We got up hoping to get breakfast in the cafe adjacent to the camp ground, but they weren’t open. Instead, we had breakfast on the tables out back while we packed up. The owner, Christine Watts, stopped by and chatted for a while. She is a lovely woman who is running the place with her son. Her husband suddenly died a few years ago and she was devastated by the lack of warning. She has recently started traveling and enjoying life again. She’s been to Canada, the US mainland, Hawaii, and on some cruises.
We had to cut about a mile inland to get over the river that runs through Newport Sands. It wasn’t a bad walk at all, but George’s feet were already hurting. We were hoping to find a little cafe before we left town because we were entering the longest section of trail without pubs every few miles–we were scared for our lives. Fortunately for Pam and I, we just recently watched the movie “Alive” about the soccer team that crash lands in the Andes, I was up on the history of the Donner Party, and I could identify garlic in the wild. If we hit a rough spot, I sure wouldn’t want to be in George’s shoes. When the herd gets culled, it’s the weakest that goes first. I know Pam and I were coming out alive on the other end of this section.
By the time we made it all the way around the sands and past the golf course, we still hadn’t found a cafe. We struck up a conversation with the parking lot attendant and she told us the golf course club house will accept the public. We could drop out packs at her shack and she would ensure their safety while we made the mile round trip to the club house.
Even with the “last meal” at the club house, I was still dragging. Obviously, I wasn’t taking in enough calories which didn’t bode well for George. To try to alleviate the situation, I would hike forward of the group about a mile at a time and then find a nice spot to take a nap until they caught up. This helped a little, but I just couldn’t recharge my batteries completely.
This is one of the most rugged areas of the coast with a lot of climbing down and up to the cliff tops. While we were playing leapfrog, we ran across a group of hikers heading southbound. Nick and Barbara are doing the entire trail through a series of day hikes and different friends are hiking with them each day. Today, they were hiking with Jan and Rich who have a bed and breakfast in London near the airport area. We plan on staying with them when we head back across the pond in December.
After about 7 miles, I turned around to see a sign with the warning of rugged area for the next 6.5 miles with high risk of falling and no outside access available. It’s a good thing they didn’t post this at the other end or I would have had to take an extra 1/2 to talk Pam into it. We came to an area called the “Witches Cauldron”. We were tired and didn’t really want to investigate why. What caused us to look around was the desire to find an area large enough for our tents.
There was a river flowing down the valley that dropped into a cave. We just assumed it fell into the ocean, but Karen said the water just disappeared. I didn’t know she was sneaking alcohol with her in her pack. I humored her and went to look. Sure enough, it fell into a cave and disappeared. We noticed an indent in the cliff above us and we went higher to look. It was a beach completely surrounded 360 by land. There are a series of caves feeding this hole (cauldron, if you will). We finally traced the sea water entering the cauldron through a series of caves which we were standing above. This is one of the most unique formations we have seen on this trip.
As exciting as our discovery was, we were tired and wanted to just be done for the day. We headed on to the next cove in hopes of a camping spot. We found a beautiful area off of the road to Moylgrove but it was posted no camping. I had wanted to camp on the next beach, but George seemed dead-set against it. The rest of us dropped down to the rocks behind the beach and George just kept on climbing. We finally convinced him he was going to have to walk a couple more miles or camp behind the beach. Tired George finally acquiesced.
It was very rocky but had a beautiful view of the beach and the sunset. We couldn’t use tent stakes for the tents and had to use rocks on all the ties. George wasn’t happy, but at least we were stopped for the night in Ceibwr Bay.
Oh my- sounds amazing here is a link that has all the ways to say dangerous in languages from every continent. Be safe. Hope to meet up with you someday, somewhere.
https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/danger