Exploring near Swansea - guest post

Sunday I decided to travel out about 10 miles and back by bicycle to a new place and go walking. 

The map shows my cycling route

 This is the region where I went hiking.

This place was one of three suggested to me by my host.  She had encouraged me to take the bus there, but on Sunday busses are not running much, so by doing it on bike I was free to come and go when I wanted.  I checked that there was a small coffee shop/general store there that would be open, so that I could get some warm lunch there if I wanted, and also some advice on where to walk.  The shop was good and I purchased a Sunday Observer (Guardian) for J. there.  They also had a wide selection of other papers and someone who could give me commentary of the political leanings of each.

The ride there was okay, not great, but reasonably direct.  I decided to sit for a light brunch before taking my hike.  The strange thing about the hike was that in this gorgeous place there were not many people, and I was a bit confused if I was supposed to be on a specific path or trail, but the locals I met said you can go all over as long as you don’t cross fences into private property (which I really did not notice at all). 

I enjoyed walking on the green undulated surfaces at the tops of the cliffs, but it was so un-American that there were no guard rails or fences to protect you from walking over the cliff edges!  

My mild fear of heights did kick in as I tried to capture photos of the cliffs.  The terrain was really different as well, just not flat at all, but filled with small craters and hillocks all over.  It was beautiful even if it was not as sunny as the previous two days.  I got some sun, and no rain or bitter cold, so that was fine.  I went down to one of the small cove beaches near where the earth view map has the “Google” label.  There I took off one shoe and dipped a foot in the ocean.  There were caves cut into the cliff and I looked in some of those too.  Then I went up over the cliffs and down to the edge of “Three Cliff Bay” but did not go down to the beach there.  

Then I went up inland to the Castle, and over the Pennard Golf Course.  The castle was more in ruins than I had expected, but still very interesting.  Amazingly, there is no signage with either warnings about climbing, or historical facts at the castle at all, very very different from the US. This is my third castle visit here, and you can read about the castle here,

The other two I have visited which at least had some signage are:

http://www.castlewales.com/swansea.html (this is next to my apartment!)

This one I went to on Saturday on my walk to Mumbles lighthouse and pier along the coast.

The golf course was built up around the castle, so one had to cross it at points.  I learned to play golf in my teens and enjoyed it a little, but this golf course is a completely different experience from the ones I have played on.  I found it much more interesting topographically, and playing here would require significantly different skills than just hitting long straight shots like you try to do on courses I have played on.  You can see this a bit on this website.

All in all a very nice outing for me today, and while I was on my own, I made small conversations with several different folks while I was out and about.

Heading home on a converted railroad track.