Welcome to Wales: Corgis, Cawl, and Cyclone Reports

Friday March 7, 2025

We spoke to both Sarah and the friend who was staying at our house this morning. All was okay, but Cyclone Alfred was due Friday night and the council had told everyone to get home by about 6pm. Fingers crossed all is well. Sarah sent me the pic below to show the current weather conditions at her place.

We left Fursdon at about 9.30 am to head to Wales today to begin the Via Everywhere In Wales Mum Has Named A Corgi After part of the Bottom To The Top Via Everywhere In Wales Mum Has Named A Corgi After Tour. Today we intended to tick off not one, not two, but three corgi names – Taffy, Tenby and Morgan.

Mum and Dad have always had corgis – Welsh Pembroke corgis. They got their first almost sixty years ago, before I was born. That corgi had a litter of pups and they kept one of them. Other than the first and the current dog (which already had names when she got them – but, thankfully, Welsh names), Mum has always taken out the map of Wales and chosen a place name to call the dog. On this trip through Wales we’ll be detouring to find some of these place names.

We’ve both been looking forward to this leg of the trip. While we visited Tenby on our first trip to the UK (together) in 1995, since then we’ve only ventured across the border as far as Chepstow and Tintern (see here and here).

I’ll always remember my first proper day in England on that visit way back in September 1995. Aunt Anne and Uncle Tom took us across from Gloucester to the markets at Chepstow Racecourse. It was raining and we bought cockles with vinegar and pepper in these little plastic bags to eat as we  walked around. When it was time for lunch we stopped at the big hotel in Tintern, overlooking Tintern Abbey, and ate roast pork that tasted more like pork should taste than I’d ever had.

I couldn’t comprehend that:

• there were things that were as old as the Abbey
• we’d passed into another country (Wales)…just like that
• any river could be as tidal as the Severn was.

Almost thirty years later, these things still amaze me – even if the welcome to Wales sign on this part of the motorway is less than inspirational.

Although grey and foggy when we left Devon, the weather deteriorated on the road and by the time we stopped at Taff’s Wells on the River Taff – incidentally, a tick in the first Corgi box – it was cold and very grey. Shirley’s (the friend we stayed with back in Dorset) prophecy was ringing in my ear, “It always rains in Wales.” It appeared she might just know what she was talking about…

In search of Caerphilly cheese, we stopped at The Welsh Cheese Company in an industrial complex at Taffs Wells. While we bought some Caerphilly, it wasn’t made up the road in Caerphilly. You see, while Caerphilly cheese originated in Caerphilly, these days most of it is produced in England – namely in Somerset and Wiltshire. We did, however, buy some Caerphilly and a couple of Welsh cheeses.

Other than the cheese shop, Taffs Wells doesn’t have a lot to offer on this cold, grey, threatening-to-drizzle Friday so we head for a pub in Morganstown (equally as uninspirational) to find some lunch…and the pub is full. We recall seeing a Garden Centre down the road, so head there instead and have our first bowl of Welsh Cawl. Cawl was, I decided, invented for cold, grey, drizzly Fridays… in fact, any cold, grey, threatening-to-drizzle day.

Back in the car and the forecast 1.5 hour drive to Tenby took almost double that, with us arriving at about 4.30 pm. One of the selling points about the Airbnb apartment we rented was the car park – something in very short supply within the town walls. This carpark, however, required all the parking skills Grant has plus more. There were centimetres in it. Heaven knows how we’ll get back out again. Let’s just say that if I was driving there wouldn’t be an unscratched fender on that car.

The apartment itself is great and honestly could not be any better located. It seems as though every surface in the kitchen and bathroom is either shiny or shiny and black. There are even remote-controlled coloured lights under the (shiny black) kitchen cabinets. They’re totally wasted on us, I mean, who needs remote-controlled coloured lights under the kitchen cabinets? This aside, the apartment is really comfortable.

We head into town for a walk, stopping at Tenby’s oldest pub (dating back to the 1600s), the Coach and Horses, for a beer. This pub’s claim to fame is that Dylan Thomas once got so drunk in here (from all accounts, there was nothing terribly unusual in that) that he left his manuscript – the only copy of the play’s manuscript – Under Milk Wood, on a seat in the bar.

While I’ll tell you more about Tenby next time, below are a few pics from our grey Friday afternoon walk.

Dinner tonight was at the Hope & Anchor. I had the seafood pie because it contained laverbread (or Welshman’s caviar, made from seaweed), and laverbread was (along with Caerphilly cheese, Welsh cakes, Cawl, Bara Brith and Glamorgan sausages) on my list of foods I had to try in Wales. Grant had a pork chop with chive mash and black pudding. The pics are dreadful, the portion sizes ridiculous, and the meals average (at best). The salad, however, was good.

In other news, all is silent on the cyclone front – Alfred, it seems, has decided to hang out just off the coast for another day.

Oh, and the drizzle we’d been driving through stopped as we arrived in Tenby. Despite the weather forecast, I’m convinced the sun will be out tomorrow.

Seafood Pie

Even though we don’t have access to laverbread, today’s recipe has to be Fish Pie.

I make Rick Stein’s version (the recipe is here), cutting the recipe in half for just us.

The stats…

Temperature: 8-9

Miles travelled: Approx 200 miles*

*Even though we work in kms in Australia, all signage in the UK is in miles, so that’s what I’m going with.

These posts are taken directly from my travel journal … you can find the series here.