Julie Brominicks revisits a historic maritime village on the southern coast of Wales, where cockle pickers have foraged the mudflats for hundreds of years – and still do today
Julie Brominicks is a landscape writer who lives in Wales.
DAY OUT: Llansteffan, Carmarthenshire
Beyond Afon Tywi and a strip of bright sand is a string of colourful buildings and a wooded headland on which sits a broken castle. My first glimpse of Llansteffan from Glanyfferi was 10 years ago, when you had to walk another 17 miles to reach it via the first crossing of Afon Twyi at Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen).
The walk was green and interesting, but I regretted the disappearance of the ferry, which travellers of old had used. But now, the ferry is back. It is the way to arrive.
Llansteffan, after all, situated on the spit between the Tywi and Tâf rivers, is maritime in spirit. But it is also sylvan, with its woodland known as The Sticks. A place where both cockle shells and beechnuts crunch underfoot.
ESTUARINE BEAUTY
The village is charismatic, too. Although the local shop no longer boasts a post office, it now sells a darn good pizza instead. The Pound – a circular building once used for rounding up cattle – is a gallery these days, the pubs serve up banter and beer, and the silence within
