Wales Coastal Path. Day 64, 65, and 66 (and 67)

Ok, I’ve finished the Carmarthen section of the path. That’s 6 of 8 segments, 64 of 80 days, and 696 of 870 miles. Only 174 to go? Are you tired yet? I am.

Random thoughts. If you’ve had the patience to read my blogs, you will have read several on my reflections about stopping working. To summarise, retirement is an adjustment and some people adjust better than others. But let me just say, some people want to work into their 90s, some people want to make up for ‘lost time’, some people look for new purposeful endeavours, and some people just want to putter around. All seem acceptable to me, as long as they are mostly good for the person who is retired. So why am I returning to this topic yet again?

Well, one day on the walk, I listened to an interview with Rutger Bregman on NYT, The Interview. I know of this author because I read one of books called ‘Humankind: A Hopeful History’. And here I digress. In that book he leaned towards the idea that humans are inherently decent. In one part of the book he discusses some of the psychological experiments that reflect so badly on humans. One example is Stanley Milgram and the experiment that involve students shocking other students, literally electrically. These experiments are often invoked to explain horrendous, cruel, and even murdererous behaviour. Bregman critiques those and many other experiments that have been so influential in our thinking about humans’ tendency to evil. I found the book quite compelling and aligned with my generally optimistic view of people. What follows from that optimism is that I tend to trust people more than I probably should. A friend of mine, who I worked with for several years, once taught me an important lesson. The specific incident that had such an effect on me was when the housekeeping staff found a needle with narcotics in an on-call bed that had been used by an anaesthesia resident. I immediately accepted the resident’s explanation that they had inadvertently left the syringe of narcotic in their pocket at the end of a case, stumbled to an on-call room, and fell dead asleep. My friend and colleague’s reaction was to ask are we sure that this resident was not abusing narcotics. Turns out it was the first explanation, but I learned how important it was not to immediately ‘assume the best’. In this case if I had been wrong, and assumed an innocent mistake, then either this young resident or a patient could have been seriously harmed. I’m still very trusting, but I hear my friend’s voice and always challenge my trusting assumptions. That story has nothing to do with point of this blog other than Rutger Bregman’s has written another book. As I said, I have a bad habit of digressing

So to return to the podcast, and I quote from Wikipedia ‘In May 2025, Bregman published Moral Ambition. In the book, he challenges conventional career success metrics (such as high salaries and prestigious titles) and urges professionals to redirect their talents toward addressing pressing global issues like climate change, inequality, and pandemics.’ For example, in the podcast he states that 45% of Harvard graduates going into the financial sector. If true, or even close to being true, that seems like a high percent. Bregman accepts that some people make the choice to pursue money but he suggests that there is a talent pool of all ages (including retirees) that should/could be redirected towards solving moral issues. I suggest you listen to the podcast yourself, but I came away wondering how do you know you’re working on a (legitimately) moral issue, how much work on a moral issue is sufficient to say you are working on a moral issue, and when can you say that you’ve done enough and you can take a break. It’s taken me a while to get to the point but this all comes back to my reflections on retirement. I return to my belief that’s you don’t have to have a substantive purpose-driven retirement, that a small purpose-driven retirement is enough, and if you have lived an entirely purpose-driven professional life, it’s ok to putter around. But listen to podcast and see what you think. If you haven’t yet, and unless you are Warren Buffet, you too will have to think about such things some day.

Day 64. Llanelli National Wetlands Centre to Penclawdd 8 mls /12.9 km. What a lovely and relatively easy day. This is a Millenial bridge, turns out the Millennial Path goes through a lot of Llanelli

A while later I encounter this tiered tiny beach spot. Seemingly random but there must be a story?

And after few more miles I come out into beautiful greenery

I make way to the lovely Manse House. Nice to be back in a guest house!

Day 65. Penclawdd to Llanmadoc 9 mls /14.5 km. The Gower Path so far lacks the typical Coastal Path seaside cliffs. This day it’s mostly walking along the large estuary of the River Loughbor.

The walk is again varied among forrest and field. I do encounter a sign I’ve never seen before that raises many questions for me.

Are blind cats more dangerous than sighted cats? Can blind cats navigate outside? Etc.

But I don’t have time to wait to see the blind cat, I’m rushing to cross Burry Pill before peak high tide. No worries as it turns out

Day 66. Llanmadoc to Rhossili 10.2 mls /16.4 km. Day started out wonderfully with a walk along a sea wall

Turns out the sea wall was broken, so I had to back track. That started an argument with the app. So instead of the sea wall I had a slightly hazardous diversion through the woods

Occasionally I could see out through the trees. Not sure what happened to these trees but may be the broken sea wall and salt water?

Then things got even more off track. I ended up on lovely deserted beach walk. You have to admit that is a seriously low tide! But turns out that wasn’t actually the path.

I come off beach and end up walking through grass and climbing fences to try to rediscover the path. At this point the app and I had serious words. The good news is that app doesn’t talk back. The bad news is that the app always wins. Eventually and with difficulty I found path. For the first time in weeks I’m back on a coastal path. However, this is a new type of coastal view, sloping cliffs but now covered in green.

I make my way into Rhoselli and the fancy Worm's Head Hotel for 2 nights

Day 67. Rest day in Rhossili. ‘Oh god, not another fucking beautiful day’. A quote from Sarah Miles in White Mischief as she views Kenya from her balcony. My mother would be horrified at the profanity but it is another beautiful day in Wales. Just room in the blog for one picture

Ok, one more the other direction