Even on a grey day, the broad sweep of Oxwich Bay is bewitching, its silvered sand gleaming wetly in pale daylight. It creates an ideal canvas for a photograph: reflective and otherworldly, it summons your ghost self to appear at your feet. In the distance, the three limestone teeth of Three Cliffs Bay beckon you to walk towards them, past salt marshes and sand dunes.
In any light, the formation resembles the sawtoothed back of a dinosaur, its head dipped to drink the salty seawater. Scramble along these precarious ridges, and you might feel you’ve conquered the land beneath your feet — an expanse of water to your left; miles of beach below, and dense woodland to the right.
You can understand why this country — Wales, or Cymru as it is called in Welsh — is the land of legend.
Yet interest in this small country’s immense beauty frequently focuses on the challenge of bagging Mount Snowdon, Cymru’s highest peak, and on the Arthurian legend that swirls around the mountain’s surrounding areas. It lingers on the Brecon Beacons, carved by majestic gorges and doused by crashing waterfalls; threaded by hiking trails and replete with the delicious goods of local producers. Glorious as these landscapes are, they sometimes steal the limelight from Welsh coastal areas.
The Gower Peninsula, in which Oxwich and Three Cliffs are found, is one of the most spectacular stretches of Welsh coastline, lined by cave-riddled limestone cliffs and wide, sandy beaches. In 1956, it was the first place in the UK to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty — an accolade celebrated, in 2016, with an aptly-titled ‘Find Your Epic’ campaign.
Covering 19 ‘epic’ miles, the Gower begins in Mumbles, about an hour’s drive west of Cardiff. Despite its historic (and newly restored) pier, and the presence of the 12th century Oystermouth Castle, Mumbles is something of a soft launch into the region, with a ‘quaintness’ — complete with a row of pastel-painted cottages in Village Lane and chintzy tea rooms — that’s somehow at odds with the region it’s the gateway to. Its other highlight seems to be a seemingly interminable ‘rivalry’ between the two main ice-cream parlours. Are you Team Joe’s or Team Verdi’s?
The Mumbles Mile — a legendary seafront pub crawl — is, probably to the relief of locals, a thing of the past, but there are still a number of welcoming bars in which to take a break and slake your thirst. Gin & Juice, with its rooftop location, is a firm favourite, not only for its service and variety, but also for its views over the coast and towards Oystermouth Castle. The food is worth a try, too.
Suitably fuelled — whether with ice-cream or a Gin & Juice Rooftop Burger — it’s from Mumbles that the Gower Coast Path walk begins. Some sections are wheelchair and pushchair accessible (check visitswanseabay.com for more information) and from Bracelet Bay, Mumbles Lighthouse is visible across the water.
Langland Bay is another of the Gower’s highlights, with its 70-plus beach huts, built between the 1920s and 1960s. Rising grandly behind their green and white roofs is Langland Bay Manor which, built in 1856, was used as an upper-class summer house, a hotel and a convalescent home before eventually — and perhaps inevitably — becoming luxury apartments.
But this is one of the Gower’s most endearing qualities – the fact that you can catch glimpses of its grandeur from relatively unassuming vantage points; that you can splash safely in its waters and lounge (or huddle, depending on the season) happily on its beaches — and do so all with car parks within easy reach. For me, however, it’s beyond these beautiful yet genteel scenes that the Gower’s magic really begins to take hold.
This is where you see the coastline in all of its unforgiving jaggedness, and where brasseries and cottagecore tearooms fade into the distance. Aside from Oxwich, there’s the moody ambience of Whiteford Sands, to the northeast. Backed by sentinel pines, through which you must walk around two miles from the nearest parking area (Cwm Ivy), this vast beach is secluded and generally empty. The rusting skeleton of an iron lighthouse, at the beach’s northernmost end, adds to the desolate feeling — as does the knowledge that it is the last of its type in Britain.
Anc if that’s not evocative enough for you, how about the fact that this beach is known to be haunted? Accounts of a thundering noise, galloping over the sands, have been well documented over the years; it’s believed to be either a woolly mammoth or war-like Celts.
And then there’s the Gower’s westernmost point: the Worm’s Head, which packs a world of adventure into its long, narrow tip, despite its seemingly tame name. Forget about compost, however: ‘worm’ is a derivation of the Norse ‘wurm’ — dragon. Enter the myth and magic. If you allow your eyes to lose focus slightly, you might fathom how Viking sailors, hungry and dazzled by sea-glare might have seen the head of a beast, rearing forth from the sea. Welsh poet Dylan Thomas described it as a ‘humped and serpentine body,’ alive with the movement of and noise of ‘more gulls than I had ever seen before.’
Walking from the Worm’s Head Hotel car park along the cliff edge, the three miles of Rhossili Beach yawn beneath, washed by long, parallel, regularly spaced waves. This is one of the best surfing beaches of the Gower — although the blackened ribcage of the Norwegian Helvetica, wrecked in 1887 and thrustingly piercing the sand below, serves as a stark reminder of the vagaries of this wild coastline.
As does a board, with its tally of past rescues, mounted to the exterior of the coastguard’s cottage. Although the Worm’s Head usually appears separated from the headland, tidal movement will reveal that it’s linked by a narrow, fault-lined limestone causeway. With a carefully timed five hours — 2.5 on either side of low tide — you can hike out to stand atop the crown of the ‘dragon.’ Not everyone cut off by the rising tides is rescued: lives have been lost here as hikers have attempted to swim back, or have found themselves submerged by water that, mere moments ago, was ankle-deep. In his above-quoted story ‘Who Do You Wish Was With Us?’ Thomas recalls the experience of spending the night at the Head after mistiming his return.
Most of the walk requires little more than sturdy shoes and basic caution, but the tidal reveal is thrilling: rockpools teeming with life, the gentle wave of anemones, tiny starfish clinging to water-blackened rocks, crabs scuttling for cover.
It’s a steep climb to the top of Inner Head, which provides a view over the undulating folds over the Worm’s back, tooth-like blades of rock. Far below, sleek grey seals lounge on rocks, and the occasional quicksilver of a porpoise tail in the waves can be glimpsed. Seabirds such as razorbills determinedly bomb the water for fish. Descending to Low Neck, it’s a scramble along the Worm’s savage serrations of calcite-veined limestone, with Devil’s Bridge, its
narrow span all that remains of a collapsed sea cave, soaring above. When you finally arrive at the tip of the Worm, you must almost immediately turn around, as the sea begins its inexorable turn and drowns its semi-secret world again.
If you do only one thing during a stay on the Gower Peninsula, this should be it.
Like the Worm’s Head, Blue Pool Bay (What Three Words Location: fees.racetrack.bashful) is only accessible at low tide.
At the western end of the beach, a natural rock formation known as The Three Chimneys, is worth exploring but even better is the circular rock pool, known as the Blue Pool.
Local legend holds that it’s bottomless and indeed, it can be up to 8ft deep, but check before jumping in from the rocks above, as tidal movement can fill the pool with sand and make it much shallower.
It’s been named one of the best pubs in Britain, and with its selection of real ales, hearty meals (try the Penclawdd Cockles, Laverbread & Bacon, topped with Welsh Dragon mature cheddar cheese) and atmospheric decor, it’s easy to see why.
With exposed beams and walls charmingly cluttered with nautical memorabilia, the hotel was built as a private home about 250 years ago and now has 19 ensuite rooms for overnight guests.
kingarthurhotel.co.uk
Aer Lingus (aerlingus.com) flies from Belfast to Cardiff, and Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Dublin to Cardiff.
From Cardiff, it’s about an hour’s drive west to Mumbles, where the Gower Peninsula begins.
