A Dairy Diary
- Helen Daniels
- Jul 12
- 3 min read
The last week of our South West adventure was spent in Wales. The journey, from my brother’s house in North Devon to our converted dairy on the Gower peninsula, took 5 hours including a stop for lunch. It was 180 miles and we ended up 36 miles from where we started, as the crow flies. If only there was a ferry!
The Dairy was a single storey building on a working farm. Our hostess, Gwyn, was very friendly and was happy for us to move furniture to create more space. There was an open plan living area, two bedrooms and a small shower room. Outside, a paved yard front and back provided a lovely space to sit when the sun shone, and the sheep often shared the area too. This was to be home for the next week.
Our first day here, found us driving north to visit a dear friend. We had a lovely time with Sian who made us so welcome and cooked a delicious meal. It’s always a joy to meet up with friends, especially those we don’t see often.
The following day, we set off to explore Rhossili and Worms Head. It was a breezy day, but we found a sheltered picnic table to eat our lunch, and made use of the Changing Places toilet in the National Trust car park. It was a fairly easy walk from there to the headland where Racheal and I waited while Summer explored the causeway linking the island to the mainland. Racheal enjoyed the wind while I had fun taking some creative photos (unfortunately they take up too much memory space for the blog to cope with). On our walk, we also saw the wild ponies. Back at Rhossili car park we had a choice of three cafés. We chose the one aptly called ‘The View’, which had a couple of wheelchair accessible, outdoor tables.
On the return journey to The Dairy, we made a diversion to visit Weobley Castle. Really it is a fortified house, rather than a true castle, now in the grounds of a farm. We nicknamed it Wobbly Castle and spent a good few hours over the next week imagining it as ‘home’ complete with lifts for Racheal, balconies to enjoy the view, secret tunnels and the like, although in reality it lies in ruins.
The main reason for choosing this area to stay was for Racheal to try surfing at the Surfability Centre in Caswell Bay, which she did on Friday after a morning in Mumbles. There will be another blog specifically about the experience, but here are a few photos for now.
The Saturday was forecast to be wet, so we opted for a train ride to Carmarthen. It was a pretty trip with plenty of coastal and river views. All the railway staff were very helpful, including the cleaner who showed us where to find the Changing Places Toilet at Carmarthen station. We managed to dodge most of the rain and, although Carmarthen is not the most exciting town, enjoyed a pub lunch and a bit of shopping before a circuitous walk back to the station.
We found a quirky museum to explore the following day. The main building was an old watermill but all manner of additional sheds had been added to house just about anything you could think of. There were birds in aviaries too. It was much bigger than it appeared from the road so we spent a few hours there. A lot of it was wheelchair accessible with careful route planning.
We packed a lot into the day before we came home. Firstly, Oystermouth Castle, in Mumbles, which had a very steep path up to it, and even steeper grassy bank inside which we bravely tackled. At the visitor’s centre we chatted with a couple of volunteers and gave them some suggestions of ways to make to make the site a little more accessible, without affecting the ancient structure. As always, we made sure Racheal got to experience as much as possible.
Racheal had had her lunch at the castle, but Summer and I were getting hungry, so we made our way along the seafront to the pier to find a café. From there, a twisting coast road took us to Oxwich where we enjoyed a long walk in the beach, collecting shells as we went.
Our five week tour of south west England and south Wales concluded with a 6 hour drive back home, still with the punctured radiator which had been repaired by the RAC in Devon. It still had a slow leak, but topping it up before we set off and halfway home was sufficient to get us home safely. We met up with another friend of mine on the way home, enjoying lunch and a walk at Coombe Abbey to break our long journey.
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