Swansea; Monday, 06 August, 2007

I checked out of the hotel, left my bags with them and headed off into town and the bus station. There I picked up the bus to Kidwelly, west of Swansea. The highlight of the town is its spectacular castle, built, originally, by the Normans in the 12th century to subdue the Welsh, it swapped hands several time during the first hundred years or so, but then remained firmly in English hands through rebellions and uprisings, mostly due to its design of concentric rings of defence, outer walls, inner walls, lots of murder holes and arrow slits, it’s pretty much everything that you expect from a castle.

Much of the site is in ruins today, but you can still get a good feel of the whole castle, and from the top of the still standing south tower you get views over the whole of the town, and much of the countryside beyond, empasising quite how important this site was to keep. Nothing moved around this area without the castle knowing.

After spending a considerable time exploring the castle I hopped on the next bus on to Carmarthen, to have a quick look around the remains of it’s castle, of which not so much is in existence. A large part of the medieval castle has been replaced at some point by the county offices, but one of the gate towers, part of the outer wall and a fragment of one of the towers is still standing, and once again offers commanding views over the surrounding countryside.

I walked around the town for a short while before heading to the train station. Whilst there are not very many trains to Kidwelly, there is at least one train an hour from Carmarthen, and at half the time it takes by bus, it made much more sense to go back to Swansea this way (added to that I only had two and a bit hours to get back to Swansea, get out the Ibis, pick up my bags and get back to the station!)

I arrived back in Swansea and walked back to the hotel, through the modern SA1 development, this is the regeneration of the docks in the city centre and is doing to Swansea’s Docklands what they have done to London’s and Cardiff’s. I picked up my bags and walked to the bus stop to catch the bus back into town and then on up to the station, arriving with about 30 minutes to spare before my train, or as it turned out 10 minutes to spare before the delayed train from an hour before. I’m not quite sure what had caused the delay on the earlier train, but mine pulled out of Swansea on the dot of 5:30.