Wales: A few days in Gower

Gower (not the Gower, we were informed) is a peninsula beyond Swansea on the south coast of Wales.

We stayed at Parc-le Breos, a country house hotel with enormous lawns, where housemartins zoomed around a few feet above the ground.

Just a mile away was a neolithic burial site, where the bones of at least 40 individuals have been excavated.

From the hotel it was less than half an hour's walk down to Three Cliffs Bay on the south coast.

A few miles to the west we found Oxwich Bay.

At the western end of the peninsula is a rock formation known as "Worm's Head" (a worm meaning a dragon), with the broad beach of Rhossili Bay alongside.

Gower is a maze of footpaths, with many banks of wildflowers. Alongside the main road out of Swansea, beds of wildflowers are ingeniously placed in the wide grass lawns.

We visited two castles. Weobley castle, on the north coast, looking across the estuary to Llanelli, is more of a fortified manor-house than a serious castle. It was mostly the work of the de la Bere family in the 14th century 

In the late 15th century it was the home of Rhys ap Thomas, who in 1485 came out in support of Henry Tudor when he landed in Wales in his successful campaign to overthrow King Richard III. Rhys was rewarded by being made a Knight of the Garter. The family's rise to prominence was to be shortlived, for in 1531 his grandson, Rhys ap Gruffudd, was executed for treason and Weobley reverted to the Crown.

Oxwich castle, in the south-west of the peninsula, is in fact an Elizabethan mansion,whose defences are purely for show. It was built by Sir Rice Mansel and his son Edward, but had been abandoned by their descendants by the 1630s and fell into decay. 

Swansea (or Abertawe, to give it its Welsh name) has always been the principal town of the region. It was given its charter in the mid-12th century, and today in Swansea old and new sit side by side. 

Swansea castle was rebuilt and altered on many occasions; for although Gower came under Norman rule just a few decades after the Conquest, it was attacked and sometimes overrun by Welsh rebels right through to the 15th century.

We spent the only wet day of our visit in the National Waterfront Museum, which was largely devoted to the industrial history of the area, and was most interesting. This picture is a model of Richard Trevithick's steam locomotive. 

In conclusion, we enjoyed our stay to Gower,and would recommend it to other visitors.