Gronant Dunes Walk – Prestatyn -24.06.2011

Prestatyn is famous for its sands (over 4 miles of it); it was time to switch from hills, roads and canal walking to have “sand beneath our feet”.

Having purchased a brand new walking stick and after having a rest, I was able to take my first short stroll of the weekend 🙂 . Gronant Dunes are very enjoyable to walk – although I found it a struggle to cope with sand for a while! I am not really surprised to find out that these dunes have been designated an area of “Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)”. In fact these are the only surviving dunes in North Wales which have been left to nature! The dunes has some wonderful long stemmed grass growing out of sand and immediately I felt like I was in a hot foreign country and not in North Wales. I was almost expecting to hear crickets and perhaps a rattle snake to pop out any minute!

I think the biggest surprise that I came across was a sign for Natterjack Toad – it seems that this amphibian creature was quite an inhabitant of these dunes. Natterjack Toads, thrive in a dune environment shallow ponds, which we spotted quite a few, and they need lots of sand to dig burrow into to escape predators, the cold and heat – well there was plenty of sand! It seems Sand Lizards also live here – so I may not have been close with rattle snakes but lizards don’t sound good to me. I must admit it is good to hear about lots of wildlife living amongst the Marram grass

From 2011 – 24.06.2011 – Gronant Dunes Walk – Prestatyn

As the dunes were protected there are designated footpaths everywhere! We had slight detour, which almost took us to the golf course (which we walked on a later day) but it was not long before we were able to walk along the dunes again. The only pity about the day, was it was not as hot as it could have been and that would have really set of these gorgeous dunes and as I said before we really could imagine ourselves elsewhere! It was not long before we discovered that we were actually walking on the Wales Coast Path. Apparently this is still in development as it incorporate many paths, such as the Pembrokeshire coast path and the Gower Coast Path – in fact the total length of the path is 850 miles ~1367.9km.

I must admit that the dunes, have risen to quite a height as we were given quite a view across the bay I did wonder how far we could see, however I don’t think we will really ever know! As we continued on, we were curious about a wooden path that was provided. The path took us across a particularly marshy part of the dunes. In fact it wasn’t marshy, Little Terns were actually nesting on the ground! The wooden path took us to vantage point which really gave us a lovely view. In fact we could have stood here for hours just taking the views and watching birds. It was just nice to watch the world go by…

From 2011 – 24.06.2011 – Gronant Dunes Walk – Prestatyn

Unfortunately, we did have eventually leave viewing platform behind and return to the dunes to finish our short walk of the day. These dunes definitely has a wonderful natural habitat for wildlife, and it is nice to know we were allowed to enjoy part of these dunes without disturbing it… Although we endedour walk of Gronant dunes for the day, it was really good to know that we could experience yet more of these lovely dunes known as “Talacre Warren” on another day.

For all the afternoon walks please click here –

2011 – 24.06.2011 – Gronant Dunes Walk – Prestatyn

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