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Walking on Gower

#Sunday Times Travel 20th November 2022

The dark months are the wild months in Wales, with nature putting on its most dramatic show for the tiniest of audiences — ferocious storms, fiery sunsets and migratory birds in V-shaped flight. 

Yes, the weather can be wicked, but for every day of bone-rattling winds and driving rain there are those crisp, life-affirming ones when the mist rolls back from the valleys and coast, and everything gleams as though made anew.

Embrace the elements, bring wellies and waterproofs, and relish having Wales to your lucky self by hitting the trails — either on foot or behind the wheel; skip between dune-backed bay and tide-smoothed beaches on the Gower.

And remember: for every muddy hike or drive, you’re never far from a pub with low beams, real ales and a roaring fire — it’s the pot of gold at the end of the Welsh rainbow, and never more welcome than in winter.

Best for sea views

Key stops Mumbles — Three Cliffs Bay — Oxwich Bay — Port Eynon — Rhossili — Blue Pool — Whiteford — Crofty

How long does it take? Three to four days (walking)

The route Swansea’s bad boy poet Dylan Thomas loved the Gower, and there is something almost lyrical about the way this coast unfolds, with the tides pulling back to reveal vast, wave-whipped sands and dunes, limestone cliffs and wildflower-freckled salt marsh. Winter is an exhilarating time to get out and stride along the coast path, now at its quietest but for booming surf and storm clouds of migratory birds.

Covering 39 glorious miles, this is a long-weekend walk, anticlockwise around the Gower’s areas of outstanding natural beauty. Rounding the rocky headland from the Mumbles to Bracelet Bay, the rumbling sea is your constant companion. You might dally for a spell on castaway bays such as cliff-clasped Brandy Cove, where pirates once hid their booty, and pretty, pebbly Pwll Du. But these are just the prelude for the sensational beaches to come: the stream-woven, rock-chiselled swirl of Three Cliffs Bay; uplifting Oxwich Bay, with its butterscotch sands and dunes; the dragon-shaped peninsula of Worm’s Head; and the heart-stoppingly beautiful Rhossili Bay — three miles of pounding Atlantic surf, shipwrecks and, if you are lucky, dolphins and seals.