A week in wales

0845 - Paddington Station, London
Well here we are aboard the 0845 FIRST Western train to Swansea - minus one trekking pole (the last minute search proving fruitless). Hopefullly we remembered everything else... though we already know we left the sunglasses behind (optimistically thinking that they may be important)! Well fed from the Cornish Pasty Company at Paddington, we spent the remainder of the morning reading the paper and watching the sunny skies of London cloud over on the westward trip. At Swansea we changed trains for an uneventuful trip up to Fishguard Harbour. There were plenty of sheep and green rolling pasture to admire through the hazy windows of the train.

1337 - Fishguard Harbour, Pembrokeshire
How do we get out of this station? Seems the assumption is that all passengers will board the ferry to Ireland or similar. But not us - we're here to walk the coast path from St Dogmaels to Sta Davids. The way out of the station was in fact rather easy we found... no real need for a sign pointing the direction as you just walk along the platform in the direction of the town.

Accommodation for the night is a B&B in Newport, a day's walk north of Fishguard, so the bus named the "Poppit Rocket" (for Poppit Sands, the start of the walk) was our planned mode of transport. During Summer (to end September) this excellent service ferries walkers to all the main access points of the coast path 3 times daily in each direction along the path from Poppit Sands to Fishguard. There are also sister buses named Strumble Shuttle, Puffin Shuttle etc that cover other sectors of the path. (Find out more about this service on http://www.pembrokeshiregreenways.co.uk/default/).

Unfortunately it was a bit tight to make the 1400 bus to Newport, especially since Fishguard town lies a good 20 minute walk UPHILL from the Harbour, so we took our time and settled into the Royal Oak Inn, apparently famous for a French surrender after their abortive invasion in 1797, the "Last invasion of Britain". Here we sort out our plans, read maps and play with the camera, but mostly we enjoy our "Brains " (bitter).

Later as we went for a walk down to Lower Fishguard (down a big hill) we realise that there is another bus - #412 which goes to Newport every hour, so keen to get to our day's destination, we take the next bus.

Newport seems a pleasant sort of town, but before doing any exploring, we wanted to get rid of our packs. So onward to our B&B we march... up the hill about half a mile to the welcoming Craig-y-Warw. The first of many trips up that hill!