A couple of weekends ago, the sun was shining, I didn’t have to go in to work, had no previous engagements either, so I finally got to go back to the Gower. It was an early start as I had a 50 min train ride to Swansea, then about an hour out to my start point by bus.
I got to Oxwich Castle where I’d planned to start, had a snack and was ready to start my trek by 10:45. I knew my destination was Mumbles Head, specifically the pier at Mumbles but I had no idea how far it was in distance or in time. I figured that since it doesn’t get dark at the moment until after 9pm, that I should have plenty of time.
The trek started with a walk down to the sea and as I was starting up on a hill, I got tantalising glimpses of Oxwich Bay through the trees.
To get out to the coastal track I had to walk through a reserve that in no way looked like it was on the edge of dunes. Of course a lot of the dunes were completely overgrown with grasses, so they didn’t much look like dunes either to begin with. But eventually, I saw the sea, and the start of the coastal way I would be taking.
The start was deceptively easy getting around to the end of Oxwich Bay and facing the first cliff I had to climb. Don’t worry, there were tracks up behind the cliff face, it’s not as if I had to scale the rock face itself. But given what I could see of the steepness of the path and that most of it was sand underfoot, I knew it would be a hard slog.
And I was not wrong! But, oh the views from the top.
Once on top of the cliffs it was a nice easy walk along the top until having to clamber down to the next bay and up on top of the cliffs again. Here are some pics of the dreadful scenery I had to keep me company, what a bore 
I passed a golf course, on top of a cliff with an almighty drop…
wonder how much of a penalty you get if it knocks out a sunbather.
And of course because the UK has plenty of history, there were ruins to admire.
Of course with any walk where you’ve never been before and when you keep the map in your pack and decide to just follow the paths that seem to go in the general direction (hey, I figured if I kept the sea to my right I couldn’t go toooo wrong), there will be the odd folly. Like in the picture below. I’d come down off one cliff, climbed up a very steep path from the bottom left corner, up to that big white structure just below the middle of the saddle and down the path that ended on the bottom right corner. Now if I’d bothered to check the map, I would have known where the path went and I could have just waded across that streamlet.
Next I had to get back up to the top of the cliffs, and here’s the way I chose. Now, looking at the map, there were about 3 ways I could have chosen. This one was the hardest. And not even marked on my map as a path. Of course having just discovered my previous folly, you’d be excused for thinking I would check my map to see which way to go. Of course I didn’t! So there I went, and I am quite sure any of the beachgoers who looked up must have thought I was mad. But it wasn’t that bad. Sure the whole way up was on sand so it was a tad slippery. And yes a large portion of the ‘path’ was at over a 60 deg angle. And I often felt like I was going to start dune surfing down. Minus the board.
And you can see by the picture why I tried it. It really doesn’t look that steep from the bottom 
But despite all the picking the hardest paths to take I got to my destination in one piece, and in just 7 hours.
If you want to see any more pics, I’ve uploaded some that I took here.