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More About Cottages in Laugharne

Sir John's Hill rises above the estuary beyond the castle, and the path over it is the walk the town is known for. From the top you can see the whole channel running out to the sea.

West of the town the lanes drop to Pendine, five miles off, where seven miles of flat sand run away towards Amroth. St Clears, four miles inland, is the nearest town of any size.

Five miles west of Laugharne there is a beach that was briefly the fastest place on earth. Pendine Sands runs seven miles at low tide and dries hard and flat, which made it perfect before purpose-built tracks existed. In July 1925 Malcolm Campbell drove a Sunbeam called Blue Bird along it at 150.766 miles an hour, the first man anywhere over 150.

His rival was John Parry-Thomas, a Welshman from Wrexham, who had bought a huge aero-engined car and rebuilt it in his own workshop. He called it Babs, and the following year he took the record past 170 miles an hour on the same sand. Campbell then took it back.

On 3 March 1927 Parry-Thomas came to Pendine to win the record again. The car went out of control at speed and he was killed. Babs was buried in the dunes above the beach where it had crashed, and left there.

It stayed buried for forty-two years. In 1969 an engineering lecturer from Bangor called Owen Wyn-Owen got permission to dig it out, and then spent fifteen years putting the car back together. A museum was built for it at the top of the beach and opened in 2023.

Babs runs again. It lives at the Museum of Land Speed at Pendine, on loan from the Babs Trust, and is still taken out and driven at events. Ring the museum before you make the journey for it alone.

The Museum of Land Speed opens Tuesday to Sunday from March to October. There is a film room where the record runs play out along the sand in front of you. It is small and cheap and about right for an hour.

The beach outside is free, and at low tide the sand runs out the better part of a mile. People still bring cars and bikes to Pendine to chase records, and the village behind it has a shop, a pub and a large car park.

Ragwen Point closes the western end of the beach, and Amroth is round the headland just over the county line. You can pick up the Pembrokeshire Coast Path there and walk the first mile of its 186 miles.