Day: June 28, 2025

Today we drove to Tenby, an hour southwest of St. Davids on the southern coast of Wales. It was initially a Viking settlement, which later became a Norman port. English followed later, and even though it’s within Wales, it retains its Victorian seaside resort persona. The center of town is within the ruins of a castle wall, the walls being built in the 13th century to defend against the Welsh (the Welsh, understandably, didn’t appreciate the English presence).

*Full disclosure: this information has been gleaned from AI and Edwin.

The castle is long gone, eroded by the sea, salt air, and lichen. We explored the fort that still stands, which you can only walk to during low tide. It was super creepy: a dark staircase down to even darker candlelit rooms, which they still have decorated for Halloween with spooky cloaked dummies. They filmed an episode of Sherlock here as a maximum security prison. Very fitting.

The town is about as charming as it gets, even with loads of tourists. The rows of pastel homes and grand hotels perched above the sea with green rolling fields and forests in the background are truly stunning.

We made it back to the cottage in the evening, where we got to scratch Rosie the pig behind the ears and get Jan’s recipe for bara brith (speckled bread full of dried fruits soaked in tea). Now it’s time to play spades.

Yesterday we went to Skomer Island to see puffins. When i booked the trip back in January, I hadn’t realized how many puffins we’d see and how close they would let us get. Jan gave us a clue when she said we were going at the perfect time and that they’d be everywhere. She said we’d come back with faces sore from smiling so much.

We drove the hour (more skinny lanes and pulling over into hedges to let oncoming cars pass) to the car park and got ready to board the boat. The boat captain, Jim, was an entertainer and had trained a seagull to ride on the boat for the 15-minute trip to Skomer Island. The bird is called Tonto (the lodge attendant revealed to us that there are actually three seagulls he’s trained, all referred to as Tonto) and would alternately perch on the boat and glide above us. He joined us for the trip back and proceeded to poop on another passenger’s head and briefly land on Edwin’s head.

From the moment we stepped onto the island, we were enchanted by the puffins. They estimate there are 43,500 puffins. Though they kept their chicks in the burrows (I managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of the top of a fuzzy gray head) they were comfortable crossing paths in front of us and hanging out on the hills just a few feet from us.

Though the puffins were the stars, we saw manx sheerwaters, various gulls, oystercatchers, gannets, guillemots, and kittiwakes. Some of these nest on cliff-sides and are very noisy. I remarked that they sounded like middle school lunchtime, and then I read in the guidebook that the kittiwakes have a shrill voice and sound like children in a school playground from a distance. There you go.

After our four-hour mosey around the island, it was time to re-board the boat. I picked up a puffin Christmas ornament and a pack of puffin playing cards at the shop, feeling uplifted. Jan was not wrong.

Welcome to Wales! Edwin has been planning a Wales trip since he discovered we have ancestors on both sides from here. He’s been studying the language and history and is thrilled we’ve finally made it.

When we left Oxford Thursday morning, we quickly found ourselves on very narrow roads with walls or hedges running right up to the edges. I tried very hard not to shriek as we came upon oncoming traffic. The vehicle closer to a tiny patch of shoulder room would yield to the other. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we took roads beginning with an M, A or even B. M stands for motorway, A for a little smaller, and B for a little smaller than that. It’s the unlettered roads that can be two-way, 60 mph, and really only wide enough for one car.

We stopped in the town of Brecon, Wales to walk around and have lunch before driving into Brecon Beacons National Park for a short hike. Edwin translated for us, even though everything is listed in both Welsh and English. I think he’s working up the courage to speak to a local. Our friend in Oxford said the gen Xers don’t love having you try to speak Welsh to them because they were raised when they were forbidden to speak it. It wasn’t until the nineties when they went through a rebirth in national pride and opposition to England’s efforts to suppress their culture.

After lunch and a walk around town, we drove a half hour more, this time dodging sheep as well as oncoming vehicles to the waterfall hike. Chris really wanted to hike longer, but we were still running on too little sleep, and I wanted to leave plenty of time for finishing our drive in daylight.

After another couple hours of driving, we arrived at the Lidl grocery store in Haverfordwest, a decent sized town about a half hour drive from our rental home. I didn’t realize the roads could get any narrower, but as we drove the final stretch of the way to the cottage, it appeared we were driving down a footpath. When we pulled up to the cottage, Ty Draw (“house beyond”), I wanted to kiss the ground. John and Jan came out to welcome us, along with little Meggie, a tiny version of what looked like an Airedale Terrier. They told us Meggie was a rescue, along with the horses, pigs and other dogs on the property. They’ve been taking in abused and neglected animals for years.

After settling in and having a simple dinner, we explored the property. John and Jan said we could walk wherever we liked, so we crossed a few fields and came upon horses on our way to have a view of the sea. It was nearing 9:30, just before the sun sets here, when we made our way back and crashed hard for our first night of decent sleep.

Brecon Beacons National Park