Wales car camping in the time of covid, Pembrokeshire (part 3)
Quiet camping above Abereiddy, Wales.
The next stop was a farmhouse near Abereiddy that kept goats. What’s great about camping is how unexpected the environment can be whether it’s a bothy, wild camping or even a site, you can rarely tell ahead of time what it’s going to be like. The hippie house was a mile from the sea – a countryside view with a horizon strip of water. Presumably when money got tight, they transformed their large garden to a quiet campsite, with a side of goats. Marilynn, the owner, was short and blond with a floral head scarf flitting around with a folded-up piece of paper noting pitch assignments, and looked like she could also sell you some pot. In her hand she held leads to two pygmy goats, sweet little wee ones that immediately eclipsed anything else that was going to happen at this stop. “This is what they’ll remember”, she said passing the reigns over to the girls. This was true as they inched around the yard telling the goats “you eat some of this nice grass, Ernie” which, of course, is the only thing goats do. The barn had been turned into a woodfired pizza stall selling thin-crust pizza. Marilynn’s daughter said “if you’re staying with us you can reserve some dough, otherwise we sell out.” We bought two. They also sell beer. Each pitch included a large banquet table which presumably was for eating pizza and drinking beer in the sun, which we did.
We took the long way to learn that you can’t take the footpath through the valley. It’s overgrown with nettles and brambles, so that we had to fully dress the 3- and 5-year-old before giving up and taking the road to Abbereiddi. Once a slate quarry, the rocks and sand remain dark grey with glints of black. It was the kind of hot beach day that warranted ice cream for lunch and sun hats. The kiddies happily made up games in the rock pools and allowed us to finally catch our breath.
St Davids was manicured and catering for the type of person who complains about their poached egg being overdone. Unfortunately, suffering from lack of staff from both Brexit and Covid, we couldn’t pay someone to get us a table for breakfast on a bank-holiday Sunday, much less a poached egg. But the Cathedral is unmissable, all carved wood ceilings and stone, sun streaming in on ancient mosaic floors and the whole space scented with incense like a yoga studio. It doesn’t command or scare you into believing in god, like the dark baroque marble churches across the continent, but rather quietly invites you to be at peace. Namaste.
Driving on, we caught a sunny evening and took a few wrong turns on Pembrokeshire roads, not wide enough for one car let alone two. We rolled into the tiny seaside town of Dale to what felt like an impromptu music festival with the town’s setlist controlled by the pontoon office, sun reflecting off the dinghies moored in the bay and friends huddled near the seawall like a bar with plastic cups of cider spilling onto the small lane. The Griffin pub’s tables curled around the other side of the road in full dinner service. Our hybrid inched forward, people slowly giving way – no one arriving this late to the party mattered.
On we went to small towns and up to Cardigan Bay to watch dolphins pop above the water. Our rental car was not just driving us to new beaches for small victories, but driving us away from the pandemic we wanted to momentarily forget but couldn’t escape. Going away to see the other side of the mountain has always been healing to me, the way I coped with the world. And this summer we all needed to go.