Day 31
Pendine to St Clears: 10 miles
Dedication of the Day: Dylan Thomas
Reason: Because for someone like me who didn't know a thing about poetry, now at least I know how wonderful yours is.
Oddly enough after I felt close to spontaneous combustion yesterday, I set out feeling pretty good today. First, I was happy to be starting off from Pendine, where I could hopefully look around a bit more. And second, because I'd be going to Laugharne, the town Dylan Thomas based his most famous work, Under Milk Wood on . . . (if you've been paying attention you might note that I've said that about New Quay too - I'll sort that out for you later).
Fast and Furious
So Pendine Sands is basically a six-mile stretch of flat white sand, that seems to go on forever. WWII saw Eisenhower, Montgomery and Churchill standing at Wiseman's Bridge to watch 100,000 men rehearsing D-Day landings here. But before that it was known for one thing - speed.
This is where people came in the 1920s to set land-speed records. Between 1924 and 1927 Sir Malcolm Campbell and Wrexham engineer JP Thomas set about taking the title away from each other, Campbell in his V12 Sunbeam called Bluebird and Thomas in a redesigned 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' originally built by the recently deceased Count Zborowski (they were called that because of the exhaust pipe noise) called Babs. Together they set 5 world land-speed records at Pendine Sands.
Unfortunately this ended when Thomas, trying to regain the record in 1927, was decapitated by a broken drive chain when Babs overturned while going 180mph. His friends buried the car in the dunes, and stayed there for decades - until she was dug up in 1969, restored, and now sits in the Museum of Speed - at Pendine.
Unfortunately I'd gotten there before the museum opened for the day, but there was enough memorabilia around Pendine to serve - plaques, explanatory placards, a racetrack shaped memorial, all right on the path. It was all actually pretty interesting.
On the road again
Because Pendine is MoD controlled (there's actually a NATO sign at one of the entrances), the path cuts inland, and a fairly significant part of the walk to Laugharne is either on, or right next to, the road. The scenery was relatively interesting, high tree covered hills that used to be sea cliffs to the left, farms to the right. But mostly I was interested in actually getting to Laugharne today.
That's because Laugharne is where Welsh poet Dylan Thomas 'got off the bus and forgot to get back on again'; he wrote Under Milk Wood here, and he's buried here. Before you even get to Laugharne, the path converges with the Dylan Thomas 'birthday path' the walk he did on his 30th birthday and memorialized in a poem. Coming from Pendine rather than from town, I was forced to read the poem and placards backwards, but it was still pretty interesting.
On getting to town you can see the charm it held for the poet - a crumbling castle over green grass covering a once busy port. Also in it's heyday it had more than a dozen pubs for less than 2000 people, a fact that couldn't have escaped heavy drinker Dylan Thomas' notice.
In any case, I went to see many of the Dylan Thomas sights - I saw the gazebo in the castle he wrote in, the shed he spent most of his time in, I toured the boat house and watched the whole 1970s British tv documentary about his life, read all the memorabilia and even had a drink at Browns Inn, where he and his Irish wife Caitlin used to go every. single. night. And where Mick Jagger, Jimmy Carter, Elijah Wood, Anthony Hopkins, Elizabeth Taylor, and Pierce Brosnan have followed. In the same informational board that told me this, I learned that the former inn owner made a small fortune off of selling dartboards to American tourists - claiming that each one was the one Dylan Thomas himself used.
I learned a lot about a Welsh poet who, before I lived here, I knew little to nothing about specifically. I was particularly interested in how both New Quay and Laugharne claim him as their own - but neither likes to mention the other except in passing. Laugharne slightly mentioned the issue by admitting that several of the characters in Under Milk Wood were from New Quay - but relying on Thomas himself having told a friend he intended to write a poem dedicated to the 'timeless, beautiful, barmy town' of Laugharne.
What both towns seem to agree on is that he died too young, but of a cause that most could see coming - his drinking. In New York City, after drinking heavily, he said his last words along the line of 'I must have had 18 whiskies, I think that must be a record,' he began acting erratic, collapsed and eventually died of what the New York doctors called a 'massive insult to the brain.'
When he first collapsed his wife had rushed from Wales to be with him, but arrived too late. She brought his body and all the papers she could find back to Wales immediately because she didn't want America to be able to claim him as it's own. The couple's relationship had become strained when Dylan had begun going to America to record his poetry - Caitlin preferred him writing poems not reading them, and she preferred him doing it where he had such strong ties - in Wales.
Anyhow, it was a very educational day for me in Laugharne, a nice break to have when outside everything's hot and sweaty, or even if it weren't. But the day was running long and I of course, had to say goodbye to Laugharne.
And finally, Laugharne to St. Clears
Really, not much to report on on this leg - if you'd like to know a little bit about my time in St. Clears I'll talk about it tomorrow.
But basically, the further I got from Laugharne, the further I seemed to get from any water. I was travelling field to field, field to road and field to field again, at times in enormously high grass - and in that enormously high grass were an enormous amount of bugs. This made me rue my choice of suntan lotion - I have a 15 that's combined with bug repellent (which btw is a great idea) and a 30 that lasts 8 hours (also a good idea). Because of the sun I'd chosen the 30 - but now I was pretty much covered in bugs and almost running to get away from them.
This got actually to a scary point when I crossed into one field to suddenly hear a very loud buzzing sound. I looked around and couldn't figure it out. Then I took a few steps forward and suddenly found myself in a giant swarm of bees. And I mean giant, not just a few, but probably several thousand all in a cloud swarming around the path. I valiantly did not swat at them, and ducked down (they seemed to be a few feet off the ground) and walked slowly through while of course trying to take a picture without looking through the viewfinder.
As it turned out I think they were moving up the hill I was moving across - so we just crossed paths for a minute or two. But yikes.
Anyway, besides the bug craziness, and a bit of help from a farmer who was waving me directions across his field that didn't at all match up to what the signs pointed to - oh, and I startled two giant falcons (I think) out of their dinner, and I saw a U.S. mailbox in the woods - not much happened. I reached St. Clear without issue, crossed the now-tiny Afon Taf (the westernmost tidal channel of the three prongs of water between Pendine and Burry Port), and headed to my amazingly decorated Airbnb stay with the great host and her lodger who offered me a job in a chocolate factory. Joking of course. I think.
