New Quay, Ceredigion, Wales, Summer
Sometimes you just have to be a bit of a tourist.
On a particularly lush day, we moved away from clifftop trekking and head to the beautiful little town of New Quay, Welsh name Cei Newydd.
New Quay is known for its vast sandy beaches, incredible local geology, and wildlife spotting. Until the early 19th century New Quay basically consisted of a few cottages and farm land. This all changed in the 1830s when a stone pier was constructed, which is still in use, and shipbuilding became the dominant industry here. Shipbuilding ceased 30–40 years later but ship navigation continued, and New Quay was the place to go and learn navigation. A local newspaper printed “New Quay... has more retired sea captains living in it than any other place of its own size in Wales.”
Like a lot of UK seaside towns, two world wars ended industry and manufacturing here, and began New Quay’s emergence as a desirable tourist destination. Which, on this occasion, included us.
And boy, what a glorious day it was.
All photos taken on my Sony α7ii using my Sony 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS zoom lens. RAWs developed in Lightroom, merged in Photomatix, and editing and finalised in Photoshop.
New Quay, Ceredigion, Wales, Summer by Ian Cylkowski is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The day started fairly cloudy and overcast, with the occasional pocket of rain, but we knew this would be clearing. By the old stone pier, I spotted someone fishing in Cardigan Bay and made this composition.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. In UK seaside towns, an additional certainty is seagulls, which were plentiful and confident at New Quay.
Lisabet and I paid for a small boat trip around the waters of Cardigan Bay from New Quay, courtesy of SeaMôr Dolphin Watching. While we were waiting at the old stone pier, I captured this scene of New Quay in its full summery touristy glory.
On our little boat we ventured north out of the harbour and head west around cliffs of New Quay Head. Here we could see the results of coastal erosion in these tilted folds.
Rounding the corner of New Quay Head, the aptly named "Birds Rock" comes into view. It's home to an expanding colony of Common Guillemots, Razorbills, European Shags and Kittiwakes.
Pulling the zoom back shows the crazy geology of New Quay and Birds Rock in full view. Getting these shots on a bumpy boat ride was a new challenge to me! I knew I needed fast shutter speeds, so set the camera to Auto ISO—maxing out at 12800—and let the lens aperture stay open as much as possible. Camera body and lens stabilisation definitely helped too.
Look at those layers of rock; millions of years of history, laid on top of each other like pages in a book. Further geology processes have compressed, folded, and intruded into these layers, then eroded away by the sea, leaving these incredible scenes.
We weren't going to assume we'd see any dolphins on this dedicated dolphin-spotting boat trip... but we were thankful we did! A pair of bottlenose dolphins gave us a couple of glimpses near the boat before heading further out to sea.
At this point, Wales is just showing off.