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If you want to follow Eve Myles’s tracks in Keeping Faith, head to atmospheric Laugharne in Carmarthenshire

Keeping Faith - Saturday 9.00pm BBC1
James Stewart - 3 April 2021

A close-knit town harbouring intrigue and ancient secrets. A river creeping beneath vast skies, curling past woods and around marshes that vanish at high tide like the clue of a whodunnit. A coast of horizon-shoving scale. Keeping Faith, the brooding murder-mystery smash starring Eve Myles as the embattled Faith Howells, has returned to BBC1 for its third series. But the Welsh thriller’s location of Abercorran is as good a reason to tune in as its noirish plotlines. Don’t waste time hunting for it on Google Maps, though. Most of the external shots of Keeping Faith were shot in and around the Carmarthenshire town of Laugharne (pronounced “Larn”). In fact the series is a bit of a fibber. While fictional Abercorran seems haunted, real-life Laugharne is lovely. Take a short break here when we’re able to travel again and you’ll grasp in an instant why director Pip Broughton thinks it’s the perfect location for her drama. With a lingering saltiness from its past as a port on the River Tâf, If you want to follow Eve Myles’s tracks in Keeping Faith, head to atmospheric Laugharne in Carmarthenshire the small town feels like a stage set, almost a Lilliputian world – which is perhaps why poet Dylan Thomas called it “the strangest town in Wales” (he meant it as a compliment).

The area is also blessed by the same gorgeous scenery you see on the show. “People will go, ‘The CGI is incredible’,” says Myles, “but it’s just Wales.” Your first “Oh my!” moment is likely to occur on the Strand. You’ll head down Clifton Street (easily recognisable from the programme) into King Street, past the Georgian houses of old sea captains, swinging through a tiny square, then… whoosh! The world suddenly expands into widescreen as you emerge on the banks of the Tâf estuary: boats at woozy angles in creeks, soft hills folding into silver-brown water. It’s a change as unexpected as a magic trick. Also here is Laugharne’s ruined medieval castle. It’s a ghoulish presence throughout the series, its blank windows and grizzled battlements seeming to embody Abercorran’s mix of beauty and menace. Appropriately, “Abercorran” was taken from the castle’s original name. Though the courtyard is closed until August, the ruin remains magical from the outside, glowering splendidly even on sunny days. The small summerhouse built into the castle walls is where Thomas finished writing Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog in 1939. He liked the view so much that a decade later he moved into a former boathouse just upriver with his wife Caitlin. A “seashaken house on a breakneck of rocks” is how he described their two-up, two-down. Today they’d call it prime real estate.

Its museum (dylanthomasboathouse.com) and splendid tea room will hopefully reopen soon. And the walk along the river is pure poetry: ten minutes of pillowy hills and crows and gulls on golden sands that materialise with the tide. While you’re here, it’s worth going above the boathouse to see the shed where Thomas wrote his best work. It’s now artfully messy, with papers strewn over a desk and a crumpled jacket hung over the chair, as if he has just popped out for a fag. Frankly, it’s a surprise he managed to write a word – the view of the estuary from here could lead anyone to daydream. If you’re travelling with Keeping Faith diehards in replica yellow raincoats, direct them to a cul-de-sac off Stoneway Road to see Faith’s house. Yes, it has that rear terrace where Faith and her friend Lisa slug glasses of wine. No, you can’t visit. Glimpses of the same view appear between houses along the street. Really, though, you should discover it on a walk, taking a path that climbs gently from the end of the Strand into woods.

If you’re keen you can continue for a five-mile walk to Pendine Sands (bus 222 returns five times daily, Monday to Saturday; tafvalleycoaches.co.uk). It’s another pinch-me moment for “Faithfuls”: Pendine awes by its sheer scale – seven miles of sand vanishing into a salty haze. It’s at low tide on this seemingly endless shore, in fact, that some of history’s most noted daredevils have set their land-speed records: Malcolm Campbell (150.7mph) and JG Parry Thomas (170.6mph) in the 1920s, then millionaire motorcyclist Zef Eisenberg in 2018 (201.5mph). There’s just one thing. Did you park on the Strand? A couple of times each month it floods on the highest tides. Many is the innocent daytripper who failed to check the tide tables posted on its board and returned to discover their car axledeep in water. Getting the motor started afterwards? Well, that can be murder.

 

JAMES STEWART 

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