this was our final official hiking day – six short miles from solva to st. david’s.  here’s the first part of our hike – we ran into some wild ponies, and i videotaped them, and so the video is at the very end of this post.

first, breakfast – i ordered a duck egg because i’d never had one.  i was good, but i couldn’t tell a difference in taste from a chicken egg.  but the yolk was huge!

the cambrian inn was very updated and modern even though it was in such a very old building, and i think maybe i had vegetarian sausages, but they weren’t as good as ones made of meat.  but it was a very filling breakfast, for such a short day of hiking.

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the view from the dining room.

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such a lovely place!  the night before it had been so very very crowded.

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now that’s an old window.

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the dining room, not full of loud children and adults.  it must be really nice this time of year, when it’s not so full of so many tourists.

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i had to take a picture of the water faucet in our bathroom because i don’t think i’d come across any single faucets thus far.  they were always individual hot and cold faucets, and often they were really close to the edgs of the sink bowl, so they weren’t so easy to maneuver.

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we headed out, just another glorious morning.

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we met a family who lived in the south of wales somewhere (they must have lived fairly close by, since we were in the south of wales!), and they kept a camper here all year and came here on holiday.  lucky.  the husband took our picture.

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as we headed up the road to the path, this fabulous house came into view.

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and then the path went right by this grand old place.

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here’s the other side of that house – an old lady was sitting in this sunroom, reading with a giant magnifying glass.  it would be odd to live in a place where so many people went hiking by all the time.

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and suddenly we were out in the middle of nowhere again!

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there were always a few more people near the towns – obviously, this guy isn’t going for an all-day hike with his little dog.

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in no time at all, solva was far behind us.

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we passed this very old wall…

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…and climbed up all these steps…

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and then we saw wild ponies!  they walked right past us, and i videotaped a lot of it.

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i’m reading now in the Pembrokeshire Coast Path guide book with detailed maps for every little bit of the path – it says “ponies often put out to graze by big stream to encourage species diversity.”  i don’t think i saw that before, but the author was certainly right about that!  his name is Jim Manthorpe, and it was an excellent little book to take.  in addition to the book, i copies the map pages that we needed and took those pages with us every day.

here’s the video:

next, the rest of the day, hiking to St. David’s.

ok then,

mrs. g. hughes