Ceibwr Bay & Pwll y Wrach, Pembrokeshire, Wales, Summer
Heading for the Witches Cauldron.
Heading for the Witches Cauldron.
Following the more moodier day around Aberporth and Tresaith, our planned hike to Ceibwr Bay and Pwll y Wrach beyond looked promising.
Ceibwr Bay (pronounced KYE-boorr) forms part of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. It’s known for its amazing cliff folds, a result of glaciation during the last Ice Age as well as the Ceibwr Bay Fault. We started our hike from further up the valley at Moylgrove, navigating the wooded valley down to the open bay. After gawping at the bay and snapping probably too many photos, we followed the trail up the cliffs along the western side of the bay. Our goal, ultimately, was to visit Pwll y Wrach, known as the “Witches Cauldron”, a collapsed cave.
It turned out to be a corker of a day, and the scenery was simply out of this world.
All photos taken on my Sony α7ii using my Sony 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS zoom and Rokinon 14mm f2.8 ED AS IF UMC prime lenses. RAWs developed in Lightroom, merged together in Photomatix, edited and finalised in Photoshop.
Ceibwr Bay & Pwll y Wrach, Pembrokeshire, Wales, Summer by Ian Cylkowski is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The northeastern folded cliffs of Ceibwr Bay. Look at those layers. Millions of years of fossilised history.
The stony beach of Ceibwr Cove is surrounded by bushes of rosehip, which I made use of for this wider composition.
The southwestern side of the cove features these folds of Carreg Bica Mudstones, interspersed with fauna wherever it can get a foothold. A wide and tightly composed image.
In fact, part way up the western clifftop path a small desire line branches off back down towards the sea. We followed it, finding these amazing folds and grooved formations, which I used as leading lines towards the folded cliffs.
A particularly sharp fold served as a dominant leading line towards the two shark fin sea stacks of Careg Wylan.
Gingerly navigating the ankle-breaking fins and folds, I edged closer to the cliff face. This wonderfully deep fold in the rocks gave me another composition to explore with the two sea stacks.
Before heading back up onto the clifftop trail, I sought a wider composition of these otherworldly folds and fins, using them as a leading line towards the deeply incised cliffs of Ceibwr.
Up on the cliff tops, extensive views north east reveal the cliffs towards Pen-yr-Afr and their spectacular synclines and anticlines. 50 million years or so, during the Caledonian Orogeny, colliding continents closed up an ocean basin and crumpled the sedimentary strata, giving rise to these impressive anticlines (upland ridges) and synclines (valleys and lowlands).
A sheer drop down to the sea at my feet, as near as I dared it, but for this vertiginous composition of Careg Wylan.
From the same point, looking north east back to Ceibwr Bay and the cliffs beyond. Unbelievable geological forces recorded here.
The smaller shark fin sea stack, part of Careg Wylan. I zoomed in tight to really feature it.
Looking down on the seemingly impossible-looking sea stack of Careg Wylan, twisting and rising like a corkscrew above the sea. Just ridiculous.
Heading further southwest before dropping down to Pwll y Wrach, a wide view opens itself to me, featuring a kaleidoscope of twisting sea stacks, gnarly cliff faces, secret sea caves, and everything in between. Around it all, wonderful azure tones in the water.
The path steeply descends down to Pwll y Wrach, the Witches Cauldron. It's a striking geological feature; a collapsed cave, formed where the sea has picked out soft crumbling shales and sandstones along a fault. The crater still connects to the sea and is a popular place for daring canoeists, which we saw. I attempted to capture the entire expanse of this collapsed cave by shooting five vertical frames at 14mm each, stitching them together into this massive panorama.
Further southwest from above, it's clear to see how Pwll y Wrach is a collapsed cave. Who knows how long the land bridge separating the cauldron from the sea will last?