One Month in Southern Wales

We are wrapping up our one month stay in southern Wales. Specifically, we’ve been in Llantwit Major, which is in the Vale of Glamorgan, about 15 miles west of Cardiff. It has been a fabulous month of exploring the surrounding area by public transportation and hiking and we couldn’t have asked for a better start to our three months in the UK.

A typical sight on our walks!

Llantwit Major

Llantwit Major sits in southern Wales just off the Bristol Channel coast. On a clear day you can see across the Bristol Channel to Exmoor National Park and the Somerset coast. The Wales Coast Path cuts along the cliffs of the shoreline with dramatic scenery. The town itself is a fantastic hub to explore south Wales and Somerset. It is well connected by train to other cities in the Vale of Glamorgan and into Cardiff, where you can catch a train on the mainline to other cities in Wales and England. The bus routes here are also great, taking you to neighboring villages for scenic hikes, or to the Cardiff Airport which is only 8 miles away. We’ve become big fans of travel by bus!

Llantwit Major is an ancient town, with its history deeply seeded in the pursuit of learning. This was home to the Monastery of St. Illtud and it’s college, one of the earliest centers of learning in the UK. At it’s peak, over 2000 students studied here. Surviving Viking raids and the Norman conquest, it remained an important institution until the dissolutionment of the monasteries in 1539. Today, you can still visit the 13th century church, one of the oldest in Wales.

The village itself has four fabulous pubs right across the street from each other, some dating back to the 1400s. There are winding lanes and nooks and crannies. We enjoyed daily walks through the village, discovering stunning old houses, beautiful gardens, and crumbling castles at every turn. The town had everything we needed for daily life, including 3 grocery stores, two pharmacies, plenty of restaurants and coffee shops, and several barbers.

This is a family town. In our seven months of travel, this is the first place we’ve stayed where there were families and children everywhere. This is also commuter town, with most people working in Cardiff or nearby Bridgend. ‘

We also realized pretty quickly that tourists, particularly foreign tourists are pretty rare in Llantwit. More than once, people commented on our “accents” and asked us where we were from, or commented that they couldn’t understand us! We found this pretty funny! We were also surprised by the prevalence of the Welsh language everywhere. Welsh is a Celtic language. And in contrast to Spanish, French, or Portuguese, it isn’t a Romance language, and it is pretty indecipherable if you don’t know it! In talking to some locals, we learned that children learn Welsh right alongside English in school. All of the street signage and train signage is in both Welsh and English. And we found many people to have quite thick accents of their own! Definitely different than the London accent we were accustomed to.

Our Airbnb

We stayed in a super cute, but small, Airbnb about 1/2 mile outside the main part of the village. Our Airbnb was a cottage behind the owner’s house in the suburban part of town. This was our first time staying in such close proximity to our hosts and we had frequent interaction with them and with their cocker spaniel! It was also our first time in what was essentially a studio. There was one main room with the bed, a sitting chair, an armoir for clothes, a bookcase, and a small table with stools for dining. Behind a dividing wall was the enclosed bathroom, a desk for working, and the kitchen. The furnishings were very high quality and the kitchen was well equipped, although we didn’t have an oven. I’d guess the entire unit was about 250sq ft. It was small, but also incredibly affordable, and gave us the ability to explore the area a bit more without breaking our budget!

Donny the cocker spaniel coming for a visit!

As we’re still working, we did rearrange the furniture some to make the best use of the space. On rainy days, we had to make room for the laundry rack too!

Daily Life

We really lived our dream life here in Wales for this month! There are countless hikes in the area and we took advantage of many of them. It was the perfect location to catch the local bus along the coast, hop off for a 6-8 mile hike, then hop back on to head home. We also took several city break trips during our month long stay. We visited Cardiff multiple times, went to Somerset for a weekend, and went to Bath and Bristol for day trips by train. We even went to a movie once!

We’ve settled into a great daily routine. Slow leisurely mornings where we enjoy our morning coffees, dedicated time for workouts for me and runs for Eric, time for laundry or cleaning, a morning walk with a stop at the grocery store, and cooking a big lunch. Weekday afternoons and evenings are focused on work. Friday - Sunday we pick 2 days to do extensive sightseeing or hiking, with the other weekend day focused on relaxing!

We were very happy to get re-aquantied with British food again, and indulged on fish and chips, Indian, and savory pies probably more than we should have! Good thing the walking counter-acted the food! And as was true in all of our travels, we enjoyed finding interesting items in the grocery store that you would never see in the US!

In general, food and alcohol is more expensive here than it was in Mexico and Portugal, and the currency conversion doesn’t help. 1.00 GBP = 1.35 USD. Two pints of beer in the pub cost about £14 or $19. Ouch! A typical meal out with a shared starter and 2 mains has been about £50 or $67. We’re also spending more on entrance fees to tourist sites on our day trips. But we have managed to find some low cost rentals in smaller towns to help offset that. And our goal is to balance out our budget for the year, while balancing higher cost and lower cost destinations. This is one of those higher cost destinations, but honestly not that much different than the US!

We were blessed with FABULOUS weather our first week here, and it spoiled us! But before long, the blue skies and 75 degrees gave way to more typical weather. The 15 minute daily walk to the grocery store became a bit more annoying over our last three weeks! We finally broke down and bought Eric an umbrella! We also took advantage of being in an active Amazon location and restocked some of our clothes, shoes and supplies while we were here. It was very easy to have our packages delivered to the local Post Office where we could pick them up.

One of our many rainy days walking to the market!

We’ve absolutely loved our time here. We were instantly comfortable re-adjusting back to British life and we took advantage of the great public transportation system pretty quickly. We started off with a bang, and can’t wait to spend the next 10 weeks in the UK! Next up, we head north to West Yorkshire!