By Brian Finch
We went to Wales with an Italian friend, over the August Bank Holiday weekend, to look at lighthouses. I am not sure I ever imagined writing a sentence like that but lighthouses do have a particularly interesting characteristic: they are usually located in spectacular locations because, as a result of their purpose, you will find them on rugged sea coasts.
We drove from London on a Friday evening, stopped overnight outside Newport, and drove on another three hours the following morning to the Dale Peninsular near Milford Haven. Apparently this area at the far southern tip Wales is called ‘Little England Beyond Wales’ because the population has not been Welsh speaking for hundreds of years, possibly because of settlement by Flemish or Viking peoples. Despite being very close to a heavily industrialised area the views are magnificent and even the refinery chimneys of Milford Haven to the east are elegant in the distance.
For guidebooks, we used ‘Lighthouses of Wales’ which, for lighthouse enthusiasts, is just one in a series covering the UK, and also one of the ‘The Pembrokeshire Coastal Path’ series.
We dumped our gear at a superb guesthouse, Allenbrook, in the centre of the village of Dale and took advantage of a bright sunny day to head straight out in the afternoon for a 6 mile walk around the peninsular with the objective of St Anne’s Lighthouse, near the half way point of the journey. Given another day there we would have taken the walk north up the coast. Dale itself is set in an attractive bay and, as demonstrated by the presence of a castle, was once an important place. Today it is a small village and watersport centre.
The coast, with its brightly coloured red rocks, indicates the high iron content and references the mining heritage of Wales. Just offshore you can see two small islands, Stokholm and Skomer, but a trip to their lighthouses was out of the question due to lack of time but also the absence of a regular boat service. I understand that it is possible to arrange trips, though.
A fairly easy walk past some cattle and pretty white ponies grazing on the path took us to St Anne’s Point where the lighthouse buildings have been converted into holiday cottages. It turns out that all lighthouses are automatic nowadays and no longer need a resident team to look after them.
Beyond the lighthouse we came to the small cove where the Duke of Richmond aka Shakespeare’s Bolingbroke landed on 7th August 1485, going on to fight King Richard III at Bosworth Field just three weeks later, emerging as victor and with a new name as King Henry VII. It really is a strange feeling to look at the stones underfoot and think that a man stepped there one day who went on to conquer a kingdom, transform the legal system of the country and father another man who would break with Rome and destroy the medieval church system. Quite appropriately we passed, on our way home from this trip, the skeletal remains of Tintern Abbey in the Forest of Dean, which was demolished by agents of that King Henry VIII.
In the meantime, further around the coast of the peninsular we passed a soaring modern shipping beacon that uses radio rather than light to alert shipping and finally we returned to Dale for a well earned dinner at The Griffin, a local pub restaurant that boasts the distinction of having its very own local fisherman to supply it. That’s one way to guarantee fresh fish.
The next morning we set off down the coast for the Mumbles, just outside Swansea, which is a pretty seafront resort area close to the City. We were too pressed for time to spend be able to spend much of it looking around and had to focus on our objective, though the pier right next to the lighthouse is certainly worth a stroll. There are restaurants around the entrance to the pier but a rather better one next to the nearby carpark.
At low tide you can pick your way across to the rocks to the lighthouse, which is worth it for the view back to the pier, which also houses lifeboats and their launch ramps. Whilst looking the other way across the rocks you have the lighthouse, which is not a particularly beautiful building but is certainly in a striking location. There are clearly visible remains of a causeway that once linked the light to the mainland but its stones, scattered by the winter seas, now make the walk harder, having once made it easier.
And so onward to our final lighthouse at Nash Point, the other side of Swansea. Down some narrow roads past residential areas you emerge into countryside and then suddenly out to the cliff top for a view of a classic looking lighthouse. We also arrived just as the huge foghorns at this site were being tested. A surprisingly large car park probably caters for walkers as well as pilgrims like us and is graced with a small café which provided well-timed and excellent Welsh Cakes together with a welcome cup of tea. On summer Sundays the lighthouse building is open to the public and we met a pair of lighthouse-men on site, climbed the tower, inspected the lamp and looked out to sea through binoculars, in the approved professional manner.
And finally, back to overnight at a guesthouse near Tintern, in the Forest of Dean, overlooking the river Wye.
My first visit there was in 2001 when we stopped in the Crescent City during our transcontinental trip from Florida to California. We only had a few hours to explore this amazing place before heading further west. We did our best, walking constantly for hours through the streets of the French Quarter, and the city really made its impact.
This time we decided to stay here for longer and booked ourselves a cheap room in a guest house right on the 
ppi driving south from Memphis on the Interstate 55 and our entry was, lets say, less than grand. The state boundary cuts across the far outskirts of Memphis so the only way of knowing that you have crossed it is to look for a small sign on the side of the suburban looking freeway indicating the beginning of the DeSoto County.
by Caroline Sandes