President Jimmy Carter

A sad day today, maybe not unexpected given he was over 100 years young! President Carter was a great man, but maybe what’s less know is that he was a friend of Wales in general, and an admirer of Dylan Thomas in particular. When visiting Great Britain in 1977 he wanted to visit Laugharne in West Wales, the final home and resting place of the great Welsh poet. His schedule meant he couldn’t make it, but he petitioned with Archdeacon Knapp-Fisher of Westminster Abbey for Dylan Thomas to be commemorated there. Despite initial reluctance (due in no small part to Thomas’ reputation – exaggerated! – as a hard drinker, a memorial to him stands there today.

President Carter also came many times to Wales to fish, at Nantgaredig on the river Tywi in Carmarthenshire , Llyn Clywedog in Mid Wales, and the Teifi Pools high above Tregaron in the Cambrian Mountains. All places I’d have loved to have been a tourist guide for him – well him plus several bulky Secret Service people as well no doubt! If you’d like to see the places he visited, then maybe I can help drive you as you go in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter.

And if you’re more in poetry than fishing (and the two needn’t be mutually exclusive!) then I can arrange driven tours also to visit areas where Dylan Thomas lived and worked, as well as the house in Swansea (that “ugly, lovely town”) where he was born.