My Welsh Waterstones Tour: Stop 3- Carmarthen

There is one problem about this tour and that is my visits are too short. I just want to come back again and see more of the places I see.

I have been through Carmarthen more times than I can remember. It is the half-way point between my mother's family in Swansea and my father's in Cardigan. I remember a hill and narrow twisting roads, and somewhere a wizened old tree, barely alive, which could not be allowed to fall otherwise the town itself would fall...

But sometime since then the tree has gone, and the town suffered little except for a little flooding (although no more than normal, so I hear).


I stayed at an old inn - a quiet convenient place in the middle of town, and after returning from Swansea made my way through the square to this.


And my table in the middle.


I had a truly excellent time. I abandoned the idea of handing out boiled sweets as an ice-breaker (which hadn't worked in Swansea - no one wanted one) and went wandering around the store a little, chatting to people before returning to my table with my films.


But then a man came into the shop specifically for my book having seen an article about it in the local paper, and then a photographer came to take my picture for next week's paper. This was all due to the efforts of the booksellers in the shop so I was delighted.


In the middle of all this my editor Penny Thomas popped in to see me, and after my allotted time I met her and the author Fflur Dafydd in a tea shop. Then, pausing to collect my bag from the inn, caught the train back home. It was a long journey (five hours) but I'm glad I made it.