If you have no idea what 80 days of summer is all about, then where have you been!? Don’t worry you can catch up here. But basically for 80 days, I am going to make sure I do something every single day that makes the most of summer, some things will be new some won’t. This challenge is to show that life is really made for living, no excuses, no wasting days! Just happiness every single day!
There will be times in your life when you stumble across something magical, whether a person, feeling or in this case a place. something, someone or somewhere so beautiful that you can’t help but feel the magic in the air.
For me, that little bit of magic came a couple of weekends ago in the form of Porth Wen and possibly one of the most beautiful places in Wales. I had seen an article about Hidden gems in Wales and saw that one of them was an abandoned brickworks in north Anglesey. So naturally I wanted to go and check it out, I showed it to my dear friend Anna who is always up for an adventure in nature. Before we knew it we were in my car driving in search of what we had seen. Two and a half hours later we were driving down a tiny dirt road (thank you google maps) wondering where the hell these brickworks were, we couldn’t even see the sea. Finally, we realised we must be in the right place and literally parked in a bush with just enough room for a tractor to get past. We scanned the area until we saw a gate and yet again another little dirt road and so the adventure began!
The sky was so dull and the air so humid that it felt like we would die just walking up the slightest incline, for the full 2 and a half hour drive I kept telling Anna that there was magic in the air, I could literally feel it all around me. Even as we walked up the hill the air was eery and we had no idea what we were about to see.
Once at the top of the hill, all paths just stopped, luckily we saw a family who looked like they knew what to do and before we knew it they popped into a bush. I mean that in the most literal way, so me and Anna climbed into the bush after them. On the other side of the very thorny bush was a very small, muddy, overgrown path you could ever imagine and I use the term path very lightly.
We walked through mud, bramble bushes and a few cobwebs until finally, we found an opening! And boy what an opening we found!
I told you! How incredible is this! There was a couple of families enjoying the beach and a group of lads climbing on the edge of the cliff but the place felt completely empty and totally magical!
We tried walking barefoot but the floor was made from tiny shells and stones but there was no way we weren’t going in! Not even going to lie, walking in the sea in trainers is the most comfortable thing ever! I now have four pairs of £3 Primark trainers in the boot of my car for sea emergencies.
“I love to watch the movement of light on water, and I love to play in rivers and lakes, swimming or canoeing. I am fascinated by people who work with water – fishermen, boatmen – and by a way of life that is dominated by water”. Berlie Doherty
No swimming costume or bikini, not at all a problem! Clothes will always dry but you won’t always get the chance to go swimming in the sea! Don’t worry about getting wet, go for a swim!
Porth Wen Brickworks was a Victorian brick factory that produced fire bricks made from quartzite (silica). These bricks were capable of withstanding a higher temperature than usual red house bricks and were mostly needed for the steel industry, to line steel-making furnaces and kilns.
(Also while reading up on the location for this blog post I learnt that actually it is private property and you are not meant to visit! oops!)
All of a sudden the clouds opened up and the sky turned the most intense shade of blue, I told you I could feel magic in the air! And honestly, the entire place utterly transformed with a blue sky. By this point, the families had left ad it was only me, Anna and the campers left. To me, these pictures look beautiful but they really don’t give the place justice. Porth Wen is now in my top five places in the UK.
“Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.” Robert Henri
“Ben-thig dros amser birh ew popeth ah geyr un uh beed hoon”
“Everything you have in this world is just borrowed for a short time”
As ALWAYS I have taken the most ridiculous amount of pictures and don’t want to edit them down further than I have so please bear with this post, but please keep scrolling. I promise its worth it!
Isn’t Anna absolutely beautiful, she is truly a magical beginning and a wonderful friend (plus she never complains about having to take hundreds of pictures of me for Instagram).
Eventually, we decided to wave goodbye to our little-hidden gem and head back home but not before stopping on the island for ice cream, would be rude not to! In case you were wondering we stopped at Red Boat ice cream parlour in Beaumaris, possibly the best ice cream in wales and always worth a trip to.
I would never say my life is perfect because believe me it is anything but perfect but by god it is happy! It is filled with amazing friends and family. Despite this being the longest I have ever been single it is the most loved I have ever felt. It is filled with magic and adventures for which I am forever thankful. When I say I don’t want this summer to end I mean it! This has really been the summer that has changed me! So far 2018 has been such a rollercoaster of emotions and events that I am surprised I don’t have whiplash.
You all really need to get your butts here! Like right now!
