Gower

      We've been away for a couple of nights, staying at Port Eynon on Gower. It's been just the ticket. We've done a lot of walking, exploring the coast line between Port Eynon and Oxwich. Beautiful, remote and empty. The sort of landscape that sometimes leaves me a little uneasy. I really do need some humanity, and that is one of the reasons why I found lockdown so hard to bear. Gower is, in Diane Williams words, 'a land set apart'. Somewhere quite special. A poetic, 'thin' place.

      Wednesday afternoon took us to within sight of The Sands at Lower Slade. Yesterday we went further walking over to Oxwich via Oxwich Green. Horton and Oxwich Green are both delightful, but quite different. The last time I was in Oxwich was Boxing Day 2015 in very different weather; overcast and wild. The beach the haunt of fearless surfers. Yesterday it was full of holiday makers.

     Lunchtime was an extraordinary treat: we had lunch at The Beach House, Hywel Griffith's Michelin starred restaurant at Oxwich. The whole thing was purely serendipitous - the bf having, unbeknownst to me, emailed the restaurant in case of a cancellation - only for them to contact us when we were in Oxwich Green. It was needless to say marvellous. I had 'Flowering Courgette', 'Carmarthenshire Pork Belly' and 'Bara Brith Soufflé'. I'm still thinking about that soufflé. It was just exquisite. And the sherry, a Fernando De Castilla Cream Sherry, that was pretty damn good too. The return walk to Port Eynon was a sluggish affair.

     And then Friday morning a brief stop on the return journey in Penmaen to draw and photograph the church. Mostly Victorian, 1854-5 by R K Penson. Best 'Cambridge Camden Society' approved Middle Pointed. Lovely position on triangular village green.  

Boxing Day and Oxwich Bay

Christmas was spent in Swansea.  Boxing Day afternoon and we had an itch to get out.  At my suggestion we went to Oxwich Bay on peninsular Gower.  It was wonderfully atmospheric and remote-feeling; thick scudding clouds and white crested waves - everything else a variation of slate grey.  The beach is wide and sweeping between two headlands jutting out into the Bristol Channel.  Very beautiful and, for such a overcast day, popular. It's even more popular in summer.  It attracts surfers; there are watersports shops and a rather classy looking restaurant, 'The Beach House' on the beach.  (Gower, especially The Mumbles, is a bit of a gastro hub these days.)  Behind the beach are great marshes, full of reeds and water, which only enhance the feeling of isolation.

 The western headland - at the foot of which is the tiny, blink-and-you-miss-it, village of Oxwich - is covered in thick woodland - a 'hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping [invisible] down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishing boat-bobbing sea.'  And there past the hotel (rather ugly) and up a muddy track is the tiny church of St Illutyd in its cramped and crowded churchyard - all whitewashed and snuggled into the damp hillside.  The wide eaves of the slate roof - which spoils the church by not being graded - gives the St Illutyd's a rather Late Victorian, or early twentieth century feel, when it is in fact very ancient.  The present church, which is Medieval, stands on the site of a 6th century monastic settlement.  A remarkable, haunting place.