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The final day of our Pembrokeshire / Swansea Holiday.

Date : Sunday May 17th 2009.

Places visited : Swansea and The Gower Coast

Walk details : Swansea Bay plus a walk to Pwlldu Bay.

Distance travelled : 1.5 miles, 250 ft of ascent.

Weather : A very blustery day with short showers carried on a very fast windsurfing breeze.

The view from . . . the front door.

 

On our last full day we decided to drive out along the seafront and visit another Gower beach, this time one a little closer to town.

All weekend we had been watching some large paragliding kites flying back and forth across the bay

so we diverted that way to see what has been happening.

It was the Swansea heat of the British Kite Surfing Championships being held this weekend.

Think paragliding or perhaps horizontal power surfing with attitude.

" Sunshine, showers and big winds made for big kite surfing " was the quote on the web site we read afterwards

The idea is to surf fast but with style, taking full advantage of wind and waves for some interesting airborne moves.

Priorité à Droite ?

It's too windy to shout " Starboard "

This guy was practicing on a land based skateboard . . .
. . . whilst this one was airborne by some 30 feet or more.

A fast run across the bay continued as we left for our walk with the dogs.

Full results on the British Kite surfing web site here

Pwll Du, the first of the Gower beaches once you leave town.
A sandy bay with a classic shingle bank like Newgale last week.

The beach has to be approached on foot as there is no local parking.

The track is now only accessible by the toughest of 4x4's.

The houses are all that's left of a once busy village that boasted a shop and a pub.

The cliffs to the left were heavily quarried for limestone which was taken to the beach and exported by boat throughout the Bristol Channel communities at a time when lime was an important agricultural fertiliser. ( More stories on the Welcome to Gower Blogspot )

There doesn't seem as much sand as we remember from years past.

What remains is covered by seaweed, the result of the many winter storms out at sea by the look of it.

Sunshine, surf and Sangria . . . all that's missing is the sun and Sangria.

The Bishopston Valley river is crossed by a deep ford or the footbridge that these fellow walkers are heading for.

Ann's cousin now owns the old Beaufort Inn in the photo, but it 'called time' to commercial sales some fifty or more years ago.

We leave the bay as the sun breaks through,

a once busy industrial site, now a peaceful haven of solitude.

The coast looking east from Pwll Du as we return to the car.

Around the other side of the headland is Langland Bay and the Mumbles that we visited yesterday.

So we return to Swansea.

Time to pack our bags and say our goodbye's as we are off home first thing in the morning.

A big thanks to the Druidstone staff and Sandra, Jackie and Gill here in Swansea for all our good food and fine accommodation over the last eight days.

- - - o o o - - -

 

Technical note: Pictures taken with with my Cannon G7 or Ann's Ixus 75 Digital camera.

Resized in Photoshop, and built up on a Dreamweaver web builder.

This site best viewed with . . . our passports to get back into England !

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Our previous time here - 13th to 21st May 2005 A visit to Swansea and Pembrokeshire.

Next event - 21st May 2009 Loweswater Farmers Day Out