Wales 5: Laugharne to Kidwelly and Ferryside

Valerie assured our hosts at Laugharne that she had booked our room for three nights, not two as they had recorded in their booking system, and so we stayed on. It was only as we drove away from Laugharne, and Valerie received a call from her perplexed son asking why we hadn’t turned up at the cottage she had booked in Kidwelly, that we realised we had lost twenty-four hours –- today was Saturday, not Friday. (I'll attribute this mental lapse to the magic spell of Dylan Thomas rather than a senior moment.) We abandoned our plans to visit the National Botanic Gardens of Wales in the Towy Valley, and drove post haste toward toward Kidwelly. 

Valerie had booked a cottage, through Tanylan Farm holidays, on the coastal road between Ferryside and Kidwelly. Hawton is one of three cottages that form part of a traditional longhouse which has been recently restored. The longhouse was constructed in the early 16^th century to serve both farmer and livestock, and it was later converted to workers’ accommodation. With three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, and a spacious living room and other facilities downstairs, plus a hot tub in the back garden, there was more than enough space for the three adults and one seven-year old that made up our party. 

There was a sandy beach nearby, which we reached by walking through the camping ground, along a sandy track, and under a railway bridge. At regular intervals, little two-carriage trains would rush along the railway line, heading for Carmarthen.

In this rural part of South West Wales, the roads are single track with passing places at intervals against the hedges. We drove to an informal café at a nearby smallholding, and ate white bread sandwiches stuffed with prawns and mayonnaise and coleslaw while watching a menagerie of animals wandering around. We came away with a tray of duck eggs, and cooked scrambled eggs for breakfast next day – the shells were tough to crack, but the contents tasted good.  

The second day, we drove the short distance to the village of Ferryside and parked the car beside the River Towy Yacht Club. The trains were there again – this time at our backs, beyond the yacht club – as they sped around the estuary. I thought to myself that if I had been a children’s author I would have written a story about those trains. 

We ate our picnic lunch sitting on deep concrete steps that led down to a white sandy beach on a long tidal estuary. It was shortly before the turning of the tide, and the water was still flowing in.  

Over on the other side were hills and the outline of a ruined castle. (Google tells me that Wales had some six hundred castles; one hundred of these are still standing, either restored or as ruins.)

After our picnic, we walked along the beach past the rusting ruins of a boat, the Vicky Leigh from Liverpool. There was enough breeze for the seven-year old to fly his kite. 

 On our final evening, after the rest of the party had departed, Valerie and I cooked a light meal together: a mushroom omelette made from duck eggs, tiny boiled potatoes, green salad and a fruit dessert. The two of us used to prepare meals together when we shared a tiny flat in Grafton Gully, Auckland, in 1965 – it was a good feeling to be doing it again.

I needed to be at Cardiff Airport for a 10:30 a.m. flight on the Monday, and we had been warned to allow at least two hours to drive there. Valerie had entered the coordinates into her elderly but tried-and-true TomTom GPS Navigator the night before, and I had the large map book on my lap as a backup. There were bottlenecks on the M4 at the City of Swansea and also at Port Talbot, with its steelworks, but we made reasonable time. After fourteen junctions, TomTom took us off the motorway and on a meandering route on minor roads through small towns. This made me a little nervous, but Valerie said, “Have confidence.” Somewhat to my surprise – I had become completely disoriented – we reached our destination with time to spare.

Wales 4: Laugharne: Dylan Thomas’s birthday walk

On our second day in Laugharne, we returned to the Boathouse tearooms – one of the better eating places in Laugharne – for lunch. Most of the food is prepared in the original kitchen, and they use locally-sourced ingredients where possible. Our cawl (soup) was thick with root vegetables, and accompanied by a generous wedge of Welsh cheese.

Fortified by the soup, we set off on a circular walk that starts nearby (this is not Dylan Thomas’s birthday walk – we had decided to save that for later). The walk took us away from the town, up onto hills, through fields and onto a farm. There was a notice on the farm gate that seemed remarkably polite in the circumstances: “Please keep your dogs on a leash. One of our lambs was recently mauled to death!!” The path passed close to the farmhouse, and I saw a file of plump white geese walking solemnly in file across an arched bridge over a stream.

Our stay in Laugharne was during the first week in July. Public schools (“private” to us) had just broken up for their long summer holidays, but state schools still had a fortnight to go. There were a few young children with parents or grandparents, but it was relatively quiet. When we did Dylan Thomas's birthday walk, on our final day in Laugharne, we were the only ones on the path.

Dylan Thomas’s Poem in October is about his birthday walk to the shoulder of St John’s Hill on 27 October 1944, his thirtieth birthday. The poem – made up of seven stanzas, each of ten lines – is about getting older, and his love of Laugharne. 

 The birthday walk is about two miles/ 3.2 kilometres and goes up through Salt Farm. Known locally as “New Walk”, it was originally created in 1856 and enabled townsfolk and cocklers to access by foot their shares of the cockle beds on the marshes when high tides would have prevented them. Along the way were boards with extracts from Poem in October. 

Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk      Photo:Ann Barrie

In one of the extracts, Dylan Thomas pictures himself with his mother “walking through the parables / of sunlight / and the legends of green chapels”. By “green chapels” Thomas means trees. I think that nowadays the trees are considerably thicker and higher than when he did the walk. As he climbs, he describes the view of a “church the size of a snail / with its horns through mist”. Valerie and I were unable to spot the church, but we wondered what Dylan Thomas would have made of the wind turbine on the skyline.

As you walk away from the village, and the castle recedes, you begin to see the form of the river Coran and the river marsh. The marsh areas, which were formed by seasonal and tidal flooding, include rough pasture on higher ground, interspersed with lagoons. 

Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk      Photo:Ann Barrie

Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk      Photo:Ann Barrie

Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk      Photo:Ann Barrie

At the end of the walk we could have chosen to retrace our steps, but we chose instead to walk along a muddy portion of track, then through fields with curious cows, and then to follow the road back to Laugharne. 

Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk      Photo:Ann Barrie

Dylan Thomas’s poem concludes, “O may my heart’s truth / still be sung / on this high hill in a year’s turning.” And the final board on the walk encourages us to “Please try to return to his high hill on your birthday … Take this experience and make it your birthday walk.” Laugharne is too far away for me to make Dylan’s walk my birthday walk, but I think the idea of going for a special walk on one's birthday every year – either alone or with friends – is an excellent one.

Blog by Ann Barrie