Foel Cwmcerwyn
Metres 536
Feet 1759
11th September 2025
Rosebush Village Limits
Day four of five in the far south-west of Wales. I had been staying for three nights in St David’s, an international attraction for walkers, pilgrims and casual visitors to its ancient Cathedral. Givin its popularity I had reluctantly paid a small fortune for the privilege of a bed in the cheapest room left in town – a Premier Inn. The weather had been just about as bad as it could have been for the time of year, with the almost relentless rain gusting in at speed from the Atlantic being some sort of revenge for the relentlessly hot, dry summer. On opening the blackout curtains and peering out through the three-inch-thick double glazing, the sky was blue, and early sunshine bathed a distant hill beyond the rugby posts on the nearby recreation ground.
Carn Llidi Tor from the Premier Inn St David’s – weather conditions indeterminate
The previous evening, after being unsuccessful in getting a seat at either of the two snug olde-wordle looking pubs, I retreated to an alternative in a back street to have a quick pint before returning to the hotel. As I sat nursing a freezing cold drink that called itself a “bitter” a middle-aged American couple entered the empty saloon bar, where they stood for a minute or so. The woman who had served me was yacking away with punters in the public bar. It struck me that it might not have been the sort of place the couple were expecting, but if you’ve come 3000 miles on a pilgrimage, needs must. “We’re trying to book in,” the man said to the woman, after she eventually emerged from the public bar to cater to them.
After checking in and receiving the keys the couple went upstairs, at which point the woman who had served them slipped back into the public bar and proceeded to mock the man’s use of English. ‘” We’re trying to book in”, he says. “We’re trying to book in!” What does he mean, we’re trying to book in?”’ There was some laughter from the locals. I proceeded to carry on reading my old paperback. Ten minutes later the man came back into the bar. The woman went over to him. His wife, he explained, had noticed black mould around the shower. Was this normal and could be cleaned off? At this, instead of expressing empathy to her “guest” who, given he was from the States, may never have seen classic British bathroom black mould, the woman started a long, possibly rehearsed, load of nonsense about the rooms being cleaned down thoroughly every day and that no matter what they did it was impossible to remove. In an almost absurd escalation in the excuse stakes she then went on to explain that they could renew the putty every week, but the mould would be back the next day. That she had used the word “putty” nearly had me snorting into my beer, but apart from that it was an appalling example of how to overwhelm your victim (sorry – guest) through bluster, misinformation and subtle sarcasm. Distracted by this interaction I had stopped reading my book – ironically The Quiet American. The poor man had no effective retaliation in his armoury. Somewhat humiliated, and in the knowledge that he was going to have to go back and explain all this to his disappointed partner, he merely mumbled that “he guessed that was all that could be done then” and retreated sadly towards the stairs, head down. The quiet American alright!
I may have stayed for a second pint, but I didn’t. As soon as the man had disappeared upstairs, I could hear the woman in the other bar repeating almost word for word to the other customers what she had told him. There was some more laughter. I supped up and left. *
The reason I mention this is that the next day, and halfway up Foel Cwmcerwyn (the highest point in Pembrokeshire) I kept thinking about it, every so often shaking my head and wondering about the state of things, and indeed what she might have said to the other punters about me after I had left. ‘”A pint of bitter, please. Please, what does he mean by please?”’ Too late to worry about it now.
I had left St David’s and headed out of town on the north Pembrokeshire coast road. Past the Blue Lagoon at Abereiddy, the charming little post-industrial village of Porthgain and the pretty village of Trefin. The day before I had given up on any walking ambitions and had stopped the car in Trefin seeking refuge in the Ship Inn for an hour until an almost apocryphal downpour had stopped as quickly as it had started, after which I was at last able to go back the way I had come and finally check out some of the hidden gems.
Above Porthgain
Porthgain – the harbour. The two people on the bench are, like me, trying to work out how the car is going to exit. On the horizon the Fishguard the Rosslare ferry battles against the elements
The Blue Lagoon. I wasn’t tempted
Beyond the Blue Lagoon at Abereiddy
Despite almost persistent rain and gale force winds over the previous two days (these photos deceive), I had managed to squeeze in some short walks along parts of the coastal path. Bracing, soaking but also delightful, with huge Atlantic waves smashing into the igneous and sandstone ramparts defending the rolling hinterland, it was a place that screamed “come back.”
With one night left in Wales, the evening before I had booked a room in Cardigan, situated to the north. Foel Cwmcerwyn was, with a bit of a diversion, on route and in the heart of the Preseli hills of Stonehenge fame (arguably). I reached Fishguard midmorning. The weather forecast was ambiguous, but for the moment it was warm, windy and bright and I decided to stop and find somewhere to eat. I can’t tell you about the initial attempt to park in a pay by phone car park because it’s too painful to recount, but if you want to get close to how I felt I can recommend reading my related accounts of similar experiences with the same service provider in West Sussex and Oxfordshire. Needless to say, it was hideous in extremis. After a brief interaction with a local man who recognising my unstable condition and gave me some profound words of advice, I gave up. Minutes later I discovered an entirely free car park just a few metres further down the bay.
Fishguard – Gateway to the Republic, and the EU, from the free car park
Tempting as it was to stay a while and look out into the bay for the chance of spotting the odd seal pop its head above the surface, I had to crack on. I left Fishguard on the A4313 heading inland and east through picturesque country. I reached the village of Rosebush at around 2pm and found a small car park just past the old railway station (more later).
To reach the top of Foel Cwmcerwyn I had to work my way up to the north-east. I had a rough idea of my route but after an abortive meander north along the line of the dismantled quarry railway I backtracked to the car park and climbed back into the car. Heavy downpours were visibly operating in the area, and one was threatening now. I knew there was a chance I’d get caught out at some point, but who needed a drowning at the get go? The shower somehow missed Rosebush. Once I was reasonably satisfied that I was in the clear for a bit, I walked up to some cottages and then onto a signed footpath that led steeply up past some farm buildings and then through a large field. **
By the time I had climbed to the top of the field, I was, to put it mildly, knackered. It wasn’t a good start, but I figured I’d got the tough bit out of the way, and now on a more significant track with impressive views opening up in every direction, my motivation returned.
On track, after the initial lung buster. Looking down on Rosebush
I’ve already mentioned that the weather forecast was ambiguous, by which I mean that it predicted a lot of rain at any moment and very strong winds. I had come fairly well prepared, but now in hot sunshine, and walking resolutely up the well-trod track, I was beginning to wonder if I had overdone it. Looking south a vast battleship grey cloud shedding its load was engulfing a large industrial structure (presumably Milford Haven) dozens of miles away. Already the views were impressive, but so too were the weather systems steaming in from the Atlantic.
The track maintained a steady course heading north-east and on a reasonably tolerable gradient. Soon forestry plantations appeared on the left, and sweeping views opened up down the lush valley to the right.
Towards the forest
Towards the rest of South Wales and storm alley.
Up until this point I had been the only person on the path, but now, coming down in my direction, a couple appeared on mountain bikes. They stopped and we spoke for a bit. Like me they were from the South-East, although a decade or two younger. The man was on a bike fitted with a battery, although I wasn’t so sure the woman was. We talked a bit about cycling (me admitting I was running out of enthusiasm), and by the time we had said our farewells, I was pretty much sold on the idea of battery power. We’ll see.
I carried on across boggy ground before more trees appeared to the left, and the gradient started to increase again. Beyond the trees the wind suddenly hit me like a brick. I made it to a wooden gate which would take me onto the open hillside. Here the path steepened significantly (the cyclists had warned me although I’d been sceptical). Now tip toeing up, the wind battered me from behind, bizarrely hindering rather than assisting progress. It took about ten minutes to wearily trapeze the final couple of hundred metres to the trig point at the top. I knew it was going to be there, and with each step I relished the prospect of being able to hunker down behind it to give some respite from the gale.
So, on arrival, and finding a group of four other intrepids completely surrounding the concrete structure, my little heart sank. All I could do was loiter around for a bit in the hope they would move on, although that didn’t seem likely given their insatiable need for selfies and group photos (I didn’t begrudge them doing it, given it was an achievement worth recording, but I was a good three decades older and feeling like I’d been sandblasted). Thankfully, after some minutes, they departed in the direction of Rosebush, and I was at last able to grab hold of the trig point and stabilise my condition. The views in all directions were magnificent. Here, at the top of Foel Cwmcerwyn I could see the whole of Pembrokeshire and beyond to Cardigan Bay. To the far west the Rosslare ferry was slipping out of the safety of Fishguard harbour and smashing itself directly into the wild wind and waves of the Irish Sea. Now able to stand reasonably steady I took a few photos that probably don’t do the view justice.
A wild westerly and the resolute Trig
Rainbow over Cardigan Bay
So far, I had been lucky. Rain clouds were dotted around in every direction. It was time to head back. Launching down the path was like trying to walk into a wind tunnel. Without gravity I’d never have made it down to the gate. Beyond the gate the trees once again gave cover, and I was proceeding at a reasonable pace. Now more relaxed I was able to get a better appreciation of the views down the valley and beyond towards south Wales proper.
Towards south-west Pembrokeshire
I stopped for a bit to take in the dramatic view. A farmer on a quad bike was heading up the slopes and corralling a long line of white dots from one field to another. The commotion had spooked three horses that were now galloping away under sun and shadow.
Cantering on the range
By the time I reached the end of the plantations to my right, I was becoming increasingly concerned by a large looming mass of dark cloud scudding towards my position, and with my name on it. I had nearly caught up with the gang of four who had earlier been hovering back at the trig point. A footpath led west along the edge of the forest. There were two options. Take the path under some tree cover or continue down across the large and exposed field above Pant Mawr farm. I chose the path with the trees. The others chose the field.
Large drops of rain began to fall. Sadly, the isolated tree cover was less than useless so I was forced into a light jog until, on the slopes above the old quarry, I found a large well leafed tree that offered more protection from what was by now an epic deluge. Fortuitously I had packed a small umbrella, which was deployed to surprisingly good effect.
Unaccountably well prepared
The lashing quickly passed, and I headed on down the lumpy and sodden ground to the route of the old quarry access road and railway line.
Slate heaps after the rain
By the time I reached the community run pub at the old station (Tafarn Sinc) I’d walked exactly four miles. Along with the wind and rain it had felt a lot longer but had been worth every step. I’d found a part of Wales off the beaten track, but with a great walk leading to impressive views of the south-west and Pembrokeshire .
I took my coffee out to the open terrace. A small garden area led to where the tracks had once been, and beyond the remains (or possible recreation) of a platform. Three plastic dummies, dressed in period working-class clothing had been assembled, presumably to remind us how it must have been for passengers back in the day. The intense and distant stare on the face of the woman suggested it had been thoroughly miserable, yet despite the passage of time, relative prosperity and different clothes, that look is still familiar on most station platforms today.
A distant echo
As I drove away from Rosebush and towards Cardigan, with the wind still whipping around the nearby trees, the news on the radio announced the end of a political storm that had been brewing away for days across the Atlantic. Peter Mandelson had been sacked.
* I ought to own up here. Whilst I really was appalled by the bar woman’s behaviour towards her American guests, a few weeks earlier I had met up with a very old friend in a small town in the Peloponnese. I was staying in the town, and he was passing through in his camper van. As we sat outside a taverna waiting for food and observing a mink casually saunter up the road on the prowl for anything that moved, I mentioned the sequence of wildlife sounds that had been routinely waking me up in my room every morning. Starting with a crescendo of sparrow chirping around six, followed minutes after that by the sound of a mouse running backwards and forwards in the ceiling space above my bed (it might have been a rat, but I wasn’t prepared to countenance that possibility), and then finally the cicada’s early morning conversations.
The mention of the mouse took my friend back fifty years to a distant moment in time when he had worked at the Waldorf Hotel in London in the mid-1970s. He explained that for a time he had been the night manager and that the worst part of that role was the almost nightly complaints from new American guests about the sound of mice in their room. My friend is one of the funniest people I have ever known, so it was no great surprise that over the next ten minutes he rolled out a long list of all the excuses that the night manager was expected to respond with under these circumstances, and that by the end I was on the floor in hysterics. Without going into specifics, the essential aim was to express immediate and incomprehensible dismay (“A mouse sir! Surely you’re mistaken.”), that the possibility of a mouse in the Waldorf was an impossibility in modern 1970s Britain, that perhaps sirs wife had oversensitive hearing, or that they may have been confused by another source of the noise, or even whether it might have been possible that the guests had brought the mouse into the hotel in their hand baggage. Only in the last resort would a room change be agreed. Of course, it was the 1970s, and not just the Waldorf, but almost every structure in the whole of London was riddled with mice.
** Not visible at ground level, but when I looked at the area around Rosebush on Google earth, I noticed what appeared to be huge letters spelling the word CAWS in the tree plantation just to the east of the cottages. Surely my eyes were deceived. Well, a bit of research and sure enough, around twenty years ago the local farm, which produces its own cheese, planted a large number of conifers that do indeed spell CAWS, which apparently is the Welsh for “cheese”. Smile! Here’s a free ad for them.
El Colmado 57 