For reasons I probably could have explained a month ago, I rented a three-bedroom house in Fishguard. It was a great pleasure to scatter my junk across so many rooms. There was even a yard with a clothesline and a wicker laundry basket in case I wanted to look quaint.
Key achievements: walked along the coast in both directions, befriended a cat, visited stone circles, got a haircut in a combination barbershop/cell phone store, viewed a tapestry.
It has been pointed out to me that I could have gotten a haircut in Toronto, but there are some haircuts one can only get from a Welsh teenager who also repairs cell phones. The place was mostly a barbershop, but had a partitioned-off corner containing a desk, a lot of cell phone parts, and a teenager who handles both businesses. I don't know what happens if someone wants a phone repair during a haircut, or what the synergies are, or why it isn't also a crab shack.
The stone circles are both modern, the one I visited dating from 1935. You shudder to think of the dark rites of minute-taking and budget debating that once took place there. In fact, they were built by Gorsedd Cymru, which is (apparently) a Welsh cultural society that really does stage druidic-bardic rituals, and I have no evidence that they don't do so in black robes. The rituals were made up by an eccentric stonemason in the late 18th century, but are now traditional enough to, like Scottish tartans, claim a confusing type of authenticity.
The tapestry, made by local women in the 1990s, is modeled on the Bayeux tapestry and commemorates a 1797 French invasion (intended to distract the British from an invasion of Ireland that didn't happen) that stands out as one of history's most glorious shambles. A task force of deserters, criminals, and some actual soldiers came ashore, looted a couple of villages, got very drunk, and surrendered. Errors noted by military historians include bringing deserters, putting deserters in easily-desertable situations, getting drunk, not having enough guys, looting, and broadly failing to endear themselves to the people they hoped would rise up in their support. The tapestry is wonderful, and can be viewed under low, tapestry-preserving lighting in the local library.
The walk east was a pleasant out-and-back that took in the Fishguard fort, the lower town, where a dozen boats stood with their keels buried in tidal muck, and many coves. The walk to the west was more ambitious. A little coastal shuttle with no other passengers dropped me at the Strumble Head Lighthouse, which stands on a dramatic island connected to the mainland by a gated bridge that was, disappointingly, padlocked. Probably for the very good reason that people like me would otherwise try to mess with the lighthouse and then fall into the sea.
There's an Iron Age hill fort further along the coast to the south, and I tested the possibility of reaching it and doubling back but worked out that the time and effort would be too much. Just the walk back from the lighthouse turned out to be strenuous, a jagged sine wave that constantly climbed and descended headlands. In one cove, a seal and her pup were calling to each other like very loud sheep. I took a picture of the mother, with a mid-tier phone camera and at long range. If there were no such thing as seals, this is the photograph that would claim to prove otherwise. I can't absolutely guarantee that it's not an oblong rock or a prankster in a home-made costume.
Two-thirds of the way back, I turned inland in hopes (dashed by access problems) of visiting a couple of neolithic sites and entered a cursed region of trails, horse tracks, single-lane roads, narrow paths overgrown with thorns and wet ferns, enchanted glens blessed with eternal muddiness, open fields, and grey-stone farming hamlets. This is Deepest Wales, and before GPS, anyone who found their way here had to stay and, apparently, open a horseback-riding business. It was a great happiness to find Goodwick and know that a shower was only one cove away.
