Capital Walk – Swanbridge to Wenvoe

Having completed the first stage of our Wales Coastal Path walk, Alec and I had to decide what to do for the next few weeks. We calculated that it would be possible to do The Gower legs using public transport from Cardiff as day trips, but were persuaded that a more realistic option would be a local stay for three nights, and four days walking – this would also be good preparation for the Pembrokeshire and mid and North Wales stages, as well as Alec’s proposed attempt at the Offa’s Dyke long-distance walk. But not just now …

So this is what we came up with. The Capital Walk is a walk around the boundaries of Cardiff – a collection of Cardiff Ramblers walks connected together to make a semi-circular walk of c.38 miles. How many legs/stages we do it in rather depends on our respective fitness. Currently Alec is suffering issues with his foot; whilst my ankle is much better at the moment. Such is life! This walk allows multiple bailing-out places so is well suited to our respective difficulties.

So after meeting-up at the Central Bus Station it was the 08:59 Bus 94 that took us through Penarth and Cosmeston to drop us at Swanbridge X-roads. A short walk down to the coast saw us arrive at high tide – I’d never seen the causeway completely covered, and of course it was a very high tide indeed.

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Turning our back on the Captains Wife (we’d had unfortunate memories of stopping there before on our WCP walk, we headed off for St Mary’s Well Bay and Cosmeston Park.

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The weather was to stay fine throughout the walk and we quickly walked past the Medieval Village, the Lakes and on to the long track that leads up to Old Cogan Hall Farm. It was then a short walk through Murch to get to Dinas Powys where we headed for Mill Lane and the track past the castle and Woodland Trust plantation which took us to a newly harvested field of maize (surprising how many cobs are missed by the equipment) and on towards Michaelstone-le-Pit.

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We now walked up past the fish ponds which are locally known as the Salmon Leaps and into the woods which climbed slowly towards Wrinstone Farm.

 

Capital Walk - 1 (5 of 6).jpgIt was during this stretch that Alec’s foot (and ankle) was beginning to seriously trouble him, and all thoughts of trying to get to St Fagans, or further, were put on hold. The target destination was Wenvoe, the distance walked – about 8 miles.

Capital Walk - 1 (5 of 5).jpgThis we achieved and so we sat down in the Wenvoe Arms for a few beers to recover and while the time away – after all we didn’t need to be back for a little while :-). A very happy and pleasant afternoon was had putting the world to rights and chatting with the new landlord who’d only taken up the tenancy at the beginning of the week. It would be interesting to go back in 6 months and see what changes might have happened. There’s a very regular bus service back to Cardiff from Wenvoe, so we didn’t have long to wait for a bus home.

So on to next week and again a short walk from Wenvoe heading towards Llanilltern and the A4119 I suspect will be our destination, possibly Pentyrch – we’ll see. It would be nice to think we could get up and over The Garth and get to the Gwaelod, but I suspect that’s not on.

The Google Map of the walk is shown below – just use the sliders to navigate and zoom in on parts of the walk.

To Sully from Cosmeston Lakes

To Sully from Cosmeston Lakes at EveryTrail

A gentle stroll from Cosmeston Lakes Country Park – somewhere I’d never been before – with Jenny. We started following the Cardiff Ramblers walk, but made a mistake early on which meant we had to do a slight retracing of our steps. Jenny had said she wasn’t walking through any field with cows in it; we had to … once, and it was amusing for me to turn round as we left the field to see all the cows following closely behind her. We agreed it would have been good to have had the camera handy, but I didn’t!

We then decided to cut the walk short and drop down to Swanbridge and have tea at The Captain’s Wife. The walk back along the road and track to the car was easy, allowed a couple of photo opportunities and ended amusingly when we were asked in the car park how to use a SatNav (programmed by her partner). We left her having difficulty finding her way out of the car park – so I gestured wildly the direction she should head in. Hope she got home 🙂