. 

After a further walk along the clifftop, we headed inland towards a small tower that appears on the horizon shown in the top picture. Whilst not on the guidebook route, it was only a minimal extra effort to ascend to the 'tower', which was more like a small enclosure at the top of the hill. Here's the view back to the car park and our route.

And here's Sue at the tower.

An uneventful walk back to the car park after a 7.5km walk with 200 metres ascent, found us in the best place available for our picnic lunch. In the car.

Here's our route:

During the walk, Sue identified a few 'new' flowers: common restharrow, lady's bedstraw, creeping saltbush, buck's-horn plantain, sea plantain and rock samphire. 

On the return journey we couldn't resist stopping at the Plas Glyn-y-Weddw gallery, where there turned out to be nothing on view due to an exhibition changeover. However, since we were last here the café has been rebuilt in the form of a sea urchin sculpture. It's most impressive. 

We watched a film that offered a little history of the venue, and a detailed commentary on the design and installation of the new café sculpture. 

An excellent day out despite a bit of rain.