Station Bridge

The crow's nest

More shots of the famous Station bridge that crosses the railtrack at Burry Port/Pembrey station. As I have written before on this blog, this was a very popular hang out spot for my friends and I from around 1988 until 1992 ish. The heart of the town, or the 'crow's nest' as I always thought of it.
Some notable places you can see from this bridge are Barrie's Plaice and The George on the left and the Portobello Inn over there on the right. Carry on up the right and you'll find The Hope & Anchor pub.
You can see now how conveniently placed the chip shops and pubs are in Burry. The merry drinker can almost fall into Barrie's for a rissole or pie after a session in the Port. Very handy!



This is a view of the bridge from the bottom of Stepney road. the big red building in the background is the Neptune Hotel. When I was a boy it was the Carbay club and was one of the first pubs I ever drank a Coke in. (Courtesy of my father). In my minds eye, I can still see inside as it used to be all those years ago, with the dark wine colour leather seating lining the walls and big set windows. Emotions can go a little haywire, especially when one thinks of all the times, good and bad, that have passed by since the Car Bay club closed.



This is approaching Station bridge from the harbour. The building to the immediate right is one of the old Jones Newsagents (or 'top shop' as my brother and I called it), and the place nextdoor (you can just see the red shutter) is Smartiland sweetshop. Every childs favourite place back in the day. Slush Puppies and red laces! In the 1970's it was simply called Ken Rees's after the owner.

Port Slang

Here is a list of slang words we used in Burry Port. Some words are not exclusive to the town but a few are. One or two even created by yours truly.

Nobbling ~ To be very cold.

Daps ~ Trainers/sports shoes

Pokey ~ Loud & good. This Motorhead record is Pokey!

Porthcawl ~ Say nothing. A cleaner way of saying 'say f**k all.' Say Porthcawl. Co created by me.

Shant ~ alcohol. Lets go on the shant!

Roots ~ cigarettes. Got any roots?

Gewk ~ powerful. This motorbike is gewkey!

Wog/Ceiff ~ to steal. Did you ceiff that?

Bread ~ money. Got any bread?

Creeping Death ~ temgesic drug. Created by me.

Moiled ~ crashed. You moiled on that skateboard. Can also mean wrecked. You moiled that skateboard well and truly.

Flim ~ five pounds. Can I borrow a flim?
Thanks to my friend Steffs Qualters for reminding me about this one.

The Ghost of Pembrey Hills

They hide a secret

The Pembrey hills stretch deep into Burry Port territory and provide a beautiful background to the seaside town, which is sandwiched between the hills and a rugged, wild coastline that faces the Gower.
These hills have proved popular for many years, especially during the summer season when schoolchildren free from the classroom would roam the hills to build dens, rope swings and use cardboard sheets to slide down the steeper areas, abandoning all thought for personal safety.
They were a fabulous place for picnics too owing to spectacular views of the coast. If you ever happen to find yourself in Burry Port, drive up to the 'Lookout' on the narrow lane from Isgraig and you will see exactly what I mean. Stunning!
But there is a darker story linked to the Pembrey hills.
Will Mani lived in Pinged and was a very cruel man with a foul reputatation. He beat his wife regularly, whether drunk or not and of friends he had few because people wisely chose to stay away from him. He would hide in the hedgerows on the hills and rob travelers who were going to Carmarthen on buisness. Mani was a brutal thug and seemingly proud of it.
In 1788 he added murder to his bumper list of crimes, after he killed a woman who was out walking on the hillsides. There was never any doubt of guilt. The cuff from his coat was found in his victim's hand and was identified by the tailor who made it. Will Mani's fate was sealed and he was hanged then gibbeted on the hill at Pensarn in Carmarthen.
It is said that his ghost still haunts those hills in Pembrey.

Burry's Ghosts and Myths

All villages have ghosts and Burry is no exception. For instance the Legion club is supposedly haunted and there have been people who have apparantly captured the spook on video camera. (Ive not seen any film myself). But plenty more colourful legends and myths have been believed to roam the towns fields and hillsides. Of course as these lush green parts grow less and less, so do the mysterious beastlies who roam them.
One was creepily called the Hook, who was rumoured to wander the Furnace Fields at night looking for children to terrify. As a boy I spent most of my spare time in those fields but (thankfully) never saw this character. To be honest I sensed almost immediately that the Hook was nothing more than a tall tale told by older children in an attempt to frighten the younger ones. But in the darker recesses of my mind, I hoped he did exist because I thrived on danger and having a deranged hook weilding guy hiding out in the hedges gave me a queer thrill.
Another less sinister myth was that of Miner 49er who was supposed to live in the hills and chased young people away if they got too near. There is a Miner 49er in the Scooby Doo cartoons so it isn't difficult to see where this came from.
The Pembrey/Burry Port hills have quite a few legends attached to them including the story of a group of runaway boys who decided to leave home and set up camp in the wilds. As is the way with these type of tales, more rumours were added as the years rolled on until this gang had supernatural abilities. Like the fact none of them ever aged out there in the woods, and only the young could see them.
The ghost of killer Will Mani is said to haunt the Pembrey hills and I have covered that story elsewhere on this site.

The Burry Element

The main drag

Porth Tywyn (Burry Port) is a lovely town but its schizophrenic as many small Welsh towns can be. In the summer its sunny as popcorn and as happy as the corn is snapping, but come winter it is grey, gossipy and neverending in its gloom. Locals are happiest in complaint, content in the towns back-to-back intimacy as long as the beer is cold and flowing.
Do not be fooled by the photograph above. It might look quiet and deserted but there is a local lurking behind one of the many lamposts, just waiting to pounce with the 'gen' (rumours) or the price of 'fags' (cigarettes). And its lovely, it really is.

Chivers Corner

Petrol indeed

Chivers Corner is a wonderfully named petrol station in Burry Port. And as I have with every part of my hometown, I have a story about the station. A few in fact come to think about it but one stands out like the red topped lighthouse which greets mariners every day. I was around eight years old and very adventurous, and I remember my parents deciding to take my brother and I to Porthcawl fair. An announcment like this was enough to excite children until they were filled with an almost uncontrollable amount of energy. And so it was with me. The family car pulled in to the Chiver's Corner forecourt to fill up with petrol for the journey and this prompted me to get out to stretch my legs (eventhough we'd barely gone a mile). Years ago the petrol station had a small shop which sold Smurphs and toy cars and it had a concrete walkway which went around the back of the place. This narrow path jutted out over a drop of around 12ft, the bottom wild with sharp rocks, nettles and thorns. Hardly a soft landing.
Now owing to my wreckless streak I thought it would be a good idea to climb over the metal railing and hang from my fingertips over this prickly and quite frankly dangerous area. Over I went and just as I lowered myself down my brother joined me to see what I was doing. In this I was fortunate because after I had been dangling for a minute, the grit from the path began biting into the flesh of my fingers, and as I looked below, I could tell that dropping into the debris underneath was going to result in a nasty injury.
So I began yelling at my brother to fetch our father to help me up. Of course he was busy filling the car up so I had had to wait, clinging painfully for life. It might have been 12ft but it looked way more than that to me at the time. I remember glancing down, trying to work out what type of injury I was likely to sustain if I let go. Broken ankle, lacerated shins, bruised legs, shattered knees, mangled toes. There was no end to the agonies I conjured up in my increasingly terrified mind.
When the old man who owned the gargage at the time walked around the corner to come to my aid, my arms felt like they had been pulverised by a steamroller and I gritted a smile from my mouth because by now Id been hanging for something like seven or eight long minutes. After pulling me up I offered my heartfelt thanks and we went on our way to Porthcawl with me looking quite sheepish on the back seat it has to be said. Ego and a devil-may-care attitude brews strange feelings in a young, and not so young mind.

A Carnival of Carnivals!

Today is Carnival Day in Burry Port, and its been held on the first saturday of July ever since I can remember. (Probably since it began, as we are sticklers for tradition in Burry). And this morning, as I awake thirty miles away from my hometown and a whole different skin from my ten year old self, the sunshine is pouring in through the windows like a buttery avalanche of goodness, which is exactly how every Carnival Day started in the past.
I might be using a touch too much of the Perfect Childhood Potion here but I honestly can not recall there ever being rain on this day. Certainly not from around 1979 (you can tell its sunny from the included photo below) to the mid eighties anyway. Come Burry's Carnival Day you could guarantee sunshine.
And excitement. And hundreds of locals and visitors lining Station Road in order to see the colourful assortment of floats and walkers in costumes. Teenagers back then (before the nanny state gripped everything) even climbed lamposts and hung from the railway bridges to secure good vantage points to watch the parade.
All of the work and build up in organising, designing lorries and choosing the Carnival Queen, it all paid off with interest when the day itself pounced from a ususally murky June. For most Burryportians it truly was/is the beginning of summer.


Myself (left) Father (Gonzo) and younger brother in 1979's Carnival

The carnival procession would start at 2pm in the carpark of the old Carbay Club, which is now the Neptune Hotel. The route was over the Coop Bridge and down along Station Road until the whole thing turned into the park after heading through New Street. Burry Port has quite a large public park with rugby and football pitches, and it is here that stalls and a funfair would pitch up for the day.
As a young boyo my family would all gather in my grandmothers house, near the tiny wooden gilled surgery, that was a darts throw from the park/shops, and had a car park so that family members from Penclawdd always had a place for their always orange~looking cars. My mother, grandmother and aunts would make a giant buffet of sandwiches, crisps, homemade pasties, rissoles and no end of sticky drinks. Everyone it seemed was at my grandmothers house on Carnival Day back then.
I was not fussed with the floats and procession itself, I was always eager like a firefly to head on over to the sugary delights of the funfair, where candyfloss would often fall from other childrens hands and blow in the summer breeze across the dried rugby pitch like neon tumbleweeds. All I remember was being crushed in Jones' newsagents shop doorway as noisy floats passed by, decked out in cardboard interpretations of paradise islands and sets of populat television shows of the time. While an assortment of Draculas, Incredible Hulks, Bugs Bunnies and the odd clown jigged by on rubber feet, holding out buckets half filled with copper pennies that rattled like teeth in a jam jar.
Being a solitary type of boy, I would always try to use the crowds to hide and shrink into so that these strange, mad eyed, usually sports shoe wearing beasts could not find me among the denim and cotton stalks of grown ups legs. Of course down there there were new dangers such as falling cigarette ash and syrup from ice cream sauces.
It was worth it however because the rest of the day was magic. An afternon spent in the park with hot dogs, game stalls, funfair rides and seemingly hundreds of chances to win miserable looking goldfish! (Im holding a goldfish in the photo above but due to the limits of the width of this post its too small to actually see). Every short trousered Welsh pup wanted one of those fish, regardless of how tattered they looked and no doubt come teatime every home in Burry Port had a hastily bought goldfish bowl which stood on top of the fridge like a crystal blister. Fridges were ideal for fish bowls as they were too high and too smooth and cat proof.
The funfair wasn't never going to challenge Porthcawl obviously but it had a nice selection of daring rides from waltzers to the parachutes, which were a type of ferris wheel which stood lazily at an angle instead of being upright and had umrellas over the wheels cars. This was a particular favourite of mine because when you came down from being at the top, it looked as if your rickety carriage was going to smash face first into the baked mud below. Quite a thrill even in those days when homemade 'rides' involved tree swings going over 30ft hillsides.
After the funfair and games, not to mention perfomances by the local brass band, we would head back to my grans for yet more homebaked treats. As you might have noticed, Burry Carnival day left quite an imprint in my memory and its a place in my head which I know is safe from any darker, more morbid thoughts which frequently invade my mind.
Of course as time rolled on and my older self left the salty snacks of my grandmothers oven and found another shaded area amongst rows of beer and ciders, the carnival offered new experiencces for my eager self and I was equally thrilled by them. Come the age of 19 onwards (until the day I left the town) Carnival Day would herald a mornings drinking; weak lagers, sherry and occasionaly spirits, fetched from the Co-op as soon as its doors opened. Crates of ale were carried from there and taken to various friends houses to be thrown back with heavy metal roaring in the background.
It was a fine day in Burry Port, as fine as the sloe berries that were found in the Furnace fields and made into wine.