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.

Thursday 18 November 2021 - Llanbedrog

One of our favourite haunts is the Lleyn Peninsula. However, as we've been ticking off Alex Kendall's routes in Snowdonia we haven't gone west recently. 

Today, to make up for that, we drove to Llanbedrog and the National Trust car park, where rows of beach huts are stored for the winter.

We wandered down to the beach on the fine, warm (14.5°C) November morning.

The steep steps beyond the Foxhole holiday cottages led inexorably to the Iron Man sculpture, from where there's a good view down to Llanbedrog.

We then followed the coast path all the way to Mount Pleasant, via views down to Abersoch and a couple of islands. 

Bladder Campion was observed, and there were rampant patches of bright yellow gorse.

We noted that the footpath marking team must have run out of yellow paint, but in deference to Conrad (Sir Hugh) I donned a yellow hat. Perhaps I should get a stock of these and issue them to (both) my walking companions?

Sue wandered off, muttering something about wanting to be a silhouette. 

"This is my sort of summit" I was heard to exclaim as we reached the classically named summit of Mynydd Tir-y-cwmwd. "All trig pointed summits should be provided with benches on which their septuagenarian visitors can munch their bananas", asserted the yellow hatted visitor.

A leisurely descent took us past a chapel and the church, and back to the beach for a short stroll in the sand to get our mileage up to 5km.

There's a new café by the beach, Aqua, that served excellent coffees before we moved on to Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, a dower house built in 1856. We've been there before.

A browse around the gallery could easily have left our wallets £1000 lighter, but that expense was saved for a family matter, and our only purchase was of soup and sandwiches for lunch. Then we took a couple of photos and headed back to Porthmadog for a stroll around Llyn Bach and a pot of tea with my brother Dave.

Here's today's route - 5km, 200 metres ascent, taking 1.5 hours.

Wednesday 1 November 2017 – Morfa Nefyn and Llanbedrog

Peter and Cassie, who hosted us in Calgary in September, are in the UK for a few weeks. They have been staying in a rented house in Mynytho for a few days with Peter’s old school friend Rod, and his wife Kate.

We popped down for the day and enjoyed a couple of ‘gentle strolls’, the first being along Porth Dinllaen, near Morfa Nefyn. The wind was light and the sea was calm; a few seagulls were floating overhead, or bobbing gently on the water.

It was warm for the first day of November, so much so that children on their half-term holiday were playing happily in their swimsuits on the beach, with one girl venturing into waist deep water with her fishing net!

The 19th Century Ty Coch Inn, located on the beach, was too inviting to stroll past. Coffees (and some sneaky brownies that were in Martin’s rucksack) were enjoyed, with the sun occasionally breaking through the light cloud.

Another short meander brought us to the smart lifeboat station, with its shiny rescue boat ready for action (after closing the hatches, of course).

There’s a popular golf course here. Take plenty of balls! The coastguard is well positioned to watch the golf and have a seaward view at the same time. Today his telescope was trained on a flock of about twenty choughs who were practicing their murmurations, or should that be ‘chattering’?.

Meanwhile, cormorants, oyster catchers, and a variety of gulls mobbed the offshore rocks.

We weren’t the only tourists – just off the peninsula Nessie revealed that she was on tour – enjoying her half term break no doubt.

The Welsh Coast Path assiduously follows the coast as closely as possible hereabouts. So much so that Cassie decided to turn back at this point, Rod and Kate having already succumbed to the more level nature of the path through the golf course.

We soon regrouped, having wandered around the headland in various ways. Ty Coch Inn was now heaving with families enjoying their lunch. We joined them. The food was good, especially the home made soup.

Walking back along the Porth Dinllaen beach to the National Trust car park, the views to Yr Eifl, with its cap of cloud at 500 metres, confirmed that we weren’t missing out by eschewing the higher peaks of Snowdonia.

Here’s our 4.5 km route.

The afternoon saw us taking a wider road than the morning’s narrow lanes, to Llanbedrog, where the National Trust car park seems to be a winter home for lots of beach huts. These are just 8’ x 6’ sheds with robust corrugated roofs instead of the usual felt (that on our shed at home has rotted and blown away), and solid doors. The lack of any windows must grant a rather dark sort of privacy.

Down at the beach, a lone heron looked rather out of place amongst the one-legged oystercatchers, gulls, and redshanks.

What can you spot?

Away in the distance (see previous picture for the wider view), the sun caught a small section of beach.

Kate adjourned to the pleasures of Plas Glyn-y-Weddw’s tearoom, whilst the rest of us climbed about 100 metres up a steep stairway.

A short walk from the top of the steps leads to a wrought Iron Man that was a millennium project to replace a Tin Man that had looked out over Cardigan Bay to Barmouth and the Rhinogs since the 1980s.

There were good views from here, back to Llanbedrog beach and also down to the Plas Glyn-y-Weddw mansion.

We took the coast path around Mynydd Tir-y-cwmwd rather than head over the summit, where the toposcope would have been informative as to the direction in which the peaks of Snowdonia lie, but given the cloud cover those peaks were well hidden today. Instead, we got an aerial view of Abersoch and an ‘estate’ of up market mobile homes.

Looking out to sea, a lone two bladed windmill lurked in the foreground.

A short descent back to Llanbedrog took us past St Pedrog's Church Hall, then past the church itself to Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, a dower house built in 1856 by Lady Love Jones Parry. The Gothic mansion became an art gallery and ballroom in 1896 and was served by a horse-tramway from the railway terminus at Pwllheli until 1927. It remains a vibrant gallery, and is one of nine locations that houses the Celtic Neighbours partnership, a group of visual artists from native Celtic communities.

Some of the art, on this occasion from a renowned Welsh abstract artist (Gillian Ayres), unlike the tea and cake, and as on previous visits, remains sadly not to our conservative taste.

The lovely sculpture, ‘Louise’ was made by David Williams-Ellis and was generously donated in 2002 and placed on a large rock from the Wern Estate.

Outside the mansion sits the only remaining carriage from the tramway that was closed in 1927/28 after part of the line was destroyed by a storm in 1927. Now immaculately restored, the carriage was found in a barn in 1967, being used to store animal feed.

Here’s our 4.5 km route. Allow an hour and a half.

Then we returned to Mynytho for more tea before driving home.

Well, that was a most enjoyable day out, and good to see Peter and Cassie again. We hope Peter’s poorly foot regains its more normal sprightly condition as soon as possible.