DAY 86 TUESDAY JUNE 19 OLD SOUTH WALES

What a great day we had today.  Because of the shocking weather we had on Saturday, Roam Wales decide to allow us to have our tour of South wales all to ourselves with Chris once again as our guide.  He picked us up at our hotel at 9.30am in a Fiat taxi that they use for tours and drove us to Swansea. First we went through the Dylan Thomas Museum which demonstrated the high esteem he was held in in his home town (like James Joyce in Dublin).  Lyn paid her respects to his statue.

We explored the waterfront with Chris then he let us wander around the new National Waterfront Museum. There happened to be a display of works by students of Design which included these two:

ELECTRIC BIKETHAT CAN ALSO BE PEDALLED

SUZUKI VAN THAT CAN TAKE TWO MOTORBIKES

While we were there a group of young children was being entertained by a pirate who spoke in Welsh.

We drove further along the coast to the town of Mumbles (formerly Oystermouth) where we had fish and chips and peas in a Cafe at the back of "Treasures", a shop recommended by Chris that sold mostly Welsh products.  Then we walked up the hill to the Oystermouth Castle.  Since there are several hundred castles in Wales we thought we could manage one more on our last day here.

It only cost 3 ponds for the two of us to get in so we spent half an hour exploring, learning its history since the twelfth century and enjoying the views of the bay.

We drove to the next beach (Carswell Bay?) which was a summer playground for the rich complete with the traditional sheds which Sydney people can see no use for.

After enjoying these quite beautiful coastal spots we were warned by Chris that the best was yet to come.  He drove us around more impossibly narrow streets stopping to let cars, trucks and buses pass us at little niches, until we suddenly found ourselves at the start of a headland at Rhosilli.

THE JEWEL IN THE SOUTH WALES CROWN

We walked out onto the Headland with Chris and watched a paraglider and a hangglider making the most of the sunny day on the hills overlooking the beach.

The tide was coming in and we watched it gradually cutting off Worm Headland to make it an island. The tides can be 52 feet here, second only to Newfoundland for extremes.

On the way home we passed Burry Inlet and Crofty and saw more of the beautiful coastline. It took an hour to drive home on the M4.  Chris was a great guide and he was just as thrilled as we were that the weather turned out to be perfect for the trip. We owe Roam Wales a big thank you for looking after us so well.