John Fish B.Sc. Publishers of Tenby in Wales (UK)

TENBY PORTAL PAGES

Naples of Wales

They were now standing on top of the Castle Hill. Binns rubbed the palm of her hand against the grey limestone of the twelfth century Norman keep: "I love history and as soon as we arrived here I somehow felt as if I'd come home. It's all here, the history of mankind from the beginning of the Stone Age right through to the Alien Age of the twenty-first century. That white marble statue is of Prince Albert who was Queen Victoria's husband and there's always a seagull standing on his head! It's said that some nights on a full Moon when Saint Mary's Church clock strikes midnight in the dead of winter he climbs down and walks around the mediaeval streets inside the town walls. Do you believe that?"

"You seem to know a lot about it."

"Tenby Town Council has a web site on the Internet and the Tenby Observer newspaper publishes a complimentary tourist guide. That's the town's Museum and Art Gallery, and that's the Lifeboat Station. The lifeboat is called the RFA Sir Galahad after a British ship which was sunk in the Falkland's War. I'd love to be in the lifeboat when she goes down the slipway after the two maroons have been fired. You see how all the buildings of the old town are all higgledy-piggledy? That's why Tenby's called the Naples of Wales. The big rock stack in the middle of the North Beach is called Goscar Rock, when the tide is in it's surrounded by the sea. My secretary's dog is going to have puppies and she's promised me one, and that's what I'm going to call him: Goscar!

"I love to just close my eyes and listen to the sea ... it's always different yet always the same. The other night there was a storm and I'd taken this guy I met back to my room, it was really erotic making love with the waves smashing rhythmically against the cliffs, just listen to the sea ..."

"And the seagulls!"

"The seagulls, yes, this morning I fed them with some bread from the kitchen that the chef gave me. I stood on the Paragon and the tide was in, and all around me were flying hundreds of seagulls, and when I threw a piece of bread always one of them would catch it."

The Sun was setting behind Tenby town now and in the late May of early summer the prevailing south-westerly wind was decidedly chilly. Either that or the sight of Carter walking along the pathway below them, around the bandstand and then down the steps which led onto the Castle Sands at the far end of the South Beach which with the bluish turquoise tide out, stretched well over a golden mile to the bluff grey green-topped headland of Proud Giltar: the Sunset deepening its reddish glow and so promising a fine day tomorrow.

 

Extract from Preseli Bluestones by Sion Pysgod

Published at Tenby in the Pembrokeshire Coastal National Park (Wales, UK)

As a Star of Pembrokeshire Series Paperback