Laugharne

The fame of Laugharne (Talacharn) has been spread throughout the world by its association with Dylan Thomas, who died in l953 in New York City. To get to this charming, little town with its imposing castle ruins and its "heron-priested shore," we need to bypass the towns of Swansea and Carmarthen and then turn towards the coast at St. Clear's. Laugharne (pronounced Larne) is now a busy little town that takes full advantage of the thousands of tourists who come to see Brown's Hotel on the main street, site of many a drunken bout between Dylan and his wife Caitlin.

Thomas's unpretentious grave in the little churchyard; the beautiful walk along the tidal estuary of the River Taf, where the little fishing boats still "tilt and ride"; past the castle and up the steep hill to the boathouse, where he and Caitlin lived and loved and fought together, with its accompanying paper-strewn and empty-beer- bottle-littered shack where the enigmatic, untidy wretch of a man wrote many of his minor masterpieces.

An annual July festival now takes place in Laugharne to celebrate Dylan's work, but the town was also home to lesser-known but important Welsh poet Edward Thomas. Summertime tourist traffic brings chaos to the narrow streets of Laugharne, but we can find escape in the lonely fields and lanes on our way westward to our next sacred spot in the medieval kingdom of Dyfed. Here, in the county of Pembroke, we find the largest church in Wales and the shrine of St. David situated in the smallest city in the British Isles.