A walk around Llandovery in mid Wales (part 1)
Llandovery is a small market town in mid Wales. It is in the county of Carmarthenshire and has a population of just over 2,000.
The town has connections as far back as Roman times. Later on it was an important staging point on the drovers routes heading east towards England.
These days the town is known mainly for Llandovery College, one of a handful of private schools in Wales, and the annual Llandovery Sheep Festival.
Last week I had reason to visit the town. I thought I would take you on a quick walk around the town while there.
This is Stone Street, one of the main shopping streets in the town.
There are barely any national 'chain stores' in Llandovery. Most of the shops are small independent, family run shops like Ratcliffes, a traditional ironmongery and hardware store.
One of the most important shops in the town for me is P & ER Thomas Shoes.
I have rather small feet and take a 6.5 shoe size. It is usually very hard to find much of a selection of shoes in my size. But this shoeshop always has a good range to chose from. The owner, Philip Thomas, takes the same size as me...
On the corner of Stone Street is a rather odd juxtaposition of La Patisserie, a traditional bakery, and Ozzy's, a burger, kebab and pizza house right next door.
Turning out of Stone Street into the main Broad Street some of the shops are looking a little the worse for wear these days.
Further along Broad Street I passed No.14, a cafe that has just closed down and is selling all its fixtures and fittings locally on Facebook.
Ahead is The Castle Hotel, a central feature in the town. The hotel houses a small local history museum.
I hadn't visited the museum so I popped in to have a look - that will be the subject of another post.
Just for reference The Castle has an electric car charging point at the back. A couple of years ago when I had a Renault Twizzy on a 3 week trial I stopped there for a charge.
Continuing along Broad Street I get to one of my 'must-visit' shops in Llandovery - Iechyd Da the wholefood shop.
Established by owner Jake over 20 years ago, it a traditional 'alternative food' shop packed to the gills with all sorts of interesting natural and organic foods to try.
On this visit I bought a very tasty roast vegetable pastie, a feta cheese and asparagus pizza and some delicious chocolate and pear cake. All were made locally by a lady whose name I didn't catch.
Asking permission of the owner Jake to take the interior shot I got talking about what I was taking the photographs for.
Jake was interested in steemit, and the woman helping in him in the shop had actually heard of the platform and was thinking of signing up. I left them my steemit address. Hopefully we will see Iechyd Da on the platform sometime soon.
I hope you found my little walk around this quiet mid Wales town of interest.
I'll do more as I travel about if people would like to know about other places in my part of Wales.
You might also be interested in some of my other posts :
MSP Waves Radio - Pennsif's Alternative Lifestyle Show : Three Guest Finders join the team
SteemRadio - schedule of all the steemit radio shows - week beginning 29 January 2018
Pennsif on DLive : 'unboxing' of parcel from @papa-pepper [26 January 2018]
Steemit in Wales - list of steemians in Wales - 100% growth target smashed
Go Local to Go Big : Four Stages in Building Steem Backed Local Community Networks
Homesteaders & Preppers on steemit - the We are Sparta edition - 300 reached - v12 [12 Jan '18]
Delivering a 5 week steemit course to promote the platform in Wales - anyone done anything similar?
SteemCommerce - Businesses accepting payment in steem (v 2 @ 3 January 2018)
[ all photographs by pennsif ]
What does Iechyd Da translate to? I'm pretty sure I remember my grandad, who was from Wales, uttering this or something very similar on a regular basis.
Hello @stormriderstudio. It means 'good health'. It is also used as 'cheers'.
Thanks! Always eager to learn new things and you taught me a thing. Hooray for things!
Nice description of a lovely little town. We had a walk around Llandovery last week, very cool statue in the caste grounds😛. Shame it was bucketing it down for our walk around the town.
It was pretty damp the day I was there too - not unusual in west Wales.
You might want to join SteemWales Discord Server :
Useful for connecting with other steemians in Wales, promoting your posts and keeping up to date with planning for the first Wales steem meetup on 10 February.
There are a bunch of videos on YouTube titled "Escape to the Country" where folks from the city look for homes in the country of England, Wales, Scotland, and N Ireland. The best part is that you get a wonderful geography lesson on all these places. Not to mention the correct pronunciation of the locations which seems always to escape us who speak English other than the Queen's. Great post..
Nice. Yaar
this looks very delicious, makes me hungry. I have never tried a food called pizza, how to taste that pizza?
and what makes me drool to see it is a brown pie..
That looks like such a cute quiet town. i'm sure everybody knows everyone there. i'm thinking of the movie Hot Fuzz when i look at the photos :D
The organic store though... so much good yummy food to try.
Love a walk around a small town that still has local shops that carry on business for the townies and the occasional visitor. I would make it a point to take a little drive if I could find shoes or groceries anything without a big box store. Thanks for sharing your walk with us. 🐓🐓
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A very cute little town! I like the oddly angled Stone Street corner building the best. I have never been to the UK (save one short layover at Heathrow) but Wales is on my list of places to visit one day. I'm a sucker for unique accents (I know that sounds cliche).
Looking forward to learning more about the towns there and part 2 of this one!
a very beautiful city with neat buildings. the food you post must be good once I want to try it.