If adverts are to be believed, some families celebrate together with scratch cards (I am not entirely convinced of this ancient tradition). My family is stingier. We take a walk. When I lived in Luton, the ritual family walk was usually from Ashridge monument, down the Chiltern scarp to the ever-so-picturesque village of Aldbury (thatch, half-timbering, duckpond, stocks) and the even more alluring interior of the Valiant Trouper. A good strenuous walk back up the hill wore off the effects of the ale. Honest.
Today, and for the last 30 years or so, living in Pembrokeshire, the Christmas Day family walk means striding out across Newport Beach. Or tiptoeing carefully along the edge of the dunes if the tide is in.
Newport as in Trefdraeth, not the other one, Casnewydd, in Gwent. The latter, with a population of 140,000, is a city, whereas mine, Trefdraeth, is a borough, with a population of 1,000 – possibly more if you added up the owners of all the holiday cottages. It’s been a borough since the twelfth century, with the Norman FitzMartins lording it over the local Welsh, building a castle and holding an annual fair. I mention this because, although I just call it The Borough, it features in my historical novel, Long Shadows, with the Curig Fair, held every June.
Newport Beach, which is very large, and lovely now that cars are banned from it, is a cat’s spit from the town, but, perversely, on the other side of the River Nyfer so, to reach it from Newport you either wade across the river and get swept away, or you go round the estuary via the Iron Bridge, a single-track drive of three miles with several stops in ditches to make way for traffic coming the other way.
Or, far more sensibly, you park at the Iron Bridge and walk.
The bridge dates from the beginning of the twentieth century, and before that traffic merely forded the river’s mudflats at low tide or used the stepping stones, some of which are still visible, upstream of the bridge.
Pause to note them and other sights – herons, kingfishers and the like. I say kingfishers in a blasé way because this Boxing Day, for the first time in my life, I actually managed to see one. I have had several decades of always facing the wrong way whenever anyone else sees one and it’s always gone by the time I turn. Nailed it at last. Not literally.
After getting excited about kingfishers and herons, choose your riverside walk. On the south side of the bridge is a wheel-chair accessible path in the shadow the “town,” passing the earthworks of the original castle, to the quaint Parrog. On the north side, slightly more challenging paths take you both directions. You can walk up the estuary towards Nevern.
Or you can go down the estuary to the sand-dune bar and the beach, which can be an easy half-hour stroll unless you are with an avid bird-watcher, in which case allow three hours.
The River Nyfer isn’t quite a match with the Amazon or the Nile, or even the Thames, but it can still pack a punch when it’s in full throttle. Storm Darragh brought down plenty of flotsam which was swept along by the flood to be dumped in the estuary.
Flood water can strip a tree like piranhas stripping a juicy bone, something I have noticed every year and after every flood. It was such a sight that inspired the opening pages of my prequel to A Time For Silence (The Covenant, renamed Before The Silence for Kindle).
Head along the path and down onto the beach, if the tide is out, passing Mesolithic flint workings, round the dunes to the beach, or, if the tide is in, across the golf course to whatever is left of the beach, and the café which obligingly provides mulled wine and Bailey’s Hot Chocolate on Boxing Day.
The beach, as I have mentioned, is big. So big that you can walk for an hour without bumping into anyone. Unless it is an exceptionally sunny Boxing Day, when the crowds come out, but even then, most of it is deserted.
Another year – sometimes the weather isn’t so good, but the beach is still the place to be. Views of the borough across the river and the mini mountain crag of Carn Ingli, clean air and a fresh breeze to blow away even nightmares. I put it to use for just that purpose in Shadows. Endless inspiration on Newport beach.
Thorne Moore 