Elizabeth Taylor, Moby Dick and Fishguard Bay Hotel

Liz Taylor, centre, Richard Burton, right. Photo from bar of Fishguard Bay hotel.

Fishguard Bay Hotel is up on the cliff above the end of the train line where passengers are brought by train to catch the ferry from Wales to Ireland.

The hotel overlooks the bay where Moby Dick was filmed.

Film stars who stayed at the hotel were Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and entourage. Liz Taylor was also in the film of Under Milk Wood by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

The framed report of their stay is in the hotel bar, which says that the magic bedrooms were number 123 and 124. I am in some doubt as to whether Liz Taylor stayed on the hotel.

Rooms 123 and 124 are suites, larger rooms. They were occupied when I was there. Next time I visit the hotel I shall take a photo for you to see.

Another place open to the public featuring the story is down in the town.

Above the end of the railway line is the clifftop hotel, with a view.

Regarding the hotel, it is old fashioned, the best of Britain as it used to be. Solid food, meat and two vegetables, usually including potatoes.

Dessert options on my three day stay included Banoffee (banana and toffee) pie, chocolate cake, apple tart and fruit salad. (Three choices per set meal.)

Cooked breakfast included baked beans, hash brownies (grated potato fried), brown or white bread, sachets of marmalade or strawberry or black currant jam. Vegetarian sausages on request.

Old fashioned in what way? Free-standing wardrobes.

The staff are lovely, can't do enough for you.


Fishguard Bay Hotel and the bay, Wales. Photo taken and edited by Angela Lansbury.

The View
You can see the sea from the terrace in front of the hotel, the windows of the bar and the window side of the restaurant, and the front bedrooms.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Author of Quick Quotations.
Please share links to your favourite posts.

Fred Keenor, Welsh and British Hero of Football and Two World Wars - plus Liz Taylor and more about what to see in Wales

Statue of Welsh Foodball player, Keenor, in front of Cardiff Stadium, Wales, UK

I had never heard of Fred Keenor when I read that his statue had been placed outside Cardiff Stadium in Wales. Keenor was a keen football player who was one of eleven children and so poor that they could not not afford a football but played with tennis balls and bunches of rags. As a child he shared a room in a typical Welsh terraced house with three others in the bedroom, no electricity and an outside toilet.

However, despite all his disadvantages, his enthusiasm for football inspired others and the team he played in reached first division.
Wartime Trials
In World War II he was at the battle of the infamous and relentless battle of the Somme, in trenches filled with rats and raining shrapnel. His leg was so badly injured that doctors considered amputating it.
After the war he married and had seven children.

WWII
World War two when he was too old to be at the front lines brought no respire. Two of his sons were killed and after the war he travelled to France to see where one of his sons had been shot down.
he developed diabetes. Throughout his life he and his wife continued to work and literally feed themselves and others, growing vegetables and raising poultry to sell at Christmas. Alas his wife died when there was a gas leak and he was lucky to survive it.

I can relate to this. We had gas smells for years in my house. We were told that it was just the Years  flue. Years later we called the gas company again. this time the gas pipe was re-routed outside the house instead of along the inside. I have pictures of our garden dug up by the gas company.
later in life he continued working despite the problems with his diabetes, at one point walking five miles to work - with a leg severely injured in WWI.

Keenor's surviving sons included two who went on in the football world.
Truly a remarkable character with an extraodinary life.

If you are passing though Cardiff and go to reflect on the determination of this man to work and play and make the best of life.


What else is there to see in Wales for a tourist? Sites associated with Dylan Thomas, a whole trail, not just the boathouse where he lived with his wife. If you take the train to Wales from Paddington, London, on Paddington station you will see the statue on the station of Brunel who built the railway, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and railway right across Wales to the port where the ship he built linked Britain and Europe to the USA.

What To See And Do In Wales
The final stop of that section of the railway is Fishguard Bay where you can catch a boat across to Ireland, or stay at the clifftop Fishguard Bay Hotel and read about how Liz Taylor and Richard Burton appeared in movies filmed here, such as Moby Dick and Dylan's Thomas's Under Milk Wood.

Poster of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole in Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas.

Every February a writers' Holiday takes places in the hotel. Arrive early for breakfast or dinner if you want to get a romantic window seat at a table for two overlooking the bay.

Fishguard Bay Hotel. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

If you drive, you will see Welsh bilingual signs on the road and plaques about local history. If you take the train you will see bilingual signs in English and Welsh on the stations. Wales is a wonderful green break, with white sheep on the green hillsides in Springtime. Train fares vary according to season and you can reduce the price by booking early, changing your day of travel or taking time to shop around and taking a different route and seeing even more of this cute little country. It's the land of legends, the red dragon on the flag,

Welsh cakes, if you buy them on the train, cold, save them until you get home. They are half way between a pancake and a scone, delicious served hot or warm with melting butter.

Which Welsh characters do you already know? You might know Dylan Thomas the poet, Richard Burton the actor, Katherine Zeta-Jones the actress, singers such as Jones.

Another feature of Wales is the male voice choirs. But Wales is not all about men and mining and football. In Fishguard you can see the long embroidery featuring the indominatable Welsh ladies in red dressed and black hats who captured the invading French soldiers a few hundred years back.

Useful Websites
Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikitravel, Tripadvisor, Welsh Tourist Board, Cardiff Tourist Board
Fishguard Bay. Fishguard Bay Hotel, Writers Holiday. Duolingo to learn Welsh. You will see

Wales
About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. I have many more posts, on Fishguard, Brunel, Wales, learning languages, the UK and the world. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Angela Lansbury, the writer not the actress

A fellow writer has written to me a cordial letter from which I extract:

• "I have watched with interest several of your YouTube videos ...  .  I find confusing the many manifestations of your name, and wonder why you chose to adopt that of a nationally-known actress.  I can imagine what a lot of explaining I would have to do whenever you came up in conversation!"

I am not the only person in the world to have the same name as somebody else. In many offices employing over 100 people there are two or more with the same first name, and every so often you find an office where two people have the same first name and family name.

Nor am I the only person in the world to have the same name as somebody (older) whose world wide and internet success and fame has overtaken mine.

I did not choose to have the same name as a nationally known actress. 

The Family Name Change
I admit that my father changed the family surname after World War II before I started school to something which was not European but English. Unfortunately I did not record that I ever asked my father why he chose Lansbury. 

If I did, he probably answered, non committally  as he would have done, that it was just an English name. He was a practical person, ran a small optician's shop, later a second shop, and had no interest in fame. 

My father was a quiet man. He went deaf in one ear, which limited conversation. I realise, whilst typing this for you, that being deaf also accounts for liking for reading books, but also his lack of interest in anything requiring listening: radio and TV, films and theatre, concerts, nor opera. After WWII both of my parents preferred to live a quiet life. 

George Lansbury
Let's go back to the name Lansbury. My father grew up in the East end of London. George Lansbury was known for defending the seamstresses and my father's mother had been a seamstress. The name Lansbury would have been known to both my parents. However, I doubt whether they ever checked on how widespread the name was, whether it was common or distinctive. 

Many people changed their name. Something English sounding and easy to pronounce. Easier to make friends. More memorable for a business. Moss Brothers was originally Moses Brothers. Marks and Spencer.

However, my mother was the one who pushed for a change of name. Her family had been in England, for four generations, more than my father's three. My mother's family had been born in England, speaking English, for four generations.

My maternal grandmother (mother's mother) chose my first name. My mother chose the middle name Angela.

I preferred Angela. It sounded more feminine. I was a girly girl. I liked pink and pretty dresses. I liked frills. I liked to sit and sew.

When I went to primary school (known as elementary in the USA) the teacher called me Angela by mistake because another girl with the same length hair had sat in the same seat the previous year. The teacher appoogised. I obligingly told her it was OK because it was my middle name and I preferred it.

My grandmother died whilst I was still at primary school, so my mother was happy to call me Angela, matching the name I was called at school.

Unfortunately, when I went to grammar school, the teachers reverted to my, now unfamiliar, first name. I endured four years of this, until, worst of all, at O level year we read Hazlitt. Another pupil decided to nickname me Hazlit. Then somebody else decided that was too complicated and called me Hazel Nut. Finally worst of all, I was nicknamed Nut.

When I got to university I took the opportunity to r e v e r t to Angela. (Spaces inserted because predictive text inserts recent.)

As a schoolchild I spent evenings doing homework. TV showed one programme, BBC, Dixon of Dock Green. I did not go to films with my parents. 

When I went to university, I took a trip to the USA. I was delighted that reception in a grand hotel remembered my name Angela Lansbury. 

Imagine my surprise when I went out into the street and saw my name in lights. There was another Angela Lansbury.

For a brief period I added an H before my name. It didn't make any difference. I was still known as Angela and had the same conversations about my name. It just made my signature pretentious and caused confusion about my having two names.

I wrote features and travel articles and several books under my maiden name. When I married my husband insisted that I took his name.

When I started to look for email addresses and websites, my name had already been taken by other people called Angela Lansbury (I know of four of us, the actress, two authors, and one other person).

The names Angela and Lansbury are both legitimate names used by me on documents, not just nicknames, not just pen names. However, I also have other names from other periods of my life, which causes some confusion.

In many other cultures women have two names, their maiden name and their married name. Most people stick to their first married name, even if they divorce and re-marry, in order to have the same name as their children.

Liz Taylor, the actress, is a case of a person who because well-known under a name, and kept using the same name even when she married somebody of a different surname.

I once phoned Alton Towers to speak to the PR/marketing. I left a message, "Please tell Liz Taylor that Angela Lansbury would like to speak to her."

Liz Taylor, the marketing lady, spoke to me on the phone and never mentioned the fact that either of us had the same name as an actress. No doubt she had wasted enough company time doing that to other people and knew that I would understand.

When I go onto Facebook and search for a friend or acquaintance, I usually find at least three people with the same name. Businesses have problems when somebody of the same name opens a business on the other side of the world. You also have problems if anybody of the same name is associated with any kind of criminal activity. 

Worse still, newspapers merge your details with somebody else's. Easily done as people's lives overlap. Angela Lansbury the actress and I both have sons called Anthony. (She has three more children of different names.) 

In some cultures and countries a name is given to everybody in a group. Huge numbers of people are given the names Mohammed or Mary. John Smith is very common. 

I went to teach English to a girl living in Wembley whose family name was Patel. I thought it would be easy to ask where the Patels lived. After finding I was at the wrong house, I asked again. Another family called Patel lived across the road. Then I discovered that several, almost all the people in that small cut de sac were called Patel. 

In Singapore you find many people called Lim, or Wong. To claim a lottery ticket, or many other items, you have to show your national identity number. 

My family think it's pretentious of me to put letters after my name. But in Asia it is a requirement. It helps identify which department you are visiting and which level of employee you are due to meet. This spares the receptionist the embarrassment of introducing the head of the company to the office junior. It saves wasting time. It starts conversation. it helps socially. Introduce two scientists to each other. Two writers. Two students. Two heads of department. Two engineers. Two accountants. Two members of Toastmasters International.

Angela Lansbury, BA Hons, CL, ACG.
English teacher and tutor.
Travel writer and photographer, researcher, author and speaker.
Author of twenty books including:
Wedding Speeches and Toasts.
Quick Quotations.
Who Said What When.