Day 16–Thursday, April 27. St David’s to Whitesands Bay (8.5 miles)

It was only a matter of time until Amazon found George in Great Britain. This is the longest he has been out of touch with them in the last 5 years–the Amazon search and recovery team tracked us down at the Coach Inn in St David’s and have come to his rescue. He had to wait until around noon today to actually make contact, so he stayed behind this morning when we left after Steve and Michael served us our final breakfast.

It was much easier finding our way out of town than it was finding our way in. Having said that, we ended up on a dead end street and a local man came out and told us the way–we were only off one street. The coastal path is very well marked (always keep salt water to our left), but side trails aren’t always indicated in the guide books.

We made our way back down to St Non’s on a warm sunshiney morning. While we were looking at the chapel (which is still in use for Sunday mass), we met and talked with an English couple that was going on a car tour of Wales. With this quaint chapel and the current Pope, I could almost drink the kool-aide once again.

We were making great time down the trail (considering we didn’t start out until after 11a today). We met lots of military personnel out jogging the trail with full packs and another string of German hikers doing the trail southbound. At one point, I asked one of the German hikers why they were all hiking south and his response was because the guidebook is written North to South. My experience is that German’s are very rule oriented and always follow them. I remember my driving instructor in high school telling me that if you come to a red light in the middle of nowhere and see a car stop rather than blow on by, he will show you a German driver.

We also met a guy from Chicago that has been hiking for as long as we plan to–5 years. Brandon, his trail name is “Toast”. He’s a pretty cool guy that’s already figured out the real priorities of life at only 33. I sped up and walked with him for about 20 minutes thinking how good it felt to be going at such a nice pace, talking about gear and trails, but I looked around and couldn’t see Pam. That’s when I realized speed didn’t matter as much to me as hiking with my partner. She may someday speed up, but it’s more important to me to hike together. I said goodbye to Toast only to realize we had missed a turn and Pam and Karen were ahead of me and didn’t care where I was.

By the time we got to Porthlysgi Bay (tell me about it, we are out of the Norman influence on place names and I have no idea how to pronounce anything), George texted us through the InReach that Amazon had made their delivery of his new clown size insoles and that he would meet us at Porth Clais. The biggest problem with this is that it was over a mile behind us. We sat down and tried to sort it out with huge communication delays and George being in and out of coverage. After 45 min, we decided to just meet at St Justinian like we had originally planned.

I was in a bit of a panic because one of George’s text had said he was all messed up! What kind of messed up? Was he hurt? He soon will be if I find him and he’s ok. Pam and Karen got me to calm down and then we had an enjoyable walk around St David’s Point the rest of the afternoon.

We ran into a couple climbing up from a lunch spot beside the Ramsey Straights. We talked to Joe and Hannah for a bit. Poor Hannah grew up in a house that was over 400 years old and I can only imagine she longed for something new. Her parents still live in the Cotswolds. We will be hiking the Cotswold Way in November and can hardly wait to see this beautiful area. Joe used to travel a lot for work dealing with oil spills all over the world. Before that, he used to run tour boats around Ramsey Island. We enjoyed talking with them and learning more about where we are headed.

We finally got to St Justinians around 3. There’s a lifeboat station there. George was waiting in the parking lot and he was fine. It had turned cold and we still hadn’t eaten a meal since breakfast at The Coach House. We tried to find a place out of the wind to have a late lunch.

We flew (that’s a very relative turn for us–flying is the sweet spot between a good pace and one where there’s a lot of whining and complaining behind me) the last 2 miles into Whitesands Bay. When we got to the car park, the girls found the water closet charged 20p to use it. This just about dried them up, but they managed to get in and take care of business.

There’s a campground right next to the beach so we set up on the most level spot we could find. We boiled our water for supper and George started feeling ill after we made him a gourmet meal of Ramen Noodles and veggies–it was just like our happy Easter meal. I offered him some digestives (cookies) but he even turned them down–he must really be sick (or maybe it’s the 3# of chocolate he ate last night).

After George, literally crawled to bed, the rest of us walked down to the beach. It had disappeared! The high tide covers every bit of sand here. We tried to wait for the sunset, but warm blankets were calling. We were snug in bed by 8:15. Sunset about 9. We cant even make it to hiker midnight in our advanced years.