Insufficiently Welsh by Griff Rhys Jones Page B

of the little harbours look frightening. To land Vikings, or to fend off a French invasion, or to carry off bricks from Porthgain, brave skippers had to point their ships straight at the cliffs of Pembrokeshire, and seek out the tiny coves and sea walls that would keep the crashing sea out of the harbour while they tied up for a tide that would leave them high and dry and praying for good weather to get them back out.
    I sometimes run along a section of the coastal path near Strumble Head. My wife is convinced that I will slip and tumble to my death. What a way to go. The path squiggles past buttresses and overlooks sudden drops to the sea. I love the recurring incident, the hard stony beaches clad in grey pebbles and littered with wreckage worn smooth by the breakers, but I have only seen one side of the spectacle. “Coasteering” offered the other.
    I wasn’t looking forward to it. I am a former fatty. In gymnastics at school I had to cry in order to get off being forced to climb a rope. I have sailed a few boats and now I am constantly expected to leap or dangle or clamber for TV programmes. They want me to fall off, of course. The only thing that drives me on is that I have no intention of doing so.
    Imagination is my enemy. I was imagining how cold that sea was going to be. I was imagining how agonising climbing about sharp rocks on my knees would be. On a grey day in September, I went to get kitted out. I was imagining how uncomfortable that kit would be.
    â€œYou can leave your clothes on the hook.”
    Just the smell of the changing room depressed me.
    â€œThere’s your wet suit.”
    As I slurped and farted into the thing I got more and more self-pitying, tearing the cold rubber up over hairy calves and then trying to calm the folds of intractable tyre-like black gloop around my stomach. There is a long zip up the back with a big drawstring on it which I can never reach. God, I didn’t even have the strength to pull that up.
    I cheered up a bit when I saw what lift and separation the black stuff achieved. I felt smoothed out and positively svelte. It’s a little bit fetishistic.
    The instructor Jon came in. “You need to wear one of these,” he said. And he handed me a pair of Hawaii print beach shorts. “They cover your modesty.”
    â€œWhat modesty?”
    â€œSt Davids is a conservative place.”
    I looked down. I was a series of smooth planes in significant areas. There was no indication of anything untoward.
    â€œBut they are mostly to protect our wet suits.”
    I put on the flower-bedecked Bermudans. And then I was naff again.
    After the addition of a life jacket and silly helmet, we had to walk along a cliff to get to a path down to the ocean.
    The camera doesn’t like boats. Boats wobble too much. I knew the filming would be difficult. I started descending internally. Is it a Welsh trait, this moodiness? I might even equate it with the lie of the land. Always up or down, never flat. Perhaps it’s not Welsh, it’s just me. By the time we were ten minutes away from my autumnal immersion I had become sullen.
    Rachel was there to instruct me. She regularly took people out doing this, even in February. I avoided her gaze.
    â€œAre you looking forward to it?” she enquired chirpily.
    â€œIt’s just a job,” I replied morosely.
    Oh dear. Forgive me, Rachel. Yes, intolerable. Still, it made me feel better. And you are so very attractive.
    We poised by the sea edge, perched on an outcrop. There weren’t many big waves. Jon had predicted that, with the wind in the north, the swell under the cliff would be slight. He was right. The sun came out. The boat with the camera aboard chugged around the corner. It was a big, stable rib. Tudor was secure and happy with his platform. The cliffs were steep. It could motor close to the cliffs. There was no reason for the pictures to wobble unduly.
    By the time we jumped in I was on the upward