I kept checking the weather this morning, and while the forecast was still for rain and heavy winds, it looked as if they wouldn’t start until between 10:00 and 11:00. We were packed and headed out around 9:15, so I took a chance on getting in one quick outdoor sight. Happily, there was a spectacular one very close by – Castell Carreg Cennen.

Carreg Cennen was only about four miles from our B and B, but the good one-lane, hedge-lined Welsh roads made it so it took about twenty minutes to get there. The entrance to the grounds is a privately owned farm, so we paid our fee and went, of course, up. The path took us through a well-populated sheep field, and near the top, the path got confusing. I could head straight up the hill for the last part, or take a path that looked gentler. I took the path around the castle and ended up against the wall and a steep drop. I can only assume the wily, defensive-minded sheep were chuckling.

We backtracked and got up to the castle itself. It was not so complete as the Newton House grounds castle from yesterday, but the views were impressive, and the ragged outline of the castle was evocative (the English painter Tuner painted a picture of the castle in the late 1700s). I was delighted when I saw a sign for “Stairs to Cave,” but was even more pleased when the gate was open. Down we went.

Remember how the forecast called for rain and wind? The wind had arrived, and the castle tunnel to the stairs to the cave was acting as a wind tunnel. Mer had some serious blonde-outs going on. We climbed the steep stairs down into the cave, which was a natural one, and I thought we were done. All good fun. Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw  that the cave went back into the hillside more in a passage. I turned on my phone flashlight, and we cautiously made our way along the cave. I think we got about a hundred feet back (and down some) when I turned around because footing was getting slick. I looked it up later, and the cave goes back 160 feet and ends in a small pool of water, which would have been useful for a castle with no well.

Back up we went, and now it was spitting rain, and the wind was picking up. Another couple came up into the castle, but there were still only four of us there. Mer and I picked our way around the accessible parts, which were mostly along one wall, and admired the view, which was rapidly disappearing. There was a line of rain moving in, so we moved out. Just as we got to the base of the castle, but with the downhill still to go, the wind picked up and started lashing rain at us. It was what I refer to as “Shannon-hiking weather.” (Shannon is my twin brother. His hikes tend to be in challenging conditions, for some reason.)

I was pleased we had gotten in an outdoor sight, but now the rain did come on as forecast – fairly heavy and with wind. We drove an hour south, to the coastal city of Swansea, Wales’ second-biggest city, with 170,000 people. I had been looking for indoor things to do, and we were there to see the Dylan Thomas Centre.

I knew very little about the poet Dylan Thomas, but I knew he was an important writer. I found out today that he is best known for his poetry, but he also wrote screenplays (especially during WW II) and short stories. He died at the age of thirty-nine in a hotel room while touring America. It wasn’t clear from the museum, but it sounded as if he drank and smoked too much and was accidently given too much morphine after he had collapsed.

The museum was small and laid out in chronological order. Thomas worked very hard at his writing and early on pestered publishers with his work to get his words in print. He moved in quite the crowd of people even as a young man – he wrote to or met ee cummings, TS Eliot, Picasso, and a host of other writers and artists. While Thomas asked many of his writer friends for feedback on his work, Thomas was very generous with his time in helping other writers too.

So, like many people, Thomas was a complex person. He was passionate about his work; he worked hard but played hard too. He loved his wife deeply but had at least two affairs on her. He probably drank too often, but was gregarious in the pub and talked with anyone at hand. He was close to his parents and often lived near them. Thomas’ friends said he was almost always happy. He certainly knew how to celebrate language.

We spent two hours in the little museum and then headed outside. The weather had gotten worse. I started us walking toward another museum a few minutes away, but we were quite wet within two blocks, so I detoured us into a Fridays restaurant because it was there and it was warm and it was dry and I was hungry. Not a very European experience, but it did the trick.

At 3:00 we headed back out into the tempest and made our way two more blocks to the National Waterfront Museum. I had come away from the webpage of the museum thinking it was a museum of science and industry for Swansea from 1900 and on. It sort of was, but it was also about the people of Swansea – showcasing groups like miner brass bands and rugby teams and trade unions and women’s suffrage organizers. The museum had many audiovisual displays, but we never found any for which the sound worked. Some of the exhibits felt unorganized and crowded, but because there was a large open space in the middle of the hall, maybe they were getting ready for some big event. I think the museum has some great potential, and I loved the section on writers and artists who came from coal and slate mining families, but the museum needs to make sure things are in order and working. I came away a little disappointed, but I was also tired and a little wet and cold.

And so we headed west to our B and B town for the night, Pembroke. We hit a fair chunk of traffic, got channeled off of roundabouts in the wrong direction (twice), and hit a construction detour, and had heavy rain, so that the seventy-minute drive took two full hours. On the plus side, just as we were pulling into town, the rain stopped. As such, after supper, we spent an hour walking on paved trails that go around the exterior of the mighty Pembroke Castle, which I hope to explore in more detail tomorrow.

So the day began and ended with bonus touring of castles. That is a good day already, and the Dylan Thomas museum added to a fine outing.