Another Rainy Castle Roadtrip

Continued from Part 2…

After a poor night’s sleep on my part, we set off from the AirBnB a little later this morning, about 10am. It was already pouring with rain, so we made a plan to get Helen into some bookshops and cafes while I’d do explore more castles.

Laugharne

Pronounced either “lawn” or “larn”, according to two different Welsh people. This was the first stop on today’s adventure, with Laugharne Castle (also named Castell Talacharn, not sure if this is the original Welsh name, will do more research if/when I visit it), but unfortunately it’s closed on Wednesdays!

Worry not though, we went into a little gift shop called Choices, and ended up spending about 30 minutes chatting to the owner about all sorts! She was so lovely, we decided to buy half the store, so walked away with a new ornament for the house, two handbags, and a box of chocolate chip shortbread.

Carmarthen

Next stop on the list was Carmarthen. A few book shops for Helen, another castle for me (hoping this one would be open and keep me entertained), and some lunch.

Lunch first, and a restaurant called The Welsh House Carmarthen by Wynne. Wynne Evans was apparently a contestant on MasterChef, so several of the dishes on the menu were labelled as MasterChef dishes. Of course we didn’t fall for the hype, and instead just ordered brunch. A full-English for me, and smashed avocado for Helen. It was delicious. Probably the best sausages I’ve had at a restaurant before!

Carmarthen Castle

After lunch, I took a very brief look at Carmarthen Castle. Probably the most disappointing castle of the trip, it was just an entrance. I walked through, and thought “where’s the rest?” 2/10, wouldn’t recommend.

Helen barely had enough time to fill a basket with books in the local bookstore by the time I was done!

Llansteffan Castle

At this point, I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms from seeing a good castle, so I left Helen in a cafe and drove to Llansteffan. The rain was absolutely torrential on the way there, but luckily it stopped just as I was pulling up into the car park.

I wasn’t prepared for the half-mile hike uphill to the castle while it was still spitting, but if I didn’t get my castle fix soon, I was going to collapse! This next image is half way up the hill towards the castle.

At the top, it reminded me a lot of Beeston castle near us. An outer wall atop a hill, with a well in the middle of the grounds. Although it’s slightly more intact than Beeston.

The views from up here were of the River Towy were spectacular, but it was so windy!

This was another 12th century Norman castle, but by the 14th century it was already in a poor state of neglect, after only being in service for a couple hundred years.

One last interesting thing I found here was at the top of the main gatehouse, one of the safety rungs was filled with love locks. Shout out to “Ginge and George”!

The entire time I was up there, and the entire walk up and down, I didn’t see a single other soul. But then you’d have to be pretty mad to want to hike up a hill in the pouring rain to see a castle on an extremely windy hilltop that’s several miles out of any civilisation.

Kidwelly Castle

The journey from Llanstefan to Kidwelly took me back through Carmarthen, where I picked Helen up from the cafe I’d left her in (see? I wasn’t going to abandon her really) and topped up on petrol. I was caught up in school traffic in a small village called Johnstown which I accidentally referred to as Jonestown to the staff at Kidwelly Castle. Then we (I) got lost trying to find the castle, so we only arrived at 4:35pm. I missed last entry by five minutes, but they were kind enough to let me through after hearing about my travel plight and castle addiction.

With only 20 minutes on the clock, I had to be fast. Again it was windy, but at least now the rain had stopped and it warmed up a bit. Kidwelly Castle was used in the opening scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but unfortunately I didn’t have any coconuts with me, nor could I remember what the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow was, so I just got on with exploring.

Wait, was that an unladen swallow flying through that shot?

You’d never guess it, but this was another Norman castle built to conquer Wales in the 12th century.

Can you spot Helen in the next picture?

Back to the AirBnB

For dinner tonight, we just grabbed a few bits from the local Tesco and had them in the AirBnB. I need to catch up on sleep so we can visit more castles again tomorrow!