It's taken a long time to restart our challenge, mainly because everything seems to have been a challenge for the last year for all of us. After a wet winter, with NO real Christmas, and then a wet and frosty spring, we managed to finally renew some motivation and get walking again. We did a few walks over the end of the year and early this year but not a lot and so it seemed wise to start gently and test out the ability levels! We have always found that beach walking is so strengthening, stamina building and therapeutic and so we tested ourselves first at Aberdovey where we know it's 8 miles to walk to Tywyn and back. A good challenge, we hoped!
It was a bright start although as set off there was a black cloud hanging over Aberystwyth.....would it stay there?
It is such a magnificent beach here, looking across to Ynyslas and its dunes and to Borth and beyond to the south....
...and up to Tywyn and the Llyn peninsula to the north of Cardigan Bay. It's not always possible to see the hills of the Llyn clearly but still the view is amazing. And the beach is so huge, so wide and the sound of the waves so therapeutic. We have been back to this beach very often since our first walk here in 2014 and it's always memorable. We had missed it very much during the tight lockdown when we were only allowed to drive 5 miles.
The dark clouds were holding back still but they added to the drama of the views too as the tide started to come back in. There was not much to see of the submerged forest today, that varies too depending on the time of year and how bad the storms may have been. We were looking back at our old photos recently of our first walk here and it was staggering how much of the forest was revealed, some of the trunks were huge and the areas of peat just enormous!
On reaching Tywyn, the clouds loomed large so we headed into a lovely cafe for a cream tea! Yummy!
When we came out the cloud had passed over and so we enjoyed the walk back down the beach in the dry. There was a solitary sanderling at the water's edge, last time we were here in April we saw a small flock....
So we had managed the test today. It had been a start which we hope to keep up! There had been a lot of visitors today and a sandcastle was standing defying the waves as we approached Aberdovey once more!
Our first 8 miles of the rest of the 500, still seems we have a long way to go but we're up for the challenge! Bye Aberdovey, for now!
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