Aberfforest

You can easily miss this little bay unless you come upon it when walking the coast path, or, like me, drop down from the main road through a wooded glen where the path winds under shadowy trees above a deep-cut valley. At the bottom two streams meet at a waterfall and, united,  emerge at the beach.

Fforest Farm (right), before it was refurbished and extended for holiday lets, was a smallholding  perched above the bay. The two houses higher up and the pink building in the centre (used for boat sales and chandlery) were built long after the National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, spent childhood holidays with her widowed grandmother on the farm  here.

It was our job at Fforest to feed the hens
with cool and liquid handfuls of thrown corn.
We looked for eggs smuggled in hedge and hay
and walked together the narrow path to the sea
calling the seals by their secret names.

Today was dull and windy but the air was soft. The surf swirled in and out making patterns on the sand, and erasing them, over and over again. There was no one else to be seen.