Distance: 5.8 km ( 3.6 miles) Total Distance: 3.6 miles
I could lie and explain how this project took months of planning, working out routes and booking accomodation but I won't. The one thing I had to decide was where to start and which way to go and the rest would be left to chance and following my rule - keep as close to the coast as possible.......and stop when I have had enough. The choice of walking the Wales coast first was simple - it was where I grew up, and it's shorter.
It ctertainly wasn't an easy start to the walk. The first thing I had to do was get to the Wales/England border. This just happened to be a fair way from a road and in a firing range. Added to that that the red flags were flying indicating that firing was taking place. It was enough to make me think that the Gods were conspiring against me before I had even started.
Start of walk and the flags are out for me - and no its not a Welsh flag!
The walk therefore started by strolling past through the MOD firing range, even though the red flags were flying, keeping out of sight behind the earth bank. As the years past there was one warning I grew to obey and that was the red flags of firing ranges!
The rest of the day's walk was through what was left of Shotton Steel Works, over the waste dumping ground, through the little dock where the last strip steel was still being loaded onto coasters, through the plant's chemical storage area and under the buzzing electric pylons. Wild poppies were in flower while a heron and a sparrow hawk patrolled the marsh land behind the firing range.
It was hard to imagine that the vast sprawling steelworks, built on reclaimed marshland, once employed 13,000 people and had over 30 steam trains.
I crossed the River Dee using Hawarden Bridge on a path adjoining the railway track and back into Connah's Quay where I had left my car. Hawarden Bridge was built in 1889 and was responsible for opening up the marshland for industrial development. It was originally a swing bridge where the central section swung sideways to allow shipping to pass but it no longer opens and is welded shut.
Howarden Bridge, early 1900s, when it still swung open.
I'd walked just over 7 miles but it was a 'there and back walk' so was only 3.6 miles of 'coastline' and certainly didn't see much of the sea as such. If I had been hoping for tall cliffs and crashing waves then I'd started the walk in the wrong place.
The wild flowers made even an old steel works look attractive.
View from inside Shotton towards the power station at Connah's Quay
Inside Shotton in the 1970s
Photo courtesy of Corus and thanks to Corus Archives, Shotton Works.
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