Coastwalk

Ten years later

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen ... here it comes again, four times every fifteen seconds: a shaft of light sweeping across the clouds from some unseen lighthouse beyond the headland. I can only just make out the far side of the river mouth. We've driven for hours but finally we're here. Over on the opposite bank my tired eyes can just about make out the shape of the youth hostel where I spent one night, ten years ago.

Ten years ago - almost to the day - I hobbled down the steps to the Poppit Sands Youth Hostel. Feeling broken after a fifteen mile walk - my first on a National Trail - and a surprise mile and a half trudge back to the car, I sank into an armchair in the lounge, exhausted. A fellow hosteller told tales of his aborted attempts to walk the Offa's Dyke National Trail. I began to doubt whether walking was for me.

In the end I completed half of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path that week and returned for the other half three years later. After finishing the Trail in Amroth I continued round the coast and have so far reached Newport Gwent.

While Emma was living in Aberystwyth I started making my way round Cardigan Bay from the north. By the time she moved to Reading I'd walked from Pwllheli at the far end of the bay to Aberporth, about a dozen miles from where I started ten years ago.

Tomorrow we hope to plug that gap in the Welsh Coast Path by finishing the Ceredigion Coast Path, in celebration of a decade of walking round this island.

The YHA isn't open tonight so instead we're staying on the opposite shore of Afon Teifi at the Gwbert Cliff Hotel. (The hotel's the white building in the centre of this photograph I took from Poppit Sands.) It's hotel's wonderfully sited at the top of the cliffs on the east side of the Teifi estuary with the coast path running past the entrance drive.

Looking across to the hostel I'm glad we're staying here, and not in dorms on the other side of the water but I know that in ten minutes' time when my head hits the pillow my dreams will be back there, ten years ago.