High in the attic of Brown's Hotel, Storm Brian sounded very loud indeed. It woke us several times in the night. I wondered if we'd complete our walk. Maybe we'd have to come back and stay another time. I wouldn't mind.
Laugharne looked sullen the next morning. The cockerel weather vane swung moodily.
The castle glowered.
Parked next to the salt marsh was a trailer crammed with hounds. Some of them had blood on their faces.
I don't like the hunt. I don't like the unloved life of the unloved hound.
We took the path signposted Dylan's Birthday Walk up through the woods.
These days the route is punctuated by information boards and benches inscribed with phrases from 'Poem in October', but it was originally built to help pickers access the cockle beds more easily.
It was fairly steep, very muddy, and deserted apart from us and Brian.
Carmarthen Bay came into view - sort of.
At a point where we could look back at the Boathouse and the estuary, the Northerner read 'Poem in October' while I sat on a bench inscribed with the legend Summery on the hill's shoulder.
A little further on we came to a fingerpost carved with the words The Last Verse. Apparently, you're supposed to descend the path here, and if it is your birthday, read the last verse of the poem aloud. We looked at the track and at each other. It was really steep and really muddy. It wasn't my birthday any more. And it didn't seem right to read aloud
'O may my heart's truth still be sung
On this high hill
In a year's turning'
when you are no longer on the high hill in question.
Oh and neither of us care to be told what to do ... unless it's by poetry, of course.
By now, Brian was thrashing fleets of trees across the sky with a terrific creaking.
We climbed another precipitous, muddy path out of the woods and up to a stone stile, which led Over Sir John's Hill. Beyond it, cattle were grazing threateningly. The Northerner doesn't much care for cattle. I don't care for precipitous, muddy descents of tracks I've just climbed, especially not since I broke my leg.
We braved the cows. They ignored us.
As soon as we'd passed the castle, it started to rain. Mission accomplished, it was time to go home. So we did.
The sky turned red and then stopped being red and the Poetry Festival ended with readings from Sarah Howe, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Rishi Dastidar; plus two poetry shows, The Venus Papers and the resonant and enthralling Leasungspell. I hadn't managed to get to every event, but still clocked up ten in a fortnight which is a lot for an introverted type much more at home wrapped up in a knitted blanket with a cup of tea. It had been great ... but exhausting.
There was a birthday - mine - looming too, the observation of which I've always found a bit overwhelming. But the Northerner sets store by such markers, so I girded my lions and other big cats and we set off for Laugharne in Carmarthenshire ...
... to Brown's Hotel, to be precise, which we'd visited earlier in the year. This time we were staying the night. With the dog. Because in Brown's, dogs are welcome.
After a settling-in drink, we set out on Dylan Thomas's Birthday Walk, which provides the grist for Poem in October ...
... a long, lyrical excursion which is, I suspect, especially beloved of his fellow October-borns.
Having visited Dylan and Caitlin's grave in May, we didn't feel the need to go back there so soon. Better to focus on the living word.
As it was, the churchyard was rather more sombre than it had been in the lushness of May.
At the church door we encountered a woman who was just finishing the cleaning, so I asked her if I could pop in for a moment. 'Are your boots clean?' she asked. I looked down at my walking shoes which were still covered in a slip of grey Sussex chalk. Luckily they are grey anyway. 'Sort of,' I said.
She'd lived in Laugharne all her life, she said, and asked if we liked Dylan's poetry. 'He was never as bad as they make out,' she said. 'It was That New York that Did For Him.'
She mentioned Augustus John, and when I said he'd been Caitlin's 'lover' when Dylan and Caitlin met, she winced a little. 'You know, I think they only did what poetry told them to do,' I said, borrowing a useful line from Birthday Letters. 'Or ... art - you know - in the case of Augustus.'
10th century Celtic Cross
We continued our walk, which took us down a deep lane that eventually wound around to the coast.
Oak
Field Maple
The good red mud of the West Country which had been overlain by the grey chalk slip of Sussex was now being covered by the good red mud of Carmarthenshire.
Rhossili Down and Worms Head in the far distance
The Boathouse, decidedly less bustling than in May
We'd intended to continue our walk up over Sir John's Hill, but while we were wandering, the weather had turned around, as in the poem, and Storm Brian was blowing in.
So we repaired to Brown's and Ted, who thinks everywhere we visit is potentially a new, long-term abode, made himself at home.
The Pelican, where Dylan's parents were tenants from 1949 to 1953 and where Dylan's wake was held
Laugharne, in Camarthenshire.
A little touristy, but not overly.
Not that gentrified either.
In fact, probably not that different from when Dylan Thomas lived here, from 1949 to 1953.
Here's the castle, 'brown as owls' ...
... and the salt marsh which floods at high tide ...
... leaving a strange, seaweed- and dead crab-strewn tideline on what looks like ordinary grass ...
... but is anything but. (We call it 'warth' where I'm from.)
We were headed for Brown's Hotel, Dylan's favourite bar, to meet up with friends.
And did those feet tread these boards? I think they almost certainly did.
In between all the hard talking and laughter, we made our way along the road to the famous boathouse, bought for him to live in by his benefactor, Margaret Taylor, who was infatuated with him.
But first the shed where he would write.
This is the boathouse ...
... looking out over the beautiful estuary.
You're not supposed to take photos inside. Luckily for me, I only discovered this after I'd snapped a few.
Evidently Dylan wrote here too.
His death mask.
After a cream tea on the sunny decking, we set off for St Martin's Church, where Dylan and his wife, Caitlin, are buried.
This is probably the 'sea wet church the size of a snail with its horns through mist' of one of my very favourite poems, 'Poem in October'. (This is my birth month too.)
If you go down to the woods today ...
... you'll eventually come across Dylan and Caitlin's grave.
So little for such big personalities.
I have form for reading poems at gravesides and grizzling before I get to the end. Today was no exception.
'Oh may my heart's truth - sniffle sniffle'
It's no good, we're going to have to come back to walk the Dylan Thomas birthday walk.
Maybe in October?
High in the attic of Brown's Hotel, Storm Brian sounded very loud indeed. It woke us several times in the night. I wondered if we'd complete our walk. Maybe we'd have to come back and stay another time. I wouldn't mind. 
The castle glowered. 
