The location of the Boathouse in Laugharne where Dylan Thomas once lived is near perfect. Perched precariously as if on stilts over the River Towy, it suggests something of the “fishing holy stalking heron” that waits to be pounced on by the “hawk on fire” in his poem Over Sir John’s Hill.

Any menace in that image is absent in the real world, though. Instead the whitewashed speck of the Boathouse stands out heroically against an amorphous green-blue haze of rolling Carmarthenshire fields, meandering rivers and the sea on the distant horizon.

The only hawk on the horizon is the official tourist industry, which once rejected “Dullen” as a reprobate who sold his soul to the English but now embraces the memory of the self-styled “Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive”.

That phrase is a reminder of an important fact about Thomas. Although he is often remembered for bucolic poems of rural Wales such as Fern Hill, where he felt “young and easy under the apple boughs”, he was really a city boy.

He was born and brought up in a hillside house in suburban Swansea where his sense of the potential of the wider world came from watching ocean-going vessels plying across the Bay down below.

When he got away, he gravitated to the metropolises of London and New York.

But, at home, he maintained a curious love-hate relationship with the Welsh countryside.

To chart the contours of Thomas’s Wales you need to explore three different parts: Swansea (and its hinterland, the Gower Peninsula), Cardiganshire, and Laugharne (with parts of Carmarthenshire).

Swansea is an odd place. Its buildings are nondescript and its main throughfare, Wynd Street, where young Thomas used to meet friends at the now defunct Kardomah Café, veers uneasily between franchised mall and boarded-up shops. He described it as “an ugly, lovely town”. But an undoubted vim inhabits its higgledy-piggledy mess.

Across the road from his childhood home lay the verdant expanses of Cwmdonkin Park, “the world within the world of the sea-town” where he would lose himself, climbing the reservoir railings, pelting the swans and finding the inspiration for his poem The Hunchback in the Park.

He liked to hurtle down the hill on his bicycle to the Mumbles, the fishing village at the western end of Swansea Bay, where he learnt to drink in pubs such as The Antelope. This was the gateway to the coves, rocks and sands of the Gower, where there is a walk in every direction — along the coast and inland. Thomas described Rhossili Bay, scene of the camping trip in his story Extraordinary Little Cough, as “the wildest, bleakest and barrennest I know — four or five miles of yellow coldness going away into the distance of the sea”. Yet this outcrop of land proved irresistible to an inquisitive youth. At Caswell Bay he conducted an unlikely romance with his first girlfriend, the Londoner Pamela Hansford Johnson.

Another part of Thomas is found on a more distant shoreline, Cardigan Bay — between the fishing ports of New Quay and Aberaeron, and inland from the latter towards Talsarn in the tranquil Aeron Valley where he brought his family to escape the Blitz in 1942. (His daughter Aeronwy is named after the river where she was supposedly conceived.) Since Thomas himself was more interested in the fleshpots of London, he later parked his wife Caitlin and their children in Majoda, the bungalow outside New Quay, which featured in the film The Edge of Love.

There Thomas began to fashion a story about a town that was mad. As a result there is some dispute between New Quay and Laugharne — to move to the third focus of Thomas’s Wales — about the origins of the fictional town of Llareggub in his best-known work, Under Milk Wood.

Laugharne is clearly the model. But, again, it was a town. Thomas was drawn not to its country airs but its urban peculiarities — with its self-governing charter, gossip and pub (Browns), the goal for his regular forays along the path from his tiny shed-cum-study above the Boathouse.

For all its quaintness, Laugharne is part of Carmarthenshire, where Welsh-speaking relations had introduced the young Thomas to their language and culture. The Celtic warmth of Llangain and Llanstephan, across the water from the Boathouse, suffuses early stories such as The Outing. His knowledge of country lore came from staying with his “ancient peasant Aunt” Annie at Fern Hill, outside Llanstephan.

Later, when he was living at Laugharne, yet another town, Carmarthen, loomed large — not just for its amenities, but also as the railhead, which allowed him to escape the Welsh countryside and then return to its warm embrace. A Welshman’s hiraeth, or longing for his homeland, is a powerful and often ambivalent emotion.

Dylan Thomas: A New Life, by Andrew Lycett, is published by Phoenix, £8.99

The poet at Worm’s Head

I stayed on that Worm from dusk to midnight,” confided Dylan Thomas, “sitting on that top grass, frightened to go further in because of the rats and because of things I am ashamed to be frightened of. Then the tips of the reef began to poke out of the water and, perilously, I climbed along them to the shore.”

Wales’s national poet was recalling an incident in boyhood when he became marooned on the tidal promontory of Worm’s Head at the outermost tip of the Gower Peninsula. It’s easy to do, especially if you are a bit of a dreamer.

Thomas’s “great rock of the Worm’s Head” sticks out two miles into the sea. The best rockpooling in South Wales is on the rocky platform of the causeway; but don’t spend too much time among the anemones, the seaweeds and crabs on a falling tide. You need to get a move on before the sea returns. Once ashore on the Inner Head, make your way round its tall grassy hump, over the canted rhombus hole of the Devil’s Bridge, and on to the outer Head where the nesting and fishing puffins, kittiwakes, razorbills and guillemots kick up a tremendous stink and row.

Find a comfortable patch and lie back, as Dylan Thomas did, ’with a book and a bag of food, the gulls crying mad over me”. In his great short story, Who Do You Wish Was With Us?, the poet depicted himself and a friend tidefast on the Outer Head. That could happen to you, too, if you waste too many sweet moments drowsing and snoozing out here, one of the most delectable spots in the world.

Pubs Enjoy a stunning view out over Rhossili Beach and Down, at the Worm’s Head Hotel (www.thewormshead.co.uk 01792-390512), which makes a good lunch stop — tasty soup and local beer.

Route (OS Explorer 164): From Rhossili car park follow track past National Trust Visitor Centre and shop; through gate, continue for a mile to Coastwatch lookout station (403874). Right here; descend to cross causeway (see below). Follow clear path round southside of Inner Head, across Devil’s Bridge (389877), round south side of Low Neck, and out to Outer Head (see below). Return the same way.

Causeway is accessible for 2 ½ hours each side of low water — a total of five hours. Tide times are posted in National Trust Visitor Centre below Rhossili car park (www.nationaltrust.org.uk ; 01792-390707); or ring Coastwatch (01792 390167). It takes at least 15 minutes of rough scrambling to cross the causeway, which is jagged and wet. The scramble across upended blades of rock between Inner Head and Low Neck is taxing and requires some agility. Bring strong boots with good tread, raingear and drink.

You are requested not to climb to the top of Outer Head between March 1 and August 31, to avoid disturbing nesting birds.

County Swansea — distance 7km (4½ miles) there and back.

Typical time Allow at least three hours.

Starting point Rhossili car park (OS ref SS 415880).

What to see Rockpools on Worm’s Head Causeway; Devil’s Bridge wave-cut arch; Outer Head seabirds and blowhole; landward views from Outer Head What to read Who Do You Wish Was With Us? in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas (Phoenix).
Christopher Somerville

The Times Walks have proved a huge hit and here are two more you can join:
Windsor Great Park, July 4. Derwent May leads the way.
Aldeburgh, July 18. Richard Morrison walks and talks about Benjamin Britten.

Go to: www.offersinthetimes.com/timeswalks