At the very tip of the Gower peninsula, a beast rears west. Its English name, Worm’s Head, derives from wyrm, a monstrous serpentine beast – a Welsh dragon of sorts. To me, the lumpy sometimes-island, connected to the mainland by a jagged causeway at low tide, looks like a turtle, with a long narrow carapace peering into the Atlantic drizzle.
There’s a Coastwatch station overlooking the causeway, where the passages of ships, tide, weather and wildlife are logged and advice is issued to those wishing to cross. Despite warnings, the hapless and unwary still get stranded from time to time. When I arrive, the tide is ripping over the rocks – I’m too late to make the trip. Instead, I climb to the nub end of the land, where I scramble between outcrops of fissured and lichen-crusted rock, over flower-rich turf smelling of thyme, salt and petrichor.
