A former Fairwater Comprehensive pupil with a lifelong love of hiking has published a book of circular walks along the Wales Coast Path.
Dr Harri Roberts, 35, has written the pocket-sized Wales Coast Path: Carmarthen Bay & Gower for Northern Eye Books.
The book – the third in a series of ‘Top 10 Walks’ along the 870-mile Wales Coast Path – features walks around Laugharne, Llansteffan, Pendine & Marros and Pembrey in Carmarthenshire.
The remainder of the walks are on the Gower peninsula, an area Harri got to know well when he was a post-graduate student at Swansea University.
‘The launch of the Wales Coast Path has opened up coastal walking for everyone and as a result, footpaths are now better signposted than ever before,’ said Harri. ‘Carmarthen Bay and the Gower Peninsula offer some of the finest coastal walking in South Wales and, in choosing these routes, I’ve tried to offer as much variety of landscape and scenery as possible. Hikers will visit long sandy beaches and historic castles, cross rugged cliffs and windswept downs, and even follow in the footsteps of one of Wales’s most famous poets, Dylan Thomas.’
Routes vary from 6½ to 4¼ miles and are suitable for most walkers of reasonable fitness.
Harri will publish a third book, an official guide to the Wales Coast Path between Amroth and Swansea, in the autumn (Northern Eye Books).
Harri has recently launched his own publishing company, Camau (Welsh for ‘steps’) with his partner, Tracy Burton. As a first project, they have been researching a series of walks from castles in the border region of Gwent and Herefordshire and have enjoyed immersing themselves in the turbulent history of the Middle Ages.
There are a number of other projects in the pipeline, including Harri’s long-term ambition to develop an ‘end-to-end’ walking route across Wales, which would connect the south and north coasts of Wales through the middle of the country by linking existing promoted paths such as the Beacons Way and Glyndŵr’s Way.
Harri is a member of the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild (OWPG) and currently edits the Guild’s in-house magazine, Outdoor Focus.
Wales Coast Path: Carmarthen Bay & Gower is priced at £4.99 and is available to buy at http://www.top10walks.co.uk and www.Amazon.co.uk
Harri’s first hiking guide – Day Walks in the Brecon Beacons – was published by Vertebrate Publishing earlier this year.