Gower Holiday Cottages

More About Holiday Cottages on Gower

East of Port Eynon the cliffs get bigger. Three Cliffs Bay is the one on every photograph of Gower, a stream bending across the sand between two headlands. There is no road to it, so you can walk in from Southgate or down the valley from Parkmill. You cross the stream on stepping stones, and at high tide it can be knee deep.

The north side is quieter. The land flattens into the estuary at Llanrhidian and Penclawdd and the tide goes out a very long way. You can watch the sun go down over those sands, which is why people drive up there in the evening.

Behind Rhossili there is a stretch of land called the Vile. It is still farmed in long narrow strips separated by earth banks, an acre or so each. That is the way most of England and Wales was farmed in the Middle Ages. The name comes from gefilde, an old word for field. Almost everywhere else the strips were merged into bigger fields centuries ago, and at Rhossili they never were. Holiday cottages on Gower sit on both coasts. You can choose the bays of the south or the quiet sands of the north.

In high summer the National Trust sows the Vile with flowers. The ground between Rhossili village and the cliff turns to stripes of colour, with Worm’s Head beyond. You can follow a circular walk round it from the village.

Rhossili and the beaches

At the south end of Rhossili beach the ribs of a wooden ship still come out of the sand. She was the Helvetia, a Norwegian barque carrying five hundred tonnes of timber into Swansea. A gale caught her in November 1887. She ran west round Worm’s Head for shelter, then the wind swung and put her on the beach. Nobody was drowned, and her stem post still stands about eight feet clear of the sand.

The wreck shows at low tide and goes again. Check the times before you walk down to it. Rhossili Sunflowers is a separate commercial farm. It opens for a few weeks in summer, charges at the gate and shuts in bad weather. Check before you set off. Gower holiday cottages are within a drive of both, wherever you stay on the peninsula.

Which beach suits you depends on what you want from a day. Port Eynon and Oxwich shelve gently and you can park near both. Rhossili takes the weather straight in off the Atlantic, and no lifeguard patrols it at any point in the year. Gower holiday cottages at Port Eynon and Oxwich are close to the two beaches that shelve gently.