Cruise news
Princess Cruises is getting out the bunting to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with a series of events and activities on board its four UK homeport ships, Sky Princess, Enchanted Princess, Emerald Princess and Island Princess.
Guests can catch live coverage of the Jubilee activities, such as Trooping the Colour, the Thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey, Epsom Derby, Platinum
Party at the Palace and the Jubilee Party, on the ships’ Movies Under the Stars screens.
Over the four days (June 2-5) the food and drink served will have a very British flavour, including afternoon tea with Victoria sponge cake, Pimms and strawberries, and there will be a royal dinner menu.
And red, white and blue will be the dress code for a very special celebration night.
Entertainment on board Sky Princess will feature a Royal Variety Show with an Elton John tribute, a Royal Trivia session, and a talk from Grant Harrold, former butler to the Prince of Wales.
A seven-night Norwegian Fjords cruise on Sky Princess sailing from Southampton on June 4 starts at £619pp. princess.com
Forest
Live, Forestry
England’s outdoor gigs, will run from June 9-19, with acts including Keane, Madness, Noel Gallagher, Rag’n’bone Man and Texas at Cannock Chase Forest, Staffs, Delamere Forest, Cheshire, Thetford Forest, Suffolk, and Westonbirt, Glos. forestry
england.uk
The
London
Dungeon’s new show, Curse of the Witch, starts on
April 2. It tells the story of Elizabeth Sawyer, hanged for witchcraft in 1621 at Tyburn Tree, Marble Arch. Expect hexes, black magic and special effects. From £27, thedungeons.
com/london
with fossils, its stretch of cliffs and coves are a veritable layercake of rock formations, from the Carboniferous to the Jurassic periods.
Looking at them from the shoreline, as I did on arrival when I met ranger Paul Lock, it was as though someone had partaken in a record-breaking game of Jenga, with higgledypiggledy slabs of rock sat on top of each other. Although a scan of the pebble-strewn beach reveals it doesn’t always remain quite as stable.
“Gryphaea – extinct molluscs – are the most common fossils we find here, which are also known as devil’s toenails,” explained Paul, as he picked up a handful of what looked like thick keratin clippings.
Scouring the ground at Southerndown, aka Dunraven Bay, among the rockpools of hermit crabs, limpets and beadlet anemone, we also found fossilised crinoid – segments of the arms of an extinct spindly starfish.
Herring gulls watched us hopefully, no doubt thinking we might unearth some tasty morsels, while a pair of peregrine falcons stooped overhead.
It was here I said farewell to Paul to continue on to Monknash alone.
As I walked, the sea was flat calm and seemed to belie the area’s shipwrecking past.
“The prevailing south-westerly wind blows straight into this channel,” Paul had explained before he left, gesturing at the water between us and where Bristol lay on the other side.
“In storms, ships would often head for it seeking shelter from the open sea, but it actually has the opposite effect – the worst of the weather would be funnelled in, and gets worse as the gap between the land becomes narrower with less room to manoeuvre.”
For the rest of the day I walked along the coastal path to Monknash for a pint at the Plough and Harrow pub.
Built in 1383, it was once part of a monastic farmhouse for the monks of Neath Abbey. According to the publicans, it was used as a mortuary for the bodies of sailors washed up on the beach.
It’s even said that some of the fine beams in the hostelry ceiling were probably spoils from ill-fated ships.
“We had a chef who swore he heard a crowd of people making noise long after we shut,” said the barman, “glasses regularly fly off the shelves and locals report seeing a figure in a cloak.”
Next morning I met up with walking guide Nia Lloyd Knott who elaborated further. “It was once the drinking spot for the ‘Wreckers of Wick’ who, local lore has it, would tie lanterns around sheep’s necks to lure ships into the rocks thinking they’d reached a town – then plunder everything onboard – always ensuring there were no
survivors. And this…,” she explained as we made our way underneath the canopy of beech trees draped with vines, “would have been the path they used to get down to shore. They say it’s haunted by the souls of those lost to sea, and even today many fishermen refuse to use it after dark.”
Walking in the daytime, listening to the cascading water from the adjacent river while shards of sunlight pierced between the leaves, the place felt distinctly spirit-free.
As we neared Nash Point, Nia told me about the most famous of all the shipwrecks – the Frolic. This paddle steamer sank here in 1831 claiming the lives of all crew and 80 passengers onboard. It was this incident which finally saw the Victorians build the lighthouse and was the last in Wales to be manned (it is now electric and rented out as holiday accommodation).
As we neared the final landmark on this section, known as St Donats (a 12th century castle that is now an independent sixth form college), I remarked how low the water had fallen since the high tide
we’d witnessed that morning.
It was then I learned another fact about the Vale of Glamorgan – they have one of the highest tidal ranges in the world (around 49ft – the highest are found nearly 3,000 miles further west in Canada’s Bay of Fundy).
After that revelation, Nia revealed another of Glamorgan’s many claims to fame.
“It’s here at this college in 1962 where they conceived, designed and built the original RIB (rigid inflatable boat) which is still used by lifeboat organisations around the world.”
They say that if they had earned royalties on the design the college would be one of the richest in the world.
Yet the headmaster gave away all rights to the Royal National
Lifeboat Institution for
It was like someone had partaken in a recordbreaking game of Jenga
£1 – a cheque he never cashed. That thought stayed with me right until the end of the Heritage Coast at Aberthaw, yet I continued on to finish instead at Rhoose Point, Wales’ southernmost spot.
The following morning I would head further east still, to the other side of Barry Island, to where the ‘grandfather of radio’ Guglielmo Marconi made history by passing radio waves over open water in 1897 – an invention that was also responsible for saving countless lives at sea, including the 700 passengers rescued when the Titanic sank.
But for now I stood silently on a jigsaw of limestone, watching the sun set over the stacks of blue lias rocky cliffs, while the waves lapped the shore.
It was a suitably sedate way to end what was a thrilling journey across this wild and unassuming coast.