Wales
Mwnt
A whitewashed sailors' chapel on a green headland, dolphins in the cove below.
A small white church stands alone on a green headland above a pale sandy cove, and below it bottlenose dolphins work the bay. Mwnt is reached down lanes from Cardigan in west Wales, and that first view, church, conical hill and sea, is the reason people keep it to themselves.
Eglwys y Grog, the Holy Cross church, was built in the fourteenth century as a chapel of ease for sailors and a refuge for pilgrims on their way to St Davids, Strata Florida or Bardsey, and its font of Preseli stone is older than the building. A cross once stood on Foel y Mwnt, the hill the place is named after, and a walk to the top is the thing to do: the bay spreads northward and in the clearest weather the mountains of Eryri show on the horizon. Mwnt lies inside the Cardigan Bay Special Area of Conservation and is one of the best places on this coast to watch bottlenose dolphins from land, with porpoises and basking sharks in season and seal pups on the rocks from late summer, so the beach asks visitors to keep well back. History is not all gentle: in 1155 Flemish raiders came ashore and were beaten off in a fight remembered as Red Sunday. Steps lead down beside a stream to the sand, a kiosk sells ice cream, and there is nothing else, which is exactly right.
Solo
Climb Foel y Mwnt with binoculars at the start or end of the day and give the dolphins an hour; the church is open to sit in when the wind gets up.
Couple
A picnic on the hill, the cove below, and the church as dusk settles on the bay.
Family
A sheltered sandy cove with steps down, a hill small enough to run up, dolphins to spot and a kiosk for ice cream at the top.
- The Church of the Holy Cross, Eglwys y Grog, dates from the fourteenth century and served as a sailors' chapel of ease and a refuge for pilgrims bound for St Davids, Strata Florida and Bardsey.
- Its font, of Preseli stone, is older still, from the twelfth or thirteenth century, and a stone cross once stood on the hill above to guide pilgrims in.
- Mwnt sits inside the Cardigan Bay Special Area of Conservation and is one of the best places in Ceredigion to see bottlenose dolphins from the shore, with porpoises and basking sharks passing too.
- In 1155 Flemish raiders landed here and were driven off in a fight still remembered as Mwnt Red Sunday, Sul Coch y Mwnt.
Ice cream, drinks and snacks from the kiosk above the steps, eaten on the grass with the whole of Cardigan Bay in front of you.
Welsh breakfasts at 1176, the restaurant inside Cardigan Castle, and bread from Bara Menyn bakehouse on Chancery Lane, four and a half miles down the lanes.
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