Cardigan Bay Camping & Caravan Club Site, Cross Inn, Ceredigion

Another day in the seemingly endless sunshine; how fortunate we have been with the weather this year. Long may it continue from our touring perspective.

The itinerary for today was a lengthier list than that finally attended to, however I was well satisfied by the time we returned before 3 pm, in time for Chris to watch the Tour’s team time trials and the tennis. There will be many attractions, locations and wonders in this area that will be omitted; perhaps they might be visited next time, if there ever is a next time.

New Quay lies a mere two and a bit miles to our west on the coast, so it would have been remiss of us to have not popped in to check it out. We only spent a paltry half hour here; this wonderful little seaside settlement deserves much more. We were restricted by the parking spot we found right on the sea frontage, free if not abused.

New Quay lays claim to being the original Llareggub in Dylan Thomas’ Under the Milkwood; this very likely because Thomas and his family moved here in 1944 to escape both the war and London.  He drank in the many pubs and spent time with the locals, many of whom formed  the characters in the play he started here. He was familiar with the township before he brought his family here; during the 1930s Dylan had visited his aunt and cousin here.

The main road cuts through the upper residential part of the town, from where steep narrow streets plunge down to a pretty harbour, formed by its sturdy stone quay, and with a small curving main beach.  The tidal range is quite extreme as it seems to be all down this coast and across the south of England. Here it ranges 7.59 metres which explains why the boats moored near the shore are left high and dry, but obviously considered retrievable on the higher tide.

This morning the tide was low, so the many vessels sat like beached whales all along the seashore and a great number of crayfish pots sat perched up high on the wharf awaiting collection and occupation. We wandered about in awe of the beautiful spot, and picked up a newspaper in the one small  general store, a store which would be hard pressed to cater for the thousands of tourists who stay in all the static caravans in the many holiday parks nearby.

We travelled further up the coast, a further seven miles or so, and as we came down toward the coast, Cardigan Bay lay wide before us. We pulled into Aberaeron, into a car park with no obvious restrictions.  Our guide book suggests that Aberaeron is THE weekend getaway on the Cambrian Coast, to which I can only respond, “Really?!”

The beach itself is wide, divided by groynes and only appealing to those who might like to pick their way along a shore looking for wildlife rather than considering basking in the sunshine. The houses across the road from the promenade are some of the ugliest we have ever seen, although in fairness, they have been built for shelter and views toward the town not toward the wild weather the Irish Sea might stir up. Certainly there are many pubs and cafes, and if it is these that make for the Best Weekend getaway, perhaps there is merit in the statement.

Aberaeron is a very well laid out township, geometrically tidy and well considered.  When the 1807 Harbour Act paved the way for port development, Reverend Alban Gwynne spent his wife’s inheritance dredging the Aeron estuary as a new port for mid-Wales and constructing a formally planned town around it, reputedly from a design of John Nash. There are attractive houses about to offer some relief, and despite my negative comments, it is rather a pleasant and curious place.  

The dock area off the tidal Afon Aeron is like a great stagnant bathtub, sitting high above the river at high tide, full of sludge and a surprising number of fish. More boats sit askew like those at New Quay in the river bed waiting for the tide to change.

We wandered up the street, popping into The Famous £1.20 Shop, a cluttered mess of every kind of gewgaw one could possibly need and found ourselves a new sink liner, a pack of needles and several rolls of cotton. 

It was close to 11 am by the time we returned to the car; now late enough to head for a National Trust property up the river. Llanerchaeron is a substantially restored 18^th century Welsh gentry estate. The villa was designed and built by John Nash in the late 1790s and is the most complete example of his early work, built for Major (later Colonel) William Lewis as a model farm complex. There was a house previously on the site, however I have not been able to dig up any further details. The Lewes family occupied the house through the centuries and ten generations; there are some interesting stories told, celebrating the female perspective of each, but it was Mr J P Ponsonby Lewes who bequeathed the estate to the National Trust in 1989. 

The estate was self-sufficient as is evident in the dairy, laundry, brewery and salting house of the service courtyard, as well as the Home Farm buildings from the stables to the threshing barns. Today it is a working organic farm with two restored walled gardens which produce fruit and vegetables which are sold in the onsite shop. 

Unusually there is a collection or assortment of antiques and curiosities in the house bequeathed by an independent single  woman who lived long, gathered bits and pieces and finally opened an antiques shop in Knightsbridge far from this part of the country. In the 1990s long after she had closed up shop, she decided she wanted to leave her collection to the National Trust, to be placed in a Georgian house. After her death at the age of eighty six, her trustees chose Llanerchaeron as the right setting to receive her collection and with it came the money from the sale of her London house, which helped fund the re-roofing of the house here. Her story is another one of those currently being celebrated at the property during this “her-story” year.

We spent the rest of the morning wandering about the garden, through the farmyard empty but for an aggressive pair of geese, a lonely horse and an overheated pig flicking flies from his eyes with a floppy ear. Approaching the lake, I noticed a great number of little pyramids dotted across the surface, which on closer inspection revealed themselves to be upended ducks feeding on the shallow weedy bottom.

After lunch we crossed the river and headed up into the woods, following the trail labelled Red Kite Walk. Of course if I had thought long and hard, I would have realised that chasing Red Kites would require climbing up to a viewing point, and so the route rose steeply up through the lovely wood, then on across farmland through gorse and blackberry. To our great delight, as we turned back toward the river, I spotted the kite swooping high above us. We stood and watched for a while before it disappeared from view.

Back at the car we decided to head straight home, without visiting the coastal spots south of New Quay that our guide book suggested worth checking out. And back home, apart from checking progress in the tennis and cycling, we learned of the second Cabinet resignation and that another four Thai teenagers had been rescued from their would-be tomb in the mountains.