Gors Farm, Pwll Trap, St Clears, Carmathenshire, Wales

                                      

If I were the perfect wife, I would have my attention applied to the soccer game being played out in Moscow between the English and the Columbians, but I am not.  With the television so invasive in our caravan time, I cannot remain entirely ignorant of the sport being played out on the world stage, but I leave my attention to a minimum; just enough to ask intelligent questions from time to time.

Despite so much going on in both Wimbledon and Russia, we did manage several hours out touring today; quality time covering a fair bit of distance, filled with wonderful landscapes and history from the distant past.

Today our route took us immediately south of St Clears, following the River Taf down to the Estuary of the same name. We pulled in beside the water’s edge at Laugharne,  famous for its castle ruins and for being the residence of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas from 1949 to Dylan’s death in 1953. 

Interestingly a wealthy benefactor bought it for them, and today the Boathouse where Dylan wrote some of his famous work is a museum, containing lots of memorabilia and much of the original furniture. Having spent some time in the Dylan Thomas Centre yesterday, and often being reminded of this favourite son as we had wandered about Swansea, we decided we would give the Boathouse a miss. Nor did we bother exploring the castle having decided that today was a driving tour rather than one for castle emersion.

Laugharne was a delightful surprise, the charming village sloping down to the estuary, and a large swathe of land available for the general public to enjoy. The castle is another of the cluster of coastal strongholds built along the coast by Norman lords to defend river crossings and waterways leading into the heart of south Wales. This particular castle was taken from Rhys by Richard I, then taken back again in 1215, until it was captured again by William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke; these ping-pongs of ownership seem to be standard for many castles.

As I was standing in a small garden area, reading some of the interpretative panels, a massive flock of noisy jackdaws flew overhead, dropping their postcard onto my shoulder. They say that one should rush out and buy a lotto ticket when such luck falls; I did not, but feel lucky every day.

Back on the road, we continued south and west along the A4066, and once on the coast proper passed dozens upon dozens of holiday parks, most of which are filled with static caravans. A few rural camps, where the road climbs away from the seashore before descending to the next bay, offer accommodation for “touring caravans”. The word “caravan” here in the United Kingdom generally means a static van, this seemingly the preferred option for the holidaying public, or at least for those who don’t jump on a Easyjet or Ryanair plane to the continent. For me the sight of these parks with their rows and rows of holiday units are just too awful, but then not everyone is able to live our life, and I should be less critical.

The little settlements of the South Pembrokeshire coast are perched on the western edge of the Carmarthen Bay, with views south east across to the Gower Peninsula near Swansea and on a good day, south to the Devonshire coast. Amroth, Wiseman’s Bridge, Saundersfoot and the like were not so long ago places of hard work, where families eked out a living scratching or patch mining iron ore and coal from the thin veins along the shore. These were not the nice places they are today.

Further west we arrived at the most charming and beguiling seaside town of Tenby, narrow one way streets within what was once a great medieval castle, since dismantled to make way for commerce and to improve the traffic flow through the town, winding their way down to the island studded shore. Above the harbour stands the headland of Castle Hill, remnants of an even older castle, most long gone but still a fabulous lookout point. The houses painted in a kaleidoscope of pastels and the gay summer fashions of the visitors, the saggy bellied bronzed elderly men sitting about the shore, the shop fronts strung with bright coloured plastic buckets and spades; it is all so picture book perfect and I was absolutely delighted with it all. And best of all there is a multi-storied car park tucked near one of the castle squares, allowing a maximum of two hours parking, which helps manage the visitor numbers at any one time.

We left within the allowed time, with newspaper and a pack of deep fried custard donuts, a speciality of supermarket bakeries, nothing about these latter delicacies pretending to be healthy, but coming in a pack of five, too many for one of course. So we found a spot a little further west at Lamphey, beside the walls of an old Bishop’s Palace and under a row of trees, to eat these and our packed lunch. I fear we will end up looking no better than the bulging bodied tourists we spend our idle hours criticising.

Pembroke was only a couple of miles on from our lunchtime spot and we found ourselves a park below the Castle and High Street. We had already decided that we would not visit the castle, a privately owned affair, one not falling under the auspices of any of our magic membership cards. Instead we set off down to the river and walked around the base of this impressive structure, appearing from the outside to be in such good repair. This was the birthplace of Henry VII, the first Tudor king and father to the better known Henry VIII.

Later we called into the little museum tucked into an upstairs room of the council chambers and learned that the castle did not have the peaceful life we had presumed. During the Civil War, Pembroke was a Parliamentary stronghold until its military governor suddenly switched to the Royalist side in 1648. Cromwell’s forty eight day siege of the town only succeeded after he cut off its water supply.

The ground floor of the council foyer is decorated in a series of murals depicting people and events of Pembroke’s long history, and are brilliantly done, and while the upstairs exhibition is rather old fashioned, it is concise and very consumer friendly, as was the old man holding the fort at the door.

During the last century, Pembroke lost its importance as a port, giving way to the nearby Pembroke Dock and Milford Haven. Today it relies mostly on the tourists who come by, the streets not having changed much that we could notice.

Chris was keen to check out Pembroke Dock, one of the Irish ferry ports here in Wales. We drove through the residential area, a drab uninteresting spread of misery from our perspective, almost ending up in the embarkation queue. We turned and headed back out of the town, soon finding a busier part of the town, a satellite shopping area containing at least four of the well-known supermarkets along with Home Base and other like stores. At least the folk of the Dock town do at least have decent shopping facilities.

The Milford Haven Waterway is a natural harbour here in south west Wales, one of the deepest natural harbours in the world. Admiral Horatio Nelson described it as “the finest port in Christendom” and he had been around, not only on the water. Which reminds me; in Tenby we came upon a house with a memorial plaque memorialising the fact that Nelson and Lord and Lady Hamilton stayed there once. What a cosy threesome that must have been! 

Milford Haven is also the name of the port town on the north west shore of the harbour, significantly closer to the entrance than Pembroke. The town was established in 1790 by Quakers from Nantucket, brought here to work as whalers. The grid pattern of the streets survives today although it apparently spent years in a state of stagnation, until it came alive as a fishing port from the 1880s.  Today it provides marina accommodation for leisure craft, and views of the refinery, storage tanks and observation towers on the southern shore directly opposite. We saw about half a dozen ships berthed at the long wharves; it seems that industry here just quietly gets on with business.

We had crossed the harbour on the Cleddau Bridge, a toll bridge erected in the 1970s. The views from the middle of the bridge are just fabulous, or would be if one could pull over and enjoy them.

I could tell Chris was keen to get home; the big games of the day were calling, so we crossed back over the bridge, happy to pay the 75p again, then headed directly back to Phll Trap on the A477, a much faster route than we had taken earlier.