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| Whitesands Bay from Carn Llidi |
Sun,
showers, dry until very last bit of our walk on the Monday (16th September). Very windy when we got to Whitesands Bay and later, on St. David's Head, this bit of
coast facing the open Atlantic. Superb views from the higher ground. Impressive
cliffs, with steeply dipping, very contorted strata, in places near vertical.
Intricate, complicated sequence of outcrops, influenced by numerous faults.
Parked at Whitesands Bay and walked north from here along coast path towards St. David's Head. White breakers on the sandy
beach, white horse waves further out to sea. Views of the northern end of
Ramsey Island, along with the Bishops and Clerks islets further out to sea,
with lighthouse on South Bishop.
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| Whitesands Bay and the cliffs |
Along
this first bit of path, lower Palaeozoic shales, mudstones, mainly Ordovician,
small wedge of Cambrian along fault.
Left
SDH for later, for now diverting off the coast path, towards the highest (Carn
Llidi,181m) of several prominent hills formed of Ordovician intrusive mafic
igneous rocks, in this case gabbro, as for SDH itself. Took path round south
side, then up onto the steeper part nearer the top. Did a quick drawing of the
views west / SW from here over the coast while Munros Man did a speedy scramble
to the top. From here could see the whole of Ramsey Island, along Whitesands
Bay, inland to St.David's, St. David's Head. In the distance to the south, the
coast along St. Brides Bay to Skomer Island. Heather
and gorse adding colour to the lower slopes of the hills.
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| Carn Llidi |
Came
down off the hill and followed the path round to the youth hostel, then tried for the next hill to the east. Initially, the paths went
through cultivated / grazed land - horses in one of these fields - but from then on, they got rougher and more
fiddly. Some of them were very overgrown and clearly not walked very often. We left
out the hill but then had trouble on the north side trying to rejoin the coast
path. Here it was all open access land, but in practice much of it unwalkable,
consisting of rough, scrubby bracken, bramble and gorse. Gave up on one path
when it got too thorny to get through. Better
luck when we came upon what was marked on the map as a permissive path.
This was clear of bracken etc. Shortly after rejoining the coast path, we sat
on a flat bit of rock and had her packed lunches. Views north now along the
coast to Strumble Head, with the lighthouse flashing.
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| St. David's Head |
From here, we walked along the coast path to St. David's Head itself, an intrusion of gabbro. Along the way, we looked down on a secluded, inaccessible cove, down sheer cliffs and saw several grey seals with their pups. Most of them on the shore, or two
swimming.
After St. David's Head, we walked back to Whitesands Bay, now a bit busier, with a few surfers. We went down to the beach to see the cliffs there, formed in the middle of the bay
of Neoproterozoic (later Precambrian) lavas and tuffs. Quite a bit of this was buried under the
vegetated dunes with the best exposures towards the south end of the beach. As with the younger sediments either side of the bay, they were steeply dipping. The BGS map marked some closely spaced faults here. Another fault separated these older
rocks from the lower Palaezoic to the south.
It
was then that we were caught in a heavy rain shower coming in from the north, over St. David's Head. We dashed back along the beach, only for the sky to clear once we were inside the cafe.
