Wales to England Day 4

After a lovely long sleep and some breakfast, Mrs Cooper drove us down to the coast about a mile away, once it had thoroughly been discussed which was the best way for us to walk. The fact that we didn’t have any proper outdoor boots seemed to worry Mrs Cooper and her neighbour a fair bit, and I felt a little on display with them looking at my little purple booties and tutting. But I wasn’t going to pretend like I was a mud and off-road master and know all there is to know, yet I did turn down the offer of wearing some Wellies. Once at the shore we walked along a small goat track which apparently stretches for 180 miles along the southern Welsh coastline – I’d love to do it all one day. It was really beautiful, and the day was fantastic, some cloud but mainly sunny and not very windy weather. We walked for about twenty minutes along the top of the cliffs and then came across a beach that didn’t have any footsteps on it, so we descended into it via some steep steps. Then took our sweet time making our way across it climbing up and along the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff, having a great laugh. Every now and then our peaceful explorations were interrupted by a loud whoosh and bang that came from the headland a little further along, so once we raced each other up the steps we sat down and watched two or three metre long planes being launched from what was apparently an army training base. We then ambled back to the house, had a nice lunch of cheese lettuce, and beetroot chutney sandwiches and got a lift into Tenby with Jo, where we looked around a monks shop, the old castle and then caught a train to Bristle.

By the time our train arrived at Bristle it was ten or eleven o’clock, and having not booked anywhere to stay we were keen to find a hostel. The first one was right on the river in a prime position, but cost £21 so we went in search of another, which was easy enough to find with the instructions given from the Kiwi at the first hostel. On the way we took some pics of a lovely church and then crossed a bridge that opens and closes to let big ships through, I pointed this out to Ben just as we had crossed it and while he was looking back he walked straight into a pole. I saw the whole thing happening and assumed he was doing it for a joke, so when he hit his head on the pole and fell over backwards I played it up really big for the man that was walking behind us. Ben got up, we had a laugh and walked about fifty metres before he realised that he didn’t have his camera on him. It wasn’t where he had fallen over, and the man behind us had walked off so it looked ominous. Ben ran back further and found a group of men in a circle looking at all his pics on his camera, it must have just fallen out of his pocket after he took it out at the church. So he said thanks, got a photo with them all, and we headed onto find this hostel. Thirty minutes and £14 later we had ourselves a place to sleep and were in search of some cheap food for the night, of which a greasy late night fast food place looked to be the most promising. Now Ben and I don’t rush into big decisions like this head on, so we compared prices from several places to find the best value for money. When we were walking back from a cheap curry place an older man approached us and said

‘Excuse me, I know 1200 poems and recite them for people and was wondering if I could tell you one in exchange for some money to buy myself dinner tonight’

So we got talking to him, and he told us about how he had just found out that week that he was actually a Grandfather, and how even though he was now fifty it only felt like a couple of weeks ago he was in his teens. He has dyslexia (must be something in the Welsh water) and has memorised over thirty six hours of poetry – he knows this because he did a charity poetry recital where he recited for 34 hours straight before collapsing. Upon our request he told us two poems about watching his lover pass him everyday by a pond and another about the pointlessness of war. He has written over a hundred himself and after eight years has secured a contract with Penguin, and a book compiling all of his poetry will be published in the next few months. According to him he is on Youtube and there is fan club on the internet as well as a following at the local University. He writes under the pseudonym Bear, but he told us his real name too – which I am not at liberty to tell.