Day 9 - Langland Bay to Caswell Bay

Gower Peninsula

Stormy Clouds over Caswell Bay

Stormy clouds over Caswell Bay

Feeling well knackered after yesterday's hurried walk with an excessively heavy daysack, I slept until midday and was in no mood for any kind of serious walk today, or any kind of walk at all in fact. But since I've made this project public there's no backing out now, so I bit the bullet and got the walk over with as soon as possible. Equipment? Nah, who needs equipment? I was carrying far too much yesterday. Soddit, let's just take the digital camera and the GPS, everything else is superfluous.

Waterfalls? No, I went there yesterday. Beacons? Too hard. I suppose that just leaves the Gower. Okay then, with a total lack of imagination I decided to continue from where I left off on day one, at Langland Bay. Overcast? Ah well, not much chance of any decent photos then. Let's just make this a walk. And a quick one at that.

Parked the car at Langland Bay, started walking. It started raining. Great! I was travelling so light I didn't even think of bringing waterproofs. Ah well, it's only water, it won't kill me. After walking for a hundred yards I checked my pockets. No car key! What's going on here? Ah well, let's go back to the car. To my surprise the door was unlocked and the key was still in the ignition. Am I going senile in my old age?

Right, so I started the walk again. Got the hill out of the way first. Passing the golf course. A number of golfers around. No one seemed annoyed or irate. What was wrong with these people? Why were they so tolerant of a walker passing by? They did a very good job of not appearing to wait until I passed before playing the hole, and gave no negative indications in my direction.

To my surprise the sun appeared, but only nominally. Scattering a few rays here and there but nothing of any consequence. Most important was that the rain stopped. It was quite breezy though.

A little later I reached Caswell Bay, beloved of summer sunbathers, but now occupied only by dog walkers, beach combers and a strange guy on a roller skateboard speeding around the beach propelled by means of a large kite, or small paraglider. I snapped a number of photos of this strange phenomenon, mostly bad. Getting the exposure right was the trickiest thing as he sped from the shady part of the beach to the backlit part of the beach. Clearly I don't have the brains to switch from manual to auto.

The surfers were out in force, of course. With the wind up the waves were doing interesting things. I made my way around the bay and found a nice rock on which to set up my diddy tripod, for purposes of taking some pink and purple photographs. As I waited for the 30 second exposures to complete the tide tried to get my feet wet, but I was too quick for it, leaping up onto the rocks with great dexterity.

After the infrared session I took a few more mundane snaps of the waves before planning my next moves. Clearly I was now cut off by the tide and so a pleasant stroll along the beach was no longer an option. But what's that I see? A steeply sloping rock face? Great! A bit of scrambling to liven up the journey. But it was too easy. Should I make my way up to the path? Nah, let's stay on the rocks and hone my balancing skills. As I progressed I found my speed and confidence increasing. It's been many a year since I've done any rock hopping, and damn good fun it was too.

Once I reached the path, a fairly rapid plod brought me back to Langland in prompt time. It started to rain again but who cared? A short but actually quite pleasant day out, much better than I'd anticipated.