Weobley Castle

      A jaunt onto Gower this morning and a visit to Weobley Castle, romantically set high above the salt marshes on the north coast of the peninsula with wide views across the Loughor estuary and far to the Brecon Beacons. On the landward side the castle stands beside a working farm. As castles go not at all large, but a comfortable fortified manor house, the best remaining example of its type in Glamorgan according to the Buildings of Wales volume on the county. Some nice architectural details too.  In places the ruins seem to merge with the natural outcropping rocks. 

   From there to quite my favourite village on Gower, Llanmadog, wth sheep grazing in the village street and ancient stone walls and even older parish church. A place to treasure. We took a brief walk along the coastal path towards the pine woods of Whiteford Burrows and Cwm Ivy Torr, a place of utter silence and solitude. Le Pays de Galles Profonde. A truly remarkable place, very atmospheric if not faintly disturbing in its emptiness. I can quite understand its folkloric associations. From there back to civilisation and the lovely Cwm Ivy cafe for tea and cake.

A morning on Gower: St Madog, Llanmadog

     The next village west of Cheriton - at the very north west of the Gower - is Llanmadog.  The sacred enclosure of St Madoc.  Early gravestones found in the churchyard and now inside the church indicate that this was an important site for the early church in this part of Wales. One of the stones dates from the late 5th century and reads: ADVECTI FILIUS GVAN HIC IACIT.

     The founders of the church could not have chosen a more lovely site - there are beautiful views across the estuary of the Loughor, and along the northern shore of the Bristol Channel west toward Tenby.  A serene place. A place to treasure. The church is tiny, just a two celled structure with bristly, dumpy west tower; the interior is atmospheric, redolent of Ecclesiological Society correctness. Again there is a sense of the ancient although the church was enthusiastically restored in the 19th century by John Prichard for Rev J D Davies who, as at Cheriton, made some of the fittings himself. In the porch swallows or martins nest above the church door.