Training Walk: In Which I Accidentally Walked 24 Miles

On Wednesday last week, I set off on a 21-mile walk which, thanks to the minor inaccuracies in the route plotted on the OS maps app, was actually 24 miles.  An error of 12.5% is a little alarming when I'm in the process of plotting a nearly-1200-mile walk.  I'm choosing to believe, however, that this particular route-planner was less particular about the accuracy of their waypoints than I am.  I did also take a few wrong turns and park my car not at the start of the walk.  I'm hopeful.

So I went for a nice little wander starting with Cefn Bryn, which is a feature of every Gower peninsula walk over 15 miles because it runs right down the middle and gives you pretty views to everywhere.  It prompted a realisation, however, that my least favourite words in the route-writers' vocabulary are "saddle" and "muddy", the latter especially when combined with "particularly".  "Saddle" just implies that you have climbed something tall, and you are going to get to somewhere just as tall, or possibly taller, but there's going to be a downhill first and that downhill is going to be entirely ruined by the unavoidable sight of the uphill to be tackled immediately after.  Hills are supposed to go up, then down, not the other way around.  "Muddy" because we all know that all walking paths are muddy, so the fact that someone has felt the need to comment upon it implies you're going to lose a boot - or at least fear you will.

I walked past Fairyhill which had the impression from the outside of being a nice place to go for a fancy meal out and entirely unsuited to already-somewhat-mud-coated walking trousers, and then came across a truly lovely little three-arched stone bridge over Burry Pill, where I quite happily sat and dangled my feet (boots still very much on) in the water, and would have been perfectly content to stay there for quite a lot longer, but there was a walk to be completed.  On the other side of the bridge was an information board (I love those) informing me that the bridge itself is listed.  This was immediately followed by an uphill climb in the mud, at the top of which a man getting out of his car told me it was going to rain later on, which rather spoilt things.

The whole way around I heard birds and saw daffodils and catkins out and even a tiny Welsh pony foal, and it generally felt very spring-like - although the ground underfoot was still distinctly wintery and I found myself wondering how the sheep don't get trench foot, or the sheepy equivalent.  After several fields of again ankle-deep mud, although thankfully not as bad as my previous muddy-field experience, I looked at another section of uphill muddy puddles and, nearly 19 miles behind me already and running up against the threat of nightfall again as usual, made the decision to go the long way round on the tarmac.  This was a good choice.

Least favourite part of the walk: as I approached Cefn Bryn on the way back, I couldn't help but notice that the ridge itself had disappeared into cloud since I'd left it.  On reaching the cloud, I found that it was somehow raining inside the cloud, which felt meteorologically improbable, and got absolutely soaked to the skin because my disbelief meant I refused to put my waterproof trousers on until the rain was so heavy that I refused to open my backpack to get them out because I didn't want to let the rain in.  I drove to the supermarket with all the heaters on in just my base-layer trousers, which dried out very well, and I'm sure terrified people in the car park putting the soaked walking trousers back on.

Boot cost per mile: £1.67
Lifts offered: one, which I declined; the gentleman then very quickly assured me that he didn't realise I was a lady from driving up behind me, which really raised more questions than it answered.