Fun though Somerset was, it was nice to be on the road to Wales.

We had a Welsh "honeymoon". The inverted commas are there because 10 days in a tent with a car that had started leaking possibly doesn't merit that glam descriptor. The weather really wasn't great: Showers in Tenby; persistence in Pembroke; torrents in Fishguard... But there were lots of nice things, too: Swimming in the sea on one of the sunny days; going to see the latest James Bond movie; having a wonderful cream tea somewhere; walking out to Worm's Head and along the sandy beaches of the Gower; waking up to find badgers had raided the tent at St David's; and finding a fabulous book shop there, unexpectedly selling cheap French and German novels.

But now it's 2026, and our last visit to Wales was in 1993, when -- as this time -- we were en route to Ireland.

Thirty-three years...

We broke the journey in Caerphilly, which -- as we all know -- is famous for its castle (the largest in Wales, and the second-largest in the United Kingdom), and its cheese (not the "dry and crumbly" version mass-produced in English factories, but the "moist and oh-so-creamy" real deal, for which you have to come to Wales).

The castle is impossible to miss. Dating from the 13th century, it's THERE in the middle of town, visible from every direction:






The cheese, though, was way more difficult to track down.

We paced the streets; we swung through the little market. No cheese.


Eventually, we tried Morrison's cheese counter. "We don't sell it," said the helpful lady, "But you can get it at the upmarket butcher's on Bartlett Street." She gave us directions. "Upmarket" turned out to be not a descriptor but a name: The Upmarket Butchers. And they had Caerphilly cheese!

Which we ate for lunch:


Fabulous. A nicely chewy texture; a good, slightly sharp taste. How sad that "production of Caerphilly almost completely disappeared in Wales"; but three cheers for the "growing number of artisan cheesemakers [who] have ensured that this most Welsh of all cheeses lives on in its original form".

OK, so this was a Welsh-made Caerphilly (from Lancych, Carmarthenshire), but actually not a Caerphilly-made Caerphilly. There IS such a thing, produced by Cumni Caws Caerffili, and there's even a Big Cheese Festival later in the summer. But doing justice to either of those propositions would take more time than we had.

Anyway, what else about Caerphilly? Well, it was the birthplace of Tommy Cooper. Remember him?


And it's a very pleasant little place:




A little while ago we watched a movie called Denmark, directed by Adrian Shergold, and starring Rafe Spall. It was filmed partly in Senghenydd, a former mining village about four miles northwest of Caerphilly. It's a tragicomic little piece, featuring a young Welshman who's doing so badly in life, and is so beset by the system, that he thinks his best chance of success is to get himself jailed in Denmark.

It's hard to imagine that desperation here, as Caerphilly comes to life on a Saturday morning. The town is certainly reputed to be a pleasant place to live.

We can't linger any longer, however, as the car needs to go back to its Swansea mothership by 1300, and there's petrol to buy.

***

Freed of our car (delivered back to Enterprise) and our packs (housed at the hotel), we were able to do some introductory Swansea walking. It's not an elegant city. But it has some interesting buildings...






We're back in a Premier Inn (with aircon!); we're near a supermarket; there's lots to do; we'll definitely get on well here.