Run Britain Day 57: From Porthcawl to Swansea

I love it when people who come to run with me get to see beautiful parts of the coastline. This morning, Dad and Charlie experienced what is potentially the nicest patch so far.

The conditions helped enormously by a beautiful sunrise, hardly any wind and a nice golf course to admire - the section of coastline outside of Porthcawl is something special. And Shadow absolutely loved it.

Shadow’s appreciation of the day definitely diminished as we approached Port Talbot, home to the Tata Steelworks - one of the largest steelworks in the world. It’s an enormous site but its last blast furnace was shut down in late 2024 and it is now weirdly quiet for such a huge industrial centre. Port Talbot undoubtedly relies on the jobs provided by the steelworks and it’s hard to see how this town will survive without it. Sure, there is a beautiful beach, but it is somewhat spoiled by the enormous industrial site which sits on it.

We stopped for lunch at a beach cafe which had its own menu for dogs. Shadow was rewarded with her hard and patient morning of running with a sausage.

I’m tracking her efforts using her PitPat which is handy because it’s hard to tell how tired she is. Shadow can run and run, but she does normally spend big chunks of the day sleeping. And with this sort of challenge, we’re out for the whole day (and Shadow doesn’t like sleeping in places she doesn’t know, even if we are resting our paws).

We finished the afternoon in the Swansea bay area which is lovely. The early sunsets do put a stop point on our running time, but I think 44km was probably enough for both of us today.