Day 20–Monday, May 1. Fishguard to Parrog (10 miles)

We got up for breakfast by 8:00. Since we had the hotel room until 11 and the weather still was overcast with a mean rain look looming, there was no hurry to get out. Also, the trail is almost over, so what’s the rush. We’ve only got about 25 miles left and runners were finishing up on one day what we had given ourselves 4 days to do. We decided to run down to the Tesco to get some food and snacks to last us the last 2 nights of camping we were planning.

Who had George falling on day 20 in the pool? NO ONE! Even his daughters had him falling BEFORE we got to Wales (Jill had him falling in the airport boarding the plane and Jennifer had him falling in London). I was most optimistic for him and I had him going down on day 2 of hiking. No body had day 20 which is when he finally went down (and I didn’t have my camera). In his defense, he tried to use the excuse that it shouldn’t count since we weren’t on the trail and he wasn’t carrying a pack–BS. Butt on deck entering hotel is a fall.

He didn’t want to count the fall as official, but he was able to use it as an excuse that he wasn’t recovered enough to hike out with us today. Instead, he’ll get a ride out to the Old Sailor Inn Pub at Pwllgwaelod and meet us for lunch. After lunch, he and Karen will take the short cut to avoid the climb and walk around Dinas Head (saving about 3 miles) and then go get a campsite in Newport while Pam and I hike out to Dinas Head.

This was a beautiful day hiking after yesterday’s rain. There is a nice paved walk from Fishguard to Lower Fishguard called the Mariner’s Walk. Lower Fishguard is another harbor off of the main harbor and this is the cutest town we have seen to date. I wanted to have a cup of tea on the harbor, but the tea shop is closed on Mondays. Instead, we took our time walking through town and exploring the fort above it on the opposite point (a common theme today–Pam and Karen were SLOW!).

It was only 2 miles out to a Caravan Park/Vacation Rental Village right on the cliffs above Fishguard Bay. When we climbed the cliff, we come out on one of the porches of the vacation homes. This was another all inclusive resort but staffed with the friendliest people we have met (not like resort at Lydstep Haven–DO NOT GO THERE). Bernard is the customer relations manager and Vickie is the park office manager. They made us coffees and talked to us for quite a long time. Bernard is part Venezuelan but absolutely loves Wales. I had to get him to stop talking about some of the things he does in the house because Pam was getting the wrong idea of extra things I should be doing.

 

I reminded the “girls” we needed to get a move on. No matter what, they just would not pick up the pace. I kept reminding them pubs quit serving at 3 and it was already after noon with 3 more miles looming. Admittedly, the coast was beautiful and it was a perfect day for hiking–sunny skies and 60s. I finally got tired of walking ahead and waiting 10 minutes for them to catch up so I just took off to go meet George.

I didn’t get to the pub until 3:10. George was a little worried because he thought we would be there by 1. My only answer was “women”. At the last minute, he tried to order 2 hamburgers and a soup, but they only had one hamburger. He got two soups and one hamburger and I was first in so I wasn’t settling for soup. They finally showed up at 3:40 but didn’t come inside. They had ran into our Canadian friends (Judy and Myrna) and were out talking to them.

Uncertain of where the shortcut avoiding Dinas Head started, George and Karen walked a couple hundred feet uphill with us before deciding it was right behind the pub (like the paper map shows, but it wasn’t like that on their iPhones). We thought it was nice to walk the extra 1/4 mile with us.

The climb to Dinas Head is almost 500′. We noticed a guy walking behind us the entire way up, but he never caught up with us. It wasn’t until we got to the top that he finally did. Chris has a bad knee which caused him to walk slow, but his slow was our normal speed. We spent the next 2 hours walking down the opposite ridge from Dinas Head. He told us a lot of history of the area as well as identifying birds and flowers for us.

He walked with us all the way down to the church ruins at Cwm-yr-Eglwys and told us the story of the sailor being saved by the mermaid (and, hence, the statue at the end of the trail in St Dogmaels). A fisherman caught a mermaid in his net. She begged and begged him to let her go but he wouldn’t. She finally promised him that she would one day save his life if he let her go. At last, he agreed. Years later, he was fishing on a calm day and the mermaid came to his boat and told him to get out of the ocean NOW. He said it was a beautiful, calm day and the fishing was good. She reminded him of her promise and told them she was saving his life. He got back to shore. The storm that hit was so terrible and violent that everyone at sea died and it washed away so much shore that three sides of the church we were standing at got destroyed as well. Only one wall of the church is still standing to this day.

Chris left us saying that he told his wife he was going for a short walk and that was several hours ago–he was probably in trouble by now. He told us one last thing to do–two coves over, in the direction we are headed, take a side trail inland to see a waterfall. When we got there, we were tired and running late, but we trusted what Chris told us. We went inland and the valley was beautiful (and filled with wild garlic). We found the waterfall and were amazed. We’d had a great afternoon with Chris.

 

It was getting close to 6 by now and we still had another 3 miles to go. Pam was starting to hurt and I was getting tired as well. George sent us a text that they found a campground and all we had to do was take the road next to the yellow house into the campground. When we got to Parrog, every freakin’ house was yellow and had roads beside them. After 2 different yellow house/road combinations, we stopped a couple and they gave us directions to 3 different campgrounds they knew of.

We walked back out to the beach and were able to see George and Karen watching the sunset about 1/2 mile further on. We finally caught up to them and they took us by THE yellow house they meant. We set up our tent and just threw our stuff in because it was after 8. Pubs stop serving dinner at 9.

We had a half mile to walk on sore feet to make it up to the Royal Oak Inn for supper. I ordered a Cwrw and pronounced it correctly which was my ticket to be accepted by the Welsh men sitting at the bar. I finally got a nice hot curry that made me sweat so I was happy. We got our picture with Susie who was closing up. We were the last ones out. Unfortunately, we still had that half mile walk back to the campground.