Big friendly Tenby is a giant of fun
As The BFG is released, let Roald Dahl inspire your weekend away
AS A child, roald Dahl was obsessed with winkles. And he did most of his winkling in West Wales. One hundred years after his birth, and with the release this week of Steven Spielberg’s BFG, starring Mark rylance and ruby Barnhill, you can re-live Dahl’s school holidays in Pembrokeshire.
His quayside family holiday home in Tenby is available for rent. The famous Welsh story-teller spent every easter there from 1920 to 1936. The Cabin, as it is called, was part of the Welsh walled seaside town’s old assembly rooms. It is now owned by a family member.
On the loo wall is a quote from roald Dahl’s posthumously published book, My Year. It says: ‘We adored Tenby.’
Sadly, the first-floor Atlantic-front holiday apartment has no lickable wallpaper or edible marshmallow pillows. But it sleeps six, and looks out over Carmarthen Bay.
The town spreads out around it in lovely fashion — sailboats bobbing in the harbour; North Beach a glorious crescent of sand. Tenby Museum and Art Gallery adds a note of culture as the oldest independent museum in Wales, dating to 1878. It is in a fine elevated location, next to the 13th century castle, hosting works by Welsh post-Impressionist Augustus John.
Dahl, who left Wales in 1927, died in 1990 and was buried at the Church of St Peter & St Paul in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, along with his snooker cue, HB pencils, a saw, a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.
He wrote most of his books in a garden shed in his Buckinghamshire home.
GGreAT Missenden’s roald Dahl Museum And Story Centre features letters, his notebooks, photos and manuscripts as well as his writing chair. Oh, and a collection of sweet wrappers. Dahl couldn’t write without a sugar rush.
There is a Café Twit, serving Swashboggling sandwiches, Bogtrotter chocolate cake and other ‘flushbunkingly glorious’ things. In September, the museum, aimed at six to 12year-olds, will host a Scentenary Trail and give children the chance to make Big Friendly Giant dream jars and contribute to a birthday poem.
Another place of pilgrimage for Dahl fans is the Great Wall of China takeaway restaurant in his home town of LIandaff, Cardiff. In 2009, it received a Blue Plaque.
This is where Dahl and four friends allegedly put a dead mouse in a gobstopper jar in Mrs Pratchett’s Sweet Shop, Mrs Pratchett probably inspired his characters in The Witches and The Twits.
Then there is the Headlands Hotel in Newquay, which was used for the 1990 film of the 1983 book, The Witches, starring Angelica Huston as the Grand High Witch, evangeline ernst.
Dahl’s second family home in radyr, Ty Myndd (Mountain House), more precisely its former gate lodge, is available for rent on Airbnb. It has three double bedrooms.
Back at The Cabin, copies of his classic revolting recipes abound. It may not be possible to cook ‘noodles made out of poodles’ and ‘smelly jelly made from armadillo toes’ but you’ll be able to rustle up some ‘scrambled dregs’ and other ‘delumptious’ delights.
TRAVEL FACTS
COASTAL Cottages (01437 767600, coastalcottages.co.uk) offers seven nights in The Cabin from £572, or low season breaks from £439 for up to four nights. The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre (roalddahl.com, 01494 892192) is open 10am to 5pm, Tuesday to Friday, and 11am to 5pm, weekends (adults £6.60; children five to 18, £4.40; family tickets £21).