Episode summary:
I spent a blissful summer day on a beach on the Gower peninsula in South Wales. Gower was the first place in the UK to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and for good reason. It’s full of idyllic, sandy beaches such as Pobbles and its neighbour Three Cliffs. If you are wondering ‘is the Gower peninsula worth visiting’, ‘what are the hidden gems on Gower’, ‘where is Pobbles bay’ or ‘how do I get to Pobbles bay’ this podcast might well be able to help.
Listen to a podcast about basking in the goodness of a Welsh beach.
Transcript – S2 E10: Basking in the goodness of a Welsh beach
This week we’re getting the sand between our toes on one of the most beautiful beaches in Wales. This episode is dedicated to Tim and Jo for St David’s Day.
I’m walking with my friends and their two kids along a shaded path. It’s high summer and bees and butterflies are busy in the jungle-thick, berry-bent hawthorn hedgerows as we pass. Sunlight is dappling through the leaves and branches, and the air is drunk with the scent of wild garlic. Every now and then, from the other side of the hawthorn hedge, we can hear a thwack, followed either by “good shot”, “ooh”, or “FORE”. We’re parallel to the 17th hole of the local golf club. There are blackbirds in this hedge, chiffchaffs too, a thrush a little further off and what we think is a skylark singing on the course somewhere, hopefully avoiding the golf balls whizzing by.
We’re gradually letting the sights, sounds and smells of nature relax us, heal us. It’s all beautiful but we’re heading for a place that is even more spectacular than this delicious hedge. It’s a beach – if you can believe it – called Pobbles. We’re in South Wales, on the Gower peninsula, the first region of the UK to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 70 years ago, back in 1956. These areas are now called National Landscapes, a sadly more clinical term, which I can’t help thinking has taken the poetry out of title.
Down to the diamond-strewn sea
My friends’ black labrador is with us. A few years ago he would have been darting into the undergrowth at every opportunity, snuffling to his heart’s content and re-emerging coated in a shawl of sticky grass. Now, in his ‘silver years’, shall we say, he’s content to plod along with us, merely peering into the foliage rather than entering it and thinking, in a calm, satisfied kind of way, “I’ve done that”.
We emerge from the hedgerows into the sunlight at an open area covered with grass and dotted with yellow-flowered gorse bushes. There’s more sand on the path now and a little further on we come to a crossroads where our path meets another, the Wales Coast Path, the fabulous 870-mile (or 1,400-kilometre) track that follows the entire coastline of this country. Just beyond the crossroads, our hearts jump for joy as we get a glimpse of the dazzling diamond-strewn sea. The path dissects low dunes and descends to the smooth grey stones at the back of the idyllic sandy bay… and, just like that, we’re on Pobbles!
As tranquil as a beach can get
The kids race for the waves, the labrador toddles off to find new friends and we more leisurely adults slap down the sand to the shoreline, past beached jellyfish and mermaids’ seaweed wigs. It’s low tide, which means we can walk all the way round the famous Three Cliffs headland to the neighbouring beach of the same name. We all know these beaches well – my friends actually live here – and we’d never risk this if the tide was higher, as the currents and rips here can be wicked. Today, however, the sea is flat as glass and the scene as tranquil as a beach can get.
These beaches and the ones further west along the coast at Oxwich and Slade are where my parents brought me for childhood summer holidays. This stunning part of Wales is where I learnt to splash in the sea, explore rock pools for crabs and lobsters, surf at Mewslade Bay and where I first thought it was fun to eat sand. It’s also where I got a taste for lava bread, bought from jolly women in Swansea Market and consumed morning, noon and night. This is the local Welsh seaweed, still gathered on Gower rocks to this day, and boiled and boiled and boiled until it produces a dark green sludge. Zero points for presentation but a solid 10 out of 10 for flavour.
My friends and I sit on the sand for hours, swapping stories, marvelling at the warm sun on our faces and watching their kids playing in the shallows. As the sun begins to sink over Oxwich Point we agree that an evening pint of Gower Gold beer might go down very nicely in the local pub garden. So we stroll homeward, our long shadows making us look like Giacometti’s famous towering stick-thin statues, and with one sand-caked and very contented black labrador plodding along at our salty ankles.
© copyright Matthew Brace
