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