The Lily Ponds lifted my mood in their shaded tranquillity, despite a sort of one-person argument between my wife and herself over whether a rather out-of-place black swan could count as a UK tick on that list she denied keeping. Thankfully, and before she could come close to blows with herself, we were treated to the sight of a kingfisher flying out over the water, plunging, and then disappearing once more with a rather large fish, which reminded my stomach that it had actually been a rather long time since breakfast. Maz laughed, forgetting her swan-based dispute.

“Mike, darling, have we suddenly discovered a hitherto unknown large land predator, or was that your stomach?”

“Guilty! How far is this pub, Debbie?”

“Around half a mile, all flat. Pity I’m driving, but…”

She grinned, suddenly, an absolute burst of happiness.

“I just happen to have some jerry cans in the bus, Mike. Clean ones. They’re empty now, and will be empty again later, but they’ll be full when we leave the pub”

Genius woman.

The pub in question had a decent-sized garden, and a little while after we had laid claim to a set of tables, a number or young men I recognised started to arrive, mostly in pairs. I don’t mean I knew them as individuals, but I could spot a fellow climber a mile off. It took a while for us to work through the list of menu choices, but Maz and I settled for their leek and bacon pie while the offspring went, predictably, for things involving chips. As I put in our order at the bar, I found myself next to a couple of those obvious craggers, and decided to play nicely.

“You been climbing, lads?”

“Er, yeah…”

“Whereabouts? Not my usual area, this”

“Stackpole Head. You climb?”

“I do. Used to do a lot in the UK, but we’ve moved to Oz now. Bit different out there”

His mate laughed.

“Bit bloody warmer, for starters! What’s the rock?”

“Ah, we’ve got a dolorite quarry near us, but there’s granite down the coast. Neither were my usual stuff over here, though”

“What do you prefer?”

“Grit, to be honest. Bit of a thug. But I love slate as well”

I could almost read the first lad’s mind, as he sought the smell of bullshit.

“Any routes you’d recommend? On slate?”

“Ah, there’s nothing really easy there. Gets worthwhile at about VS. It’s really delicate in places, so not like thugging on grit”

“What have you managed?”

Cheeky bastard.

“Oh, managed to do a variation on something called Heading the Shot. E5”

I paused, just long enough, before adding “7a”

Before they could respond, I pointed out the window.

“Daughter’s just starting, but she’s seconding HVS now, so looking good”

“Which one’s yours?”

“The six year old, with the bear. He climbs with her, if there are no chimneys”

“HVS…”

“Yeah, but she prefers grit and that, for the jamming”

The second lad was much quieter now.

“You climbing here?”

“I’d love to, but we got threatened before we left Cardiff, made us leave all our kit behind. Had a look at Huntsman’s today, though”

“That’s a bit hard in places, up to E8”

“Ah, I’m only comfortable up to about E6, 6a, so I’d need some practice”

More small talk, but I noticed that neither of the lads mentioned their own grades. Job done, Rhodes, only age and guile being required.

The food was superb, the little bit of ale I had being exceptional, and the jerry cans did everything Deb had intended. We sat out stargazing for ages, before settling down for the night, while somewhere not too far away, some lads were most likely worrying about inadequacy.

Deb drove us to the west the next morning, where Ish got a look at some more intact armoured fighting vehicles, including a chance to see them firing, which wasn’t what I expected, because it isn’t ‘bang/hit’ but ‘bang/watch the round fly/hit’. I hadn’t realised the things were visible in flight. Enough seen for me. We drove on as far as Pembroke itself, where we gave the girls another castle fix, before a slower drive over the spit of land that held Pembroke Dock and across the bridge to Nayland after filling up with provisions at the Aldi. The next bit of the journey was a little grim, as we worked our way through Milford until we were finally past all the oil storage places and back into the stone-hedged fields that Deb had explained to me with such relish.

“They look like hedges, Mike, but they’re actually drystone walls. We talk about ‘fields made with knife and fork’, where communities have cleared stones by hand. It’s limestone, so the plants love it, and the tourists don’t realise our hedges have hard centres until their car gets wrecked. Oh, and the plants show the prevailing wind direction”

She was right about that, for almost all of the bushes and shrubs looked as if they’d been sliced off at an angle, and all the same one. It was a surprisingly long way, but we were eventually pulling up in a large car park marked ‘Martin’s Haven’. Maz, Ish and I shouldered larger packs than the others, as I had co-opted our son as a pack mule for the consumables, while Kawan rode in his usual spot. Down the road, another long set of stairs, and finally a metal jetty leading down to a tiny blue and white boat, which didn’t seem to have any form of cabin apart from the wheelhouse. I imagined the safety briefing describing the emergency exits as ‘Where you like, really’, a line I had once heard on a London river bus. We filed on board, steadily filling the rear deck, and then we were off on a rather bouncy crossing, one of the crew calling out interesting sights, such as a surprising number of curious seals, and about twenty minutes later, we were bows-on to another set of steps up to the green turf od the island, and bunnies.

Lots of bunnies, none seeming to care at all about how close we got, LC busy with her basic compact camera as she laughed in delight. As the rest scattered in various directions looking for their own visual treats, our family followed the obvious path to our accommodation, in what had been the island’s single farmhouse.

“You the Rhodes family? I’m Kristin, your warden, sort of host? I was only told of three”

Maz waved at our lad.

“Not this one. He’s going back with the rest of our group. Just us two and our girl for tonight”

“What are your priorities, Mrs Rhodes?”

“Maz, please, and this is Mike, and of course Carolyn”

“And Kawan, Mum”

“And Kawan. Dark skies is one thing, but I’m a birdwatcher, so it’s the auks and the shearwaters for me”

“Ah. Sorry. They’re migratory, and, well, two months too late”

“Damn!”

“Not to worry. You won’t get the flocks we have in breeding season, not coming into their burrows, apart from a few that hang around. That’s actually part of a research project I’m involved with. Climate change possibilities. Anyway, there are still rafts of the auks in the water, getting ready to migrate”

Maz perked up.

“So there will be some coming back this evening? Shearwaters?”

Kristin nodded, then grinned.

“And I know where their burrows are”

“Ooh!”

“Let’s get you settled in, then I’ll show you on the map”

Our room was called ‘Puffin’, fittingly, and to no surprise on anyone’s part, LC claimed the top bunk. We laid out our bags, left our clearly-labelled food in the fridge, and then set off with cameras, telescope and binoculars to see what was about, apart from the rabbits. We got a few auks, including some puffins, on the cliffs and in large rafts on inshore waters, plus fulmars, gannets and, to delight on my wife’s part, two rock pipits, six purple sandpipers and three shags.

I was listening; I didn’t have much choice. She was smiling, and that was all that mattered.

It was like some sort of enlarged Brownian motion, as we bumped into scattered pairs and groups of our daytrippers, but we made a point of being at the top of the steps to wave them off as their island time expired. When we arrived back at the old farmhouse, other overnighters were settling into the kitchen. A quick round of questions, and only one other meal needed the use of the oven, and the cooking heat was just about the same as ours. Once the oven was warm enough, we popped in our ‘family lasagna’ and rinsed our various bits of salad before adding our garlic baguettes at the end of cooking time for the pasta.

Simple, tasty and filling. We sat outside as the light left, before a nod from Kristin, who led a sizeable group of us out towards the North West. She was clearly enjoying her role as tour guide-cum-educator, and chatted away about the shearwaters and puffins, including how the former rather than the latter ended up with the scientific name ‘Puffinus puffinus’. She glanced down at LC, and then did her best at circumlocution.

“Um, a culinary term for lipid rich nestbound juveniles, I am afraid. Now, we do have rather a lot of Manxies here, but they migrate to the South Atlantic for out winter”

A leathery old woman called Beryl seized on that one.

“How many?”

“Oh, I couldn’t say in numbers, but together with what’s basically our ‘other island over there, Skokholm, about fifty percent of the world population breeds here”

“On just two islands?”

“Yup. That is why we are so very careful with biosecurity here. The Manxies and the puffins get on with the rabbits, cause they’re all in burrows, and the other auks are ledge nesters, but if we got something like a rat infestation or, god forbid, something like feral mink, that would be it. Breeding rates aren’t high”

Beryl was still pushing.

“Why?”

“My opinion? Lifespan. They can live half a century or more, so no pressure for large broods”

She started laughing at that one.

“Someone did some key research years ago, do not ask me how, but the birds reuse the same burrows each year, and they mate for life. The adults recognise each other’s voices, but not those of their chicks”

Beryl’s other half, Ed, started laughing.

“Like that Monty Python skit about Yorkshire, yeah? Must be our sprog as it’s in our pad. No family ties later?”

“Nope. Reclaim the nest, mate, lay, hatch, feed, fledge---”

“And then ‘Brazil’s that way, kid, thanxbye’?”

“Basically, yes. Now, we have some odd Manxies that simply don’t clear off with the others, and we also get some that get distracted. Bright lights are a draw for them”

Maz was obviously dying to ask, and Kristin gave her the nod.

“What happens then?”

“They end up stuck in Fishguard, or up the Cleddau, so we have people who rescue them. Settle them into a cardboard box, and we then take them out on a boat. About four miles out, just to be sure. Chuck them up into the air and--- can you all kill your lights, please, and shush”

I caught a faint groan, but it wasn’t from any or four group. A wailing shriek followed the first sound, and then it was obvious there were a number of conversations in progress. Kristin set up a light so that it shone across the top of the grass, as the wails and croaks became more and more unworldly and eerie, and suddenly there was a flurry of wingbeats as a short-legged bird, appearing black and white in the torchlight, waddled across the patch of lit grass and disappeared into a burrow, another following, and their ‘welcome home’ chat became even louder. Fifty percent of the world population just on these two islands, and this was all from just four birds?