Wales: Writer's block

Dylan Thomas' house - now a museum - was bought for him by his benefactor in 1949. Photo / Visit Britain

The voice takes me by surprise. "Have you seen any of them electric cars here?" it seems to be asking, though I'm not sure I've heard correctly.

I wheel round, tearing my eyes away from the view of the 13th-century ruined castle. A tidy middle-aged man with a striking ginger moustache is closing in on me across the car park. Too late to run.

"I'm sorry?" I say.

"Them electric cars," he repeats, "I seen them on the telly, like. They reckon they'll be everywhere, but I never seen one. Have you?"

Laugharne, described by Dylan Thomas as "the strangest town in Wales", seems determined to live up to its reputation.

It is warm - maybe that brings out the cuckoos. But spring has properly sprung and it's no time to be mean-spirited.

Thomas catches the mood perfectly in Under Milk Wood: "The sun springs down on the rough and tumbling town. It runs through the hedges of Goosegog Lane, cuffing the birds to sing. Spring whips green down Cockle Row, and the shells ring out. Llareggub this snip of a morning is wildfruit and warm."

Thomas spent the last four years of his alcohol-curtailed life here. Laugharne, in the great British tradition of misleadingly spelled place names, has more letters than it needs - it is pronounced "Larn".

It is officially a town, but that's a rather grandiose title for what is little more than a village perched on the Taff estuary - albeit a very picturesque one.

Its main claim to fame is in the (much-debated) suggestion that the fictional Llareggub of Thomas' most-famous work was modelled on Laugharne.

Thomas wrote his "play for voices" here. To see exactly where, I take the path from the car park around the perimeter of Laugharne Castle, which overlooks the mudflats and marshes of the oozing estuary.

The castle, with its wrecked turrets and crenellations, is an archetypical romantic ruin that has inspired poets and painters. Having lived in the town at various addresses, Thomas had his eye on the Boat House for years. In 1949, he finally got his chance, courtesy of his benefactor, Margaret Taylor, who bought it for him.

The Boat House is now a bijou museum, and some of the rooms have been preserved as they were in Thomas' time.

The house balances on the cliff; an unlikely beacon of domesticity in an elemental wash of sea, sky, clouds, mud and rocks. With home comforts managed by his long-suffering wife, Caitlin, Dylan would retire to his writing shed (a converted garage) about a hundred yards from the house.

Bathed in the ever-changing play of estuary light and surrounded by the cackle of waterbirds, the shed is a perfect factory for poetry.

It seems likely that the Llareggub ("bugger all" spelled backwards) of Under Milk Wood is a composite drawn from various places the poet lived in. But Laugharne has become Thomas' creation anyway, where his work and likeness are milked for every last drop of associative value.

Fern Hill B&B is named after his famous poem, and Seaview, one of the Thomas homes in the town, is now a hotel trading on its literary heritage.

At the aspirational Hurst House hotel, just outside town, Thomas' poster-sized image looks on, entirely appropriately, from behind the clutter of the bar.

In souvenir shops you can buy Thomas CDs, DVDs, books and "Do not go gentle" coffee mugs.

Thomas' favourite bar, however, Brown's Hotel in the high street, is shut and in a sorry state - it was bought a few years ago by actor Neil Morrissey (Men Behaving Badly), but his plans to redevelop it have foundered.

The high street itself comes as a surprise to anyone expecting a typical Welsh village in the sticks. Though run-down in parts, much of it is Georgian and rather grand.

And there's the surrounding countryside, Thomas' country. On St John's Hill, where "the hawk on fire hangs still", views take the eye down the river estuary and out to sea beyond the gold braid of the Pendine Sands.

The beach and the dunes are owned by the Ministry of Defence. Visitors are faced with a series of increasingly ominous signs: "Danger. Firing Range. No entry", advises the first bluntly; the next: "Security: The emergency state is heightened".

I press on, albeit with a mounting sense of unease, down the deserted road, threading through the live-fire zones. I am relieved to reach the public car park, unscathed.

Now it's the council's turn to ratchet up the stress - "No swimming, no crossing the estuary, danger - sandbanks, mudflats, tides", says the stern notice.

Out of the car park I get a final warning - "You are now entering a potential explosive site" - accompanied by a graphic image of an explosion. By the time we hit the beach, I'm convinced this is the most-dangerous spot on earth.

But it is also one of the most beautiful. The tide is out and the flats seem a mile wide; to the right the highway of sand stretches west for 11km.

The surface is so perfectly flat that it was used for attempts on the land speed record in the 1920s. Malcolm Campbell set a series of records in Bluebirds 1 and 2 here, before a fatal crash decapitated another driver and the attempts were stopped.

A tragedy, but, as Karl Marx predicted, history repeats itself as farce. I learn later that somewhere on the beach today, Campbell's grandson is breaking the world lawnmower land speed record by hitting nearly 141km/h.

The Laugharne end of the sands is blissfully quiet and unpeopled. In the distance, through the shimmering haze, I can see a couple, hand in hand, walking barefoot at the surf's edge.

Much closer, a round man is flying his radio-controlled toy plane - pushing it into angry little circles in the sky. A dog appears through the dunes.

Overcome by the vision of endless space, he takes off like an ecstasy-fuelled rocket. I wait for him to explode, either by treading on some discarded munitions or, more likely, from pure joy.

- INDEPENDENT