The first day of our Welsh excursion, setting out from Bristol in grey mist but it gradually brightened as the day progressed and was sunny by this evening.
First stop was Mumbles, gateway to the Gower. Actually a pleasant little seaside town curiously also reminiscent of Matlock for some reason.
We ended up on its Victorian pier having a hot chocolate in my case.
Old lifeboat station.
Then onwards along the Southern side of the Gower past lovely beaches at Caswell Bay and Oxwich and eventually to what seemed a beautiful spot (but for the mist) at Rhosilli.
Oxwich
We’ll have to go back to Rhosilli as the expanse of golden sand could’ve been endless.
2 things were striking about the Gower. One is how similar the landscape and coastline are to those in Devon & Cornwall and second, how English it seems with very few Welsh place names.
We came off the peninsular and headed West to Laugharne, home of Dylan Thomas.
We followed a heritage trail and came across the shed he used to write in and the boathouse he lived in. I recalled having seen the writing shed back in the mid 70s and it struck me that back then it had only been 20 years since he’d written Under Milk Wood there. It wasn’t such a place of pilgrimage then that it’s become now.
Shed
Boathouse
Oddness
We found his grave, with the simplest wooden cross.
Castle at Laugharne.
Then on to the 7 mile stretch of beach at Pendine where in the 20s/30s the land speed record was broken several times.
Someone called Parry-Thomas was famously killed there in a huge white monster called Babs which more recently was dragged from the dunes where it had been buried and has since been fully restored.
We found our Airbnb and enjoyed a very authentic tasting Thai meal cooked by an extremely capable Thai woman in a pub in Amroth. So far so good.