We were knackered again today! A nice stroll, fresh air, good food, a beer or two and wham! Knackered.
Working back from fixed time-points, we wanted to be at Betty & David’s farm for 4pm, with a meal booked 15 minutes away for 7pm.
Unsurprisingly, Romeo wasn’t having any of it and is staying here in his self-enforced hormone prison that is his room. As such, we showed him how to oven cook a frozen pizza & garlic bread without burning the cottage down and planned the rest of our day.
We decided to head back to Lobster & Môr, bag ourselves some fancy crustaceous lunch & head to Solva for a mooch and a beach stroll.
Waving goodbye to the Grunt, we set off up the coast to Broadhaven 1, then the jump over to Nolton, and then on towards Newgale. At least today, we could head north from Nolton. Two days ago the road was blocked off due to the wildfires.
Holy cow! We drove down the road to be greeted by the devastation that the fires left behind.
The scorched earth spread over large areas, and had (I presume) been controlled so well that it had left pockets of I damaged green, just a few metres from a cottage, and a farm, and further on, a static caravan park.
We were passed by a fire engine with its blues on, which I suspect was heading back to something we’d seen that was still smouldering.
Out the other side of the carnage, we hopped over the last headland before dropping down into Solva, to begin the Car Park dance – that one that’s a lot like musical chairs, where you circle an asset but don’t know when it’s becoming available.
We were really lucky and managed to get a space on lap 3. So having parked up and paid, we took out crustacean bag of goodies over to the estuary to eat alfresco.
It was too windy and that wind had a slight bite to it, so that plan was soon abandoned and we retired to our Camper & split the Lobster Roll in two & took half the crab sandwich each. Oh, my they were lovely!
Lunch over, we had a stroll through the very small village, mooched through the shop “Window On Wales”, and then headed off down the estuary towards the sea, letting Toby have a good run on the sand.
We sat a short while at the tide line, but to be honest, it was a tad too windy & again had that unfamiliar cool bite to it.
Walking round the corner of the estuary, I’d been listening to the latest 93:20 podcast, so phone was on full volume. Jane stopped and bent down to pick something up and my phone rang – “Jane Airey (Mobile) calling” it said. I told Jane she was ringing me.
I answered it. And a female voice said “Hi”. I began a conversation with “Hi” and Jane haha’d me for dicking about. Until I thanked “Hi” and told her Jane was wearing a pink hoody, and would be back to the tide line in a mo, and thank you for letting us know she’d left her phone behind. Oops!
Phone retrieved, we walked back to the van, I donned a pair of jeans, and we set off towards Puncheston using Waze satnav to guide us. Part way across the farmers field that it sent us on to, we realised we were in too deep with the route that we had no choice but to plough on (farming pun intended).
Eventually we hit tarmac but only after driving through a farm yard. Delayed slightly, I pressed on. We crossed the A40 and headed towards Letterston only to get to a point in the single track road where a Telehandler had broken down making this road impassable.
A 100-point turn later and I set off back the A40 north, and took our usual route in, with no further tribulations.
It was fantastic meeting up with Betty & David, who’ve not changed a bit in the decade since Jane & I last saw them. In conversation we also realised it was Jane’s 50th (!) anniversary of coming to stay with them.
Even better that that we got a surprise visit from Lisa & the two girls, and their lovely Cockerpoo, Coco, followed by the very-much unexpected arrival of Betty & David’s hard-working son, Pete. Fantastic!
Not going to say too much more, but after a good old chat over a cup of tea & some bara brith, we had a fabulous meal out at the community owned Tafarn Sinc, which also happens to be the highest licensed pub in Pembrokeshire. More importantly, the locally sourced food was superb. I had a 10oz sirloin medium rare, which was one of the tastiest & best-cooked steaks I’ve had in years.
Conversation and locally-brewed cask ale flowed, meaning Jane did the taxiing back to the farm, where we said our “goodbyes for now”, as we all knew 10 years was too long, and then headed off back through the wiggly-windies to Little Haven.
What a fabulous day! The company making it so!
Night, night!
Chris