A walk around Llandovery in mid Wales (part 1)

Llandovery is a small market town in mid Wales. It is in the county of Carmarthenshire and has a population of just over 2,000.

The town has connections as far back as Roman times. Later on it was an important staging point on the drovers routes heading east towards England.

These days the town is known mainly for Llandovery College, one of a handful of private schools in Wales, and the annual Llandovery Sheep Festival.

Last week I had reason to visit the town. I thought I would take you on a quick walk around the town while there.

This is Stone Street, one of the main shopping streets in the town.

There are barely any national 'chain stores' in Llandovery. Most of the shops are small independent, family run shops like Ratcliffes, a traditional ironmongery and hardware store.

One of the most important shops in the town for me is P & ER Thomas Shoes.

I have rather small feet and take a 6.5 shoe size. It is usually very hard to find much of a selection of shoes in my size. But this shoeshop always has a good range to chose from. The owner, Philip Thomas, takes the same size as me...

On the corner of Stone Street is a rather odd juxtaposition of La Patisserie, a traditional bakery, and Ozzy's, a burger, kebab and pizza house right next door.

Turning out of Stone Street into the main Broad Street some of the shops are looking a little the worse for wear these days.

Further along Broad Street I passed No.14, a cafe that has just closed down and is selling all its fixtures and fittings locally on Facebook.

Ahead is The Castle Hotel, a central feature in the town. The hotel houses a small local history museum.

I hadn't visited the museum so I popped in to have a look - that will be the subject of another post.

Just for reference The Castle has an electric car charging point at the back. A couple of years ago when I had a Renault Twizzy on a 3 week trial I stopped there for a charge.

Continuing along Broad Street I get to one of my 'must-visit' shops in Llandovery - Iechyd Da the wholefood shop.

Established by owner Jake over 20 years ago, it a traditional 'alternative food' shop packed to the gills with all sorts of interesting natural and organic foods to try.

On this visit I bought a very tasty roast vegetable pastie, a feta cheese and asparagus pizza and some delicious chocolate and pear cake. All were made locally by a lady whose name I didn't catch.

Asking permission of the owner Jake to take the interior shot I got talking about what I was taking the photographs for.

Jake was interested in steemit, and the woman helping in him in the shop had actually heard of the platform and was thinking of signing up. I left them my steemit address. Hopefully we will see Iechyd Da on the platform sometime soon.

I hope you found my little walk around this quiet mid Wales town of interest.

I'll do more as I travel about if people would like to know about other places in my part of Wales.

You might also be interested in some of my other posts :

[ all photographs by pennsif ]