Swansea; Saturday, 04 August, 2007

After a belated start I finally made it into the centre of Swansea a little after 11. I headed over to the bus station to catch the bus out to some of the castles on the Gower. However, after spending 55 minutes on the bus, then changing, then spending another 35 minutes on another bus, I came to realise that more than two castles in a day would be impossible. However, I wasn’t massively worried, a combination of spectacular scenery, and the constant presence of that very fine, very soaking light rain, made me quite glad to be on the bus for a large part of the day

My first stop (which was at about a quarter past one!) was Weobley castle, high on an outcrop of land overlooking the north coast of the Gower. A lot of the outer shell of the castle remains, and from the higher points on it you get stunning views over the coast, looking along a broad sweeping bay.

One of the rooms of the main tower has been partly restored to act as an exhibition space to tell the history of castles on the Gower, including lots of information on Weobley and the other castle managed by Cadw (The Welsh Historic monuments service) at Oxwich, which made up for the fact that I would be unable to visit it because of the time it had taken to get to Weobley.

After looking around the castle I had a look at the timetable and found the bus back to connect with the bus back to Swansea wasn’t for another two hours, but a closer inspection of my guide book revealed that the bus had gone on a massive six mile loop around the countryside to get to the castle, so I was less than 2 miles from the hub of public transport in this area (i.e. one bus an hour!) at Llanrhidian Cross, so I walked up the road and sure enough 35 minutes later found myself at the bus stop at Llanrhidian in enough time to make the bus an hour earlier back to Swansea.

Instead of going the whole way back into the city centre, I got off at the hospital and changed onto the bus out to Oystermouth, the centre of Mumbles. I walked the short distance from the seafront up the hill to the castle.

Oystermouth castle is in a more ruinous state that Weobley, but you can still access the battlements, from where, if you peer through the fine mist of light rain that was falling, you get stunning views of the whole sweep of the Swansea bay, from the tweeness of Mumbles, through the city centre and onto the slightly less beautiful industrial and refinery works at Port Talbot.

I came down from the battlements at the same time as the custodian was ringing the bell to let people know they were about to be locked in, and walked back to the bus stop to catch the bus back into Swansea city centre and to dinner, pausing to stop off at the station to buy my ticket for my Sunday sightseeing trip.