We had seen so many nice pictures of the Welsh coastline, that we wanted to get back on our bikes to discover more of the surroundings. As we had decided to spend one more night in Mumbles, but had to move from our original bed & breakfast to another one because it was unfortunately fully booked, we had a recommendation from Lisa to switch to the Langland Road B&B, which was run by David and Giles.
So we charged our bikes again just to move over to another place within Mumbles, which was really nice and they were really helpful with our bikes (more to come later). Just after we had brought up our bags on the first floor into the room with the giant Union Jack Sofa in front of the window, Robert and I started for a bike tour along the coast.
At first we found Langland Bay, which was famous for its endless row of little bathing houses. Then we had to bike a bit more inland to reach Caswell Bay. From there again steep up into the fields and little villages, but we were tempted to get back to the coast to discover Pwlldu Bay, which looked beautiful on the map. The trail down there was already very rough, but it ended in a creek which we fortunately could cross over a narrow bridge. There was only a lonesome house called the Pwlldu Ship Cottage and a huge empty pebble beach. From there was another trail marked in our map, going up the valley. It got wilder and wilder.
I could tell from the expression on his face that Robert was not really convinced by the trail I had found, but I tried to be very British and “STAY CALM AND KEEP ON SMILING”. We met some hikers, but no bikers and you could see some horseshoe prints but it was quite muddy in some parts. We had to push our bikes uphill and don’t ask what we looked like, but something very special accompanied us in this dense and dark forest. The tree crowns were full of humming bees and they filled the whole valley with their amazing intense sound.
Finally we were back into civilisation and were able to have lunch at the “Three Cliffs Coffee Shop” which was full of tourists. I was curious and wanted to get to edge of the cliffs to see those famous Three Cliffs. But they were hiding in the next bay. I put my bike on some grassy ground, which was too soft to hold the weight of my bike and the stand sank in such a way that it suddenly broke under a critical angle. It was the same way as it happened in France before we came to Autun, but luckily I was so clever to get a second and last spare stand from the shop there.
For the present tour I had no more stand, but we kept on going and crossed a beautiful golf course with the ruin of Pennard Castle high above the meandering river of Pennard Pill. The sun was reflecting on a silver shimmering sea and it was time to return to Mumbles. But the Golf course hike and bike trails were cut into sand dunes and it was impossible to keep the bikes stable in this drifting sand. So one thing was for sure, we will never plan to cross the Sahara on bikes.
Back on stable ground we biked along green fields with sheep chewing totally relaxed on their grass, and the lower the sun got the quicker the temperatures dropped. We returned just in time to our B&B, where Giles was so nice and helped me with fixing the stand of my bike. He was my hero of the day. With a nice farewell dinner at the Croeso Lounge we celebrated the furthest point of our trip in Wales, as from tomorrow on we would be homeward bound.
