Poppit Sands is hidden at the end of yet more narrow roads: you can very easily miss the right turn in St Dogmaels, which is less a village of itself and more a suburb of Cardigan. My parents used to take us down to a farm in St Dogmaels for a fortnight in summer. This would be back in the days of, well, after the opening of the M50 Ross-Spur and before the start of the construction of M4. Look it up. Anyway, the local beach was Poppit Sands. I had memories of it being wide at low tide, but not of it being vast. This is the view inland.
It's approached along this road. Really. This is one of the best beaches in Britain and it's approached by a single-lane country road.
What makes Welsh beaches special is this: sea, sand... and if you click on the photograph, you'll see cows. There's workable, in fact high-quality, farmland to within yards of the shoreline. Which tells you that there are no strong winds whipping the salt water onto the land and making it hard growing.
It's all lush and gentle. They have coastguards on all the major beaches, with flags of mysterious (to me) significance, and they have decent if not European-quality cafes as well.
The river in these shots is the Teifi - hence the official Welsh name Aberteifi for Cardigan.
Personally, I believe that no English childhood is complete without a summer holiday spent on beaches like this.
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