St.David's Head

It is St.David's day today, a few photos to capture the quintessential essence of Wales, .....

 There is history captured here in grey walls and chapel, over run with the abundance of nature.

St.David's Head, clear waters

St.David's Head; old field walls

St.David's Head - Warriors Dyke one of the small coastal Iron Age forts, fancy living in this rocky landscape

Peering over cliffs at the geological folding of the rocks

Carreg Samson, the great 'rhino' of a cromlech

This is a cromlech, Carreg Arthur?, like a toadstool it sits amongst bungalows in Newport

Pentre Ifan on a dull day

Solva; There is a small hill fort on that cliff, and you have to slip and slide down to the beach on the other side

St.David's Head, waterlogged a thin skim of vegetation on rock, old walls everywhere

I think these boundary stones date back to the Iron Age, and the settlement on 'Warrior's Dyke'

I have been lazy today meant to write an opening paragraph by Jan Morris from her book 'The Matter of Wales', well here it is, a bit late, and as I have not shown any photos of the great St.David's cathedral, it is well to remember that this area is the great Celtic heart land of Wales;

"The holiest Welsh place is Dewisland, Pebidog, a stony protrusion from the coast of Dyfed, which was once a spiritual hub of the whole Celtic world.  Not only does the countryside there seem holy by its very nature, so ascetic but so exciting, all bare rock and heather headland falling to the wild Atlantic sea, but its associations too are intensely sanctified.  Here the Celtic missionaries came and went, on their journeys through the western seas, and here the itinerant Irish preachers landed on their way  to evangelize a pagan Europe.  Everywhere there are the remains of shrines and chapels, - neither the Welsh nor the Normans ever fortified the peninsula, in respect for its sacred meaning; and in the middle of it stands the most venerated structure of all, the cathedral of Dewi Sant, St.David, not only the mother church of Welsh Christianity, but the vortex of all that is holy in Wales".

St.David's cathedral snug in its valley @ Creative Commons

The ruined Bishop's palace, to the side of St.david cathdral

Of course you have to get to St.David through Newgale, which is under threat of closure, making the journey more difficult.