Strumble Head to Fishguard Fort

Stage 19: 8.5 miles in 5 hours on 2nd September

After all the time it took for me to reach Strumble Head lighthouse on the previous stage, you'd have thought it would hang about longer before waving goodbye, but it disappeared within 10 minutes of my starting out today. For the first time since the Milford Haven waterway, I was now travelling eastwards.

To start with there seemed to be one or more young men fishing on the end of every rocky promontory . However, on passing the fourth or fifth, I noticed that the human fishermen had been replaced by a cormorant - probably just as or more efficient at its work.

At Porthsychan beach a few couples (together with flasks and small dogs) had gathered to watch a seal. The seal was duly performing to its audience, alternately sunbathing in the shallows and then diving from view. You can just about make it out in this pic at the lower right hand corner, just above the stick. Getting a telephoto lens for the camera suddenly seemed a brilliant idea, but get real: I wouldn't have a clue how to use it.

Later, from the clifftops above the more isolated Aber-Felin bay, I saw many more seals. In one cove there were four adults in the water, and a pup flopping about on the beach - the first one I've see this year. Such excitement, I had to tell the next pair of walkers coming towards me about it! I noticed the lady was looking very pale and not at all interested. Then she told me she'd just nearly stepped on an adder.

Another pair of walkers (slightly more elderly than me) told me that they had absconded from their coach tour as the weather was too brilliant to be stuck inside a bus all day. When eventually I reached Goodwick and descended to the entrance of the Fishguard Bay Hotel, there was the 'Happy Days' coach parked up. My new found friends were still out on their own happy day, I imagine. It certainly must have been an energetic day for them; the way was definitely undulating, if not grumbulatory.

About halfway between Strumble Head and Fishguard at Carregwastad is a standing stone which commemorates the last invasion of Britain in 1797. The French army was led by an Irish-American and failed miserably in its ambition. Jemima Nicholas, a local cobbler from Fishguard and her women friends were said to have seriously worried the invading soldiers by appearing on the clifftops dressed in their traditional red flannel skirts and black high bonnets, looking for all the world like British soldiers. Jemima herself captured 12 Frenchmen. After the women's heroics and those of the local militia, the French surrendered. To celebrate the bicentenary of the victory, the story of the whole episode was woven into a tapestry which is now on display in Fishguard. The tapestry is the same length as the Bayeux one and tells a tale no less dramatic.

Fishguard ferry port is actually at Goodwick, the other side of the bay from the town. As I arrived the Stena Line ferry was leaving for Ross-lare. Clearly a lot of aeroplanes were also on their way across the Irish Sea too, heading for the Atlantic.

Then it was down a zig-zag steep path through woodland, over an exciting metal boxed in bridge, and away from the port.

It hadn't occurred to me before that there would be a sandy beach in both Goodwick bay and Lower Fishguard Harbour (the old port), but there were. Above the latter there were the obligatory limekilns.

Fishguard Lower Harbour is in a different aesthetic league from the ferry port.

Total walked: 151 miles of 186