Laugharne, Carmarthenshire

The little Carmarthenshire town of Laugharne in Wales is a pretty little place and it was glowing in the late spring sun. Pah, you can take the Mediterranean

Among other anniverseries, 1914 is the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas, one of Swansea’s most famous (and dissolute) sons and Laugharne is inextricably linked with him because he lived here in his later years its life is parodied in Under Milk Wood as the small town of Llaregub (try saying that backwards).

His writing studio is preserved and has seeping wonderful views of the Towy Estuary and Carmarthen Bay from Swansea all the way to the tip of Pembrokeshire.

Its so off the track though that it remains unspoiled and wears its in-house celebrity lightly even during Thomas’s centenary year. The pubs, for example don’t carry signs saying “Thomas drank here”, although presumably because he drank at every one of them; every night

“Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the
slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you
can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms. and petticoats
over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth,
Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching
pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the
eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes
and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes
and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.
From where you are, you can hear their dreams”