#Porthgain

[2squeakyshoes]

Porthgain Harbour. Pembrokeshire.

[becomingflynn]

What draws you to sing about forests, nature and folklore ?

I’ve always loved the freedom of being in the countryside. I went to boarding school in Hampshire and spent a lot of time on the Hangers, the steep wooded hills of the South Downs, walking, cycling and camping with friends. When I was 14, my parents moved to Pembrokeshire. In the summer, I worked on a fishing boat in Porthgain, catching lobsters and learning about seabirds. It was the most magical job I’ve ever had.

10 questions with Johnny Flynn, Country Living UK. (x) Photography by Mr David Urbanke (x)

[simonjames-jam]

Sir Benfro Haf (Pembrokeshire Summer). 
‘Between Traeth Llyfn and Abereiddy’ and 
‘In the vicinity of Porthgain’.


Addition to series.

shotbyjam.com

[photosharpwales]

Porthgain Harbour, Pembrokeshire.

https://shop.photo4me.com/1186772/framed-mounted-print?o=21&e=12&s=309&u=mm&share=false

[petnews2day]

Fishguard and St Davids Coastguard rescue dog from Porthgain cliffs

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/HEKpP

Fishguard and St Davids Coastguard rescue dog from Porthgain cliffs

Fishguard and St Davids Coastguard were paged at 10.30pm on Saturday, March 11, to go to the rescue of the dog which had gone over the cliff at Porthgain. Both teams quickly arrived on scene and met the dog owner who pointed out the dog’s location. One of the coastguard team members abseils down the […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/HEKpP #PetCharitiesNews

[myselfesteemwonthelp]

Mum’s keeping an eye As pup sleeps on (at Porthgain) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjsggctoJcE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[breathtakingdestinations]

Porthgain - Wales (by Phil Dolby) 

[suevincent]

Going West: Cider with Bessie

Going West: Cider with Bessie

For once, I wished I wasn’t driving. I wanted to stop every few minutes and get the camera out… the whole area is very beautiful, but the road between Nevern and our next stop in the Gwaun Valley is exceptionally so. We were driving in a convoy though and it was fairly obvious that, had we stopped, we would be hopelessly lost. The narrow roads winding over hill, down dale and through the trees…

[louisewarwick]

This is a little collage I did from one of my observational drawings I did on holiday in #porthgain in #pembrokeshire . I want this little white building to be my studio so bad!!! #illustration #collage #collageart #collageartist #paperartist #paperart #harbour #coastal #fishingboat (at Porthgain)

[findamericanrentals]

Best Porthgain vacation rentals by owner, United Kingdom vacation homes, villas, cabins, cottages & Vacation condo Rentals in Porthgain. No service fee.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

For the uninitiated Welsh-descended Canadian, if that makes a difference, do you have any contemporary Welsh music recommendations?

SURE DO, FRIEND! Okay, so, caveats: I have no idea what your taste in music is like, and also, I know dick-all about music tbh and can't tell one genre from another, so take these descriptions with a pinch of salt. Especially consider that I am synaesthetic, and music is one of those areas where I literally cannot tell what is a universal reaction and what's just My Brain; my Spotify includes a play list of "dry music", which to me is a self-evident and understandable genre, but others seem to disagree.

SO, with that out of the way, my top picks:

Y Bandana. My fave Welsh language band, personally - um, a bit rocky, a bit indie? Maybe? The lead singer has the most beautiful voice, like if you heard his voice in a wood you'd be like "Fuck me, them faeries are having a rave" but you'd definitely step into the ring and lose 100 years. Beautiful. I could recommend their entire back catalogue happily, but I'll try to limit myself: Cân y Tân is a nice mellow love song, Siwgwr Candi Mêl is dry (I'm sorry I know but I can't help it) and rocky and also fucking filthy if you listen to the lyrics, Wyt Ti'n Nabod Mr Pei? is a tongue in cheek one about a bogeyman of sorts, Geiban is a sing-it-loud good time song.

Yws Gwynedd. Yws does not have as beautiful a singing voice maybe, but Sebona Fi is 100% a faerie song. Listen to that one and try not to smile. You'll fail. They're an indie band, I think. Can also recommend Mae 'Na Le and... actually, most things off the Codi/Cysgu album.

Kizzy Crawford. Kizzy's great - she's a black singer from Carmarthen way and she likes to combine Welsh music with soul/jazz elements and it is fantastic. I really like y Drudwy, but she's got gold in her back catalogue. She did a great one for Cân i Gymru a few years back called Brown Eurosydd and she was robbed not to win.

Candelas. Most Welsh singers look like a bunch of sixth formers doing a gig at the local pub, so Candelas are notable in that they actually have the One Man Who Looks Like a Rock Star. Best song is Llwytha'r Gwn, which they did with Alys Williams (she has the most perfect and beautiful singing voice, but I personally hate her own music, so this is her best work.) In a lot of their music they have a similar sound to the Smiths, which I personally dislike because it feels like cold slime custard (damn synaesthesia) but if you like the Smiths, you'll probably find something in Candelas. The other one of theirs I quite like is Anifail.

Meinir Gwilym. Okay, if singer-songwriters are your thing, Meinir is great. I met her once and I swear she is one inch tall. Lovely girl. Very strong gog accent. Anyway, I absolutely adore Fi Fi Fi, but it's not on bloody Spotify - you have to find it on YouTube. Other highlights: Cymru USA (this one is batshit), Glaw, and Siglo Dy Sail.

Fflur Dafydd. Also one of my fave Welsh authors, but that's another post. Fflur is more pop music, which is not classically My Thing, but some of her stuff is fun. Porthgain is her best. She's got one about being short that's really great, can't remember its name. She's got quite a bit, though.

Yr Ods. They're kind of indie but they have a more synthetic kind of sound? More... I dunno, keyboards maybe. They're interesting. My fave is Nid Teledu Oedd y Bai.

Swnami. I might get a bit synaesthetic here, but Swnami have a very processed kind of sound. Like they had super high production values. They're great, but slightly plastic. Um. That may not make sense. Listen to Eira, that's pretty good.

Gwibdaith Hen Fran. Moving folk-wards now! A little bit rocky still, but mostly folk. Very irreverent. Their classic song is Trôns Dy Dad, but I also like Coffi Du (so very joyful) and Tanygrisiau (closer to pure folk).

Brigyn. Folk-electronica, kind of? A bit? They're interesting, they are primarily folk, but their music is very electric. Their best song is Os Na Wnei Di Adael Nawr, and you can find acoustic versions of it with a real harp, but their standard music uses keyboards.

Fernhill. Pure, traditional Celtic folk - they're a Welsh/Breton band, and they sing in Welsh, French and occasionally English. They are so traditional Welsh folk that one of their main instruments is the pibgorn, which sounds incredible - you can hear it on Llatai, which is my favourite and a fun, quick paced song. I'm pretty sure they use it on Ffarwel i Aberystwyth too, which is a hauntingly slow song, so between the two you can get a great idea of it.

Oh, and I should finish with Gwenno. She's not really my cup of tea, but she's excellent at what she does for those who like pop music. Patriarchaeth is probably the best one.

There's probably a bunch more I'm forgetting. I may add to this over the next week!

[2squeakyshoes]

Porthgain harbour.

[familyrussellsmithtravel]

Day 1 of a #walesadventure With the easing of covid rules came the opportunity to do something we don't normally do... book a cottage in Pembrookshire, Wales. We thought about wild camping in Dartmoore but with the day starting off with snow we were glad we had plumped for the cottage.... The snow did not effect the journey and just over 4 hours after leaving home we were in the sun and the balmy temperatures of 10C arriving at our first location, the Blue Lagoon! Like it's famous Iceland namesake this is a man made feature! In fact it's an old flooded abandoned slate mine. Unlike the Iceland version the water is not warm, however that did not deter a few wetsuit glad bathers to take a dip! We set off on a hike to Porthgain along the Pembrookshire coastal path. As you can see we were blessed with stunning views of the rugged Welsh coastline. After the 10k hike we headed to our cottage for the week, based on a little farm in the middle of nowhere. From here we can hike to the coast for a fish or drive to St David's for a snoop around the now open shops. The weather forecast (fingers crossed) looks fab so hoping we get some great hiking in and that the views continue to be spectacular! #wales #hikinguk #hike #fun #view #familytravel #familytravelblog #familytraveltribe #pembrokeshire #pembrokeshirecoastalpath #farm #staycation #loveyourtimetogether #love #kids #coast #teacherlife (at Pembrokeshire Coast National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CNk2nzBseNh/?igshid=12mhltwcu8rrn

[bottomoftheriverbed]

I am definitely not crying because the Porthgain clifftop walk is wheelchair accessible and so if I get a wheelchair I could do it again next time we're able to go to Pembrokeshire like we used to do before I got sick.

[i-ghd]

Pembrokeshire, county of castles, coves and film star sands.

The eye was piercing. The gaze was imperious. The message an unspoken “Do you know who’s in control around here?” Eventually, of course, the human in boots, inching forward as quietly as he could along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, prevailed over the haughty feathered hunter perched on a fence post.

I was no more than 15 feet away, with the summit of nearby Carn Llidi as a backdrop, when the sparrowhawk very reluctantly gave way. It lifted off and, after a few grudging wing beats, alighted again about six posts along.

In the space of ten minutes, as I moved slowly forward, it repeated this procedure: lift off, lazy flutter of wings and perch again, about fives times, before cutting back in a wide arc across the field to roughly where I first met it.

The guidebooks tell you to look down from the cliffs for seals, porpoises, dolphins and to the windy space between land and sea for choughs, those comical blackbird-size birds with red legs. But not a word about this top predator, which had clearly dined so well on the local singbirds that it scarcely needed to move. (The birds sang on, despite the predations.) 

Approach this national trail as you might a long, detailed menu in a restaurant, one with a wide choice of starters, many of them a meal in itself. There are also some main courses, specialities of this county, and you will want to sample one or two of them. However you would need a giant’s appetite to consume the whole 186-miles, still less the entire 870 miles Wales Coast Path, of which this is only a section.

Let’s start with those appetizers. (The sparrow hawk would be in the “today’s specials” section.) I stayed at the county’s western end, on its final thrust towards Ireland. As the chough flies, Waterford is closer than Cardiff.

Hearabouts any three to five mile stretch contains many permutations. The trail twists, it lurches, it plunges, it turns severely back on itself then climbs steeply down into and up out of tiny coves. Little tumbling streams cross your path. Banks dense with foxgloves enclose your way. A flower strewn meadow ends in a sudden sheer drop down to waves boiling over jagged rocks. The view constantly changes. Nothing stays the same on this path for more than a few minutes.

I did an idle measurement on Google Maps afterwards. Made into a straight line the Pembrokeshire Path would stretch here roughly from London, 198 miles away. In 2010, duly impressed, National Geographic Magazine judged this the second best coastal destination in the world, just behind the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, Canada.

Every three or four miles, over much of the western end at least, there is a convenient pause, in the shape of an attractive little harbour, and there’s a fair chance it is served by the coastal bus.

This part of the coast was bristling with unexpected, at least to me, industrial history. We think of the Welsh valleys studded with smokestacks and pit heads, but there is the evidence of long and serious industry in this quiet backwater. The clues that somewhere, such as Abereiddi, was once very busy is in the eroded remains of labourers’ cottages. In other places those that stood up long enough after the decline are now holiday cottages.

We dropped down into Porthgain, an industrial powerhouse  in its day. The roads of England were paved with crushed dolerite processed here. Now gentrification is complete. The main industrial building is now the Shed Fish and Chip Bistro. On our visit no fewer than ten Norwegian-registered vintage MG sportscars were neatly parked on the quayside.

The drivers and passengers were in the Shed, where they may well have been enjoying the exquisite if expensive fresh crab sandwiches, sold at prices Chiswick visitors would recognize. We ordered the same at the Sloop Inn opposite. We were perfectly positioned, some time later, to see the MGs set off in orderly convoy on the road to Fishguard.

The coast continues like this for miles, with a spot of strenuous striding, frequent heart-lifting views, tantalising glimpses of islands big and small just off the coast. Here and there an encounter with a profound religious past, in the ruined chapel and well of St David’s mother St Non, for example.

There are other, bigger harbours. In Solva the man in the car park handed out leaflets promoting all the little art craft shops, restaurants and guest houses. The Dutch and German cars underline the county’s appeal to a discerning international market – the drivers were not there for the weather.

And so to those landscape “main courses” I mentioned. On the path from the lifeboat station at St Justinians, heading north, I am suddenly above a wide, flat,  sandy beach where somebody had expertly drawn a vast jellyfish, so big it could only be seen to proper effect from 200 yards up, on the footpath.

Pembrokeshire’s beaches are now an international hot property.  Hollywood could have chosen some enchanted strand on Bali or Hawaii as the location where Kristen Stewart thunders through the surf with 80 muscular extras on horseback in the 2012 movie ”Snow White and the Huntsman”. Instead the studios chose the wide, flat, golden film-star sands, perfectly smoothed by the outgoing tide, of Marloes Sands, on southern Pembrokeshire, even if they did computer-generate an extravagant outburst of fairy-tale towers on the conveniently flat-topped Gateholm Island, which stands just yards off the headland.

Marloes first broke into the movies in 1967 when The  Lion in Winter was filmed here. Whitesands was used in the BBC4 Richard II. 

In 2010 Hollywood came to another Pembrokeshire beach, Freshwater West. Ridley Scott had filmed Robin Hood there, with Russell Crowe. The filmmakers built higgledy-piggledy Shell Cottage there for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The beach is clearly visible in the film. You will find no trace that the scrupulously tidy film makers were ever there. It’s the same at Marloes, left just as they found it.

You could easily construct a week or ten day holday around this sublime coastland, mixing up walks with boat trips to Skomer or Ramsey, dining out in the many harbour pubs on fresh local fish. The coast path has been conveniently cut up into 200 bite-size local walks, some of them circular.

One took us a few miles inland to St Davids, which is Britain’s smallest city, by virtue of the cathedral. We arrived early to benefit from its remoteness. Most day trippers, coming from afar, don’t get there until well on in the morning. We came across the intimate little cathedral, nestling in a green valley, well before the throng.

In the nave we had plently of room for some entry-level surveying, measuring the startling incline on the spirit level app on my daughter’s smartphone. It is almost two degrees.

St David’s has an understated nobility, because of its size and unusual position. On a scale of conspicuous cathedrals, Lincoln would be a 10. St David’s would be a 1. It was a steep climb up to the city, in reality a pleasant little town, where we gave in to the Italian charms of  the Bench cafe for coffee and ice cream.

Until the early 1800s Pembrokeshire would have been as remote by land as some European cities were for a traveler starting out from London. Railways opened the county up, and oil at Milford Haven and the Irish boat traffic through Fishguard Harbour ensured the rail links survived even in the bleak post-Beeching era.

The trains helped build Tenby into as gracious a Victorian resort as Whitby or Ilfracombe. Novelist George Eliot was inspired enough by her visit to this perfect little resort in 1856 to take up writing. It has been a destination of rare distinction ever since.

A cordon of high, narrow Georgian and Victorian town houses in delicate pastel colours still wraps around Tenby’s sea front. To dodge the wind you either head to the sandy beach on the town’s north flank, or, if it’s blowing from the other direction, seek out the little harbour to the south.

Praise, then, for frequent services direct from Manchester deep into Pembrokeshire, connecting with services from London and the west and south.

It’s still the case, of course, that most visitors drive here. They will find the car necessary for visiting the centre of the county where the excellent bus service doesn’t reach.

Pembroke, is technically on the coast. The tide probes almost under the walls of the castle where  Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, was born in 1457, (It was restored to its formidable Norman pomp after a crumbly, ivy-covered interlude in the 1900s.) But it feels like an inland town.

The castle, proud and imposing above this ancient town, is just one the county’s rich crop of citadels, The list includes Manorbier, Cilgerran, Haverfordwest, Lamphey, Llawhaden, and Picton castles. There are over 50 all told, if you include forts and the reconstructed 600 BC Iron Age citadel Castell Henllys. Leading the list is Carew Castle. It overlooks a serene millpond, with a 11th century Celtic Cross and Wales’s only restored Tidal Mill. Narberth is another appealing little castle town. If you buy the Welshcakes in Waitrose, they come from here.

[petnews2day]

Porthgain: Dog rescued after going over cliff top - BBC

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/QXeQH

Porthgain: Dog rescued after going over cliff top - BBC

Porthgain: Dog rescued after going over cliff top  BBC

See full article at https://petn.ws/QXeQH #DogNews