Walks & Waves Between The Showers. Pennard Castle to Pobbles Bay, Gower.

It amazes me how much summer spoils us. We moan the weather is not too good and use it for an excuse no to get out and about. How quickly we forget that we would race to get a 1 hour stroll in drizzle racing against a 4:30 pm sunset in January.  We would have killed for a day like today back then. But we are put off by intermittent black skies and heavy rain showers.  We allow ourselves to not see the glorious June sunshine between the showers.

Today (07/05/14) had a really bad forecast, some proper rainstorms. I awoke this morning to the first one. A quick weather check and it looked like there was a 2 hour window of sun between 12 pm and 2 pm before the storms came in again. So I set out down South Gower to squeeze a walk in, once we convinced Molly she can’t have the driver’s seat in the van.

We had to deal with some heavy South Gower traffic of the bovine variety before starting in the village of Pennard.

I tracked the whole walk on strava here.

A quick walk across the golf course (sticking to the path marked by white stones and being aware of golfers), we soon turned a corner to see Pennard Castle. Molly quickly added ‘Castle Explorer’ to her list of skills.

Pennard Castle is the best place to take in the magnificent Three Cliffs Bay. Here is in all its glory.

Molly even stopped for a moment to take it all in next to Sharon.

Then because the tide was in we took the boardwalk path along the top of Three Cliffs Bay. We wouldn’t want to make the mistake we did last time the tide was in! This allowed us to look back and get this view of Pennard Castle.

The boardwalk path is these days mainly sand, but does bring you right out onto the shoulder of Three Cliffs Bay, which is also a great place to take photograph.

The tide was in and it was one of those rare times Pobbles has waves. There was even a surfer in if you can spot him. There is a post about waves (or lack of them) at Pobbles Bay, here. If you want to see Pobbles waves really working you can see some rare images here on Flickr, captured by Photographer Carolyn Seager, checkout her site.

Once again Molly and Sharon stopped to take in the view.

But we couldn’t stop long, our 2 hour sunshine window was up and the sky was bruising. We made our way to Molly’s favourite beach Pobbles. Molly was stopped in her tracks by the sight of waves in Pobbles Bay!

But she was soon up to her neck in the surf playing fetch.

In and out like a bullet.

We got rained on during the walk back to the van, but it is so warm at the moment it didn’t matter. Apparently the weather tomorrow is the same, so why not see if you can fit in some walks & waves between the showers, DimExcuses.