From a certain angle, Dylan Thomas’s ‘Boathouse’ seems almost suspended over the water below, perching on the cliffside, like the seabirds that fly in and out of his writing. What a view he had, sitting in his writing shed, looking out over the estuary – it was a wonder he wrote anything at all! Yet, it was here, that Thomas, Wales’ greatest poet, wrote many of the works on which his reputation now rests.
If we then pan out from ‘The Boathouse’ to take in the rest of the mysterious town of Laugharne in which it nestles, we find here in its corners and cobbles, its eccentric residents and timeless air, much of the inspiration for his great play-for-voices ‘Under Milk Wood’.
Who better than Dylan Thomas himself to introduce us to this town, in this three minute radio broadcast, a recording which not only captures his voice but also his prodigious literary talent:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01d8mby
Dylan’s ‘Laugharne’ is a town of ‘scandals, cherry trees and mysteries’:
‘Some entered the town in the dark and immediately disappeared and can sometimes be heard on hushed black nights making noises in ruined houses […]
‘Some have almost certainly come here to escape the international police or their wives. And there are those too who still do not know and will never know why they are here at all’. Dylan himself admits he: ‘got off the bus and forgot to get on again […] Here we just are and there is nowhere like it anywhere at all.’
One summer, I spent a happy week here, a place aptly known as ‘the strangest town in Wales’. On the trail of Dylan Thomas, I visited ‘The Boathouse’, of course, a cafe now opened to serve cream teas on the patio below. I toured the ruined castle, frequented the quirky shops, followed in the footsteps of Dylan’s own 30th birthday walk up ‘Sir John’s’ hill’, immortalised in ‘Poem in October’. I even drank, lifting a glass to Thomas, in his favourite pub ‘Brown’s Hotel’, requesting his favourite table, where, in the photograph above, Dylan is himself seated.
I sat on the bench that, like ‘The Boathouse’, looks out over the vast expanse of the estuary. Carved into the wood is a quote by his daughter:
‘The funny thing is I find myself going back again and again.’
Though I have never been back, in my mind, I find myself returning there often.
Every year there is a literary and arts festival to celebrate Thomas. Here is a wonderful clip of the folk singer Fionn Regan, the small audience squeezed into an upstairs bedroom in ‘The Boathouse’ itself.
