Whitland, Laugharne & Llansteffan

Whitland sits inland on the A40 corridor and grew around the remains of a medieval Cistercian abbey and a later market and railway junction. The town is a local service centre for surrounding farmland and woods, with lanes that link small villages and old drovers’ routes. Nearby fields and stone walls mark a long agricultural history, and occasional traces of old trackways and boundary banks can be found in the landscape.

Laugharne and Llansteffan face different estuaries on Carmarthenshire’s coast. Laugharne occupies a bend of the Taf estuary where a ruinous castle looks down from rock and the Boathouse and its small writing shed perch above the water, a place associated with Dylan Thomas’s later work. Llansteffan sits on the south shore of the River Tywi estuary with a Norman-era castle on the headland and a broad sand beach below the village. Together these settlements offer shoreline walks, tidal views and connections to local farming and fishing traditions that shape the rhythms of the area.