Swimmer

At some time in pre-history an Irish chieftan called Lysgi landed here with his armed men. He had to cross maybe ten fields, north east, to reach the citadel of local clan head, Boia - on a startling volcanic rock outcrop that rises 20 metres above the surrounding plain. Lysgi was victorious; perhaps unsurprisingly, he has a bad press locally: the coast path handbook dismisses him with the single adjective, 'wicked' 

The little bay is called Porthlysgi; the rocky outcrop is Clegyr-Boia; emnity preserved in names. On Clegyr-Boia, post-sockets have been found, ground into the earth - some for a thatched roundhouse, some for a timber-roofed  rectangular building - 6,000 years old. It's tempting to think one was the architecture of Boia and the other Lysgi, but of course no-one knows. The sockets are the oldest evidence of settlement on the entire peninsula. It is a windswept, sparsely-populated, unspoiled place, where 6,000 years does not feel all that distant. The rocks here are 500 million years old

A small stream drains the marshland beside Clegyr-Boia, emptying here - and no doubt being the primary reason there is a bay at all - the places and names still tied together after six millennia. There are a few remains of buildings that gave temporary shelter to the first lifeboat on this coast, 155 years ago, until a permanent site was completed on the extreme western edge of the land

We abandoned ourselves to wildness and walked around this westernmost point of mainland Wales, to soak up the restorative power of rock and water and sunlight, birds in flight and growing things. And a little touch of past time. We did not immerse ourselves quite as far as the swimmer in the bay