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.
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What to do in Fishguard: the ferry, beach, books on the sea, and sea life exhibition

Fishguard is a quaint two centre harbour and village, end of the train line, where the boat train meets the Ferry crossing to Ireland. Fishguard's fun is seeing the sea and learning about wildlife. As you walk along the front, watching children leap over the low rock, you are invigorated by the sea breeze and the sea smell, tangy, salty, sharp, evoking memories of seaweed, fishy.

The Tesco Express sells bottles of water and sandwiches for £1.10 and fruit packs if you want to go for a healthy walk. By the tills are books on the area, Wales, and wildlife.

Opposite Tesco, across the road, is a seafront path leading to a large glass-sided, two-storey building containing a cafe, gift shop and exhibition areas.
 The Information counter by the doorway has lots of leaflets and people to answer your questions. An exhibition with a tour guide for a small cost every hour or so is about sealife and has a video and aquariums.

The handy gift shop sells jewellery and scarves and items for making mould of sand, and books on birds, seabirds, insects, flowers, SAS survival.

Check out their second hand books for sale making money for the Ocean project.

Birds and books and fish and jewellery.

The bus doesn't run on Sunday. You will have to walk uphill to the Fishguard Bay hotel, where you can buy a bar lunch and read about the filming of Moby Dick and Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood.

If you really want to see the sea, you can take an afternoon trip to Ireland (Rosslare). If you are British or Irish you do not need a passport, just a drivelling license or utility bill. (Check the Stena site for up to date details.) The cost of the trip is only £5 for a foot passenger.

Next post will be about the tapestry and history.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker.
Author of twenty books, the latest being Larry the Talking Labrador.

Fishguard, Famous for Moby Dick, Under Milk Wood and Lusitania

Isambad Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859), whose statue stands on Paddington station, built the railway lines west from Paddington to Bristol, across bridges he built, such as the Bristol Suspension Bridge (opened 1864), on to Wales, where ships such as the passenger ships Brunel designed were to carry passengers to the USA (SS Great Britain 1843).
This was around more than a century ago.

Fishguard Harbour railway station opened 1906 jot serve the ferry service to Ireland.

Today the  Fishguard ferry and ship port, still runs a ferry service to Ireland. The trains from London are designed to meet the ferries. That explains why the second train I could have caught on a Saturday arrived at 1.30 in the morning. I thought the Fishguard Bay hotel would be locked up for the night, and nobody would be pleased to see me. The reason is that the ferry leaves at 2 am. The train passengers are expected to have time to get into the ferry.

Why do boats and trains leave late at night or early in the morning? No, it's not so that your taxi has a clear run racing you to or from the airport of ferry port. It's so that your boat or plane disgorges its business passengers at the right time for them to arrive at the office in the morning.

The Railway lines had transformed travel in the UK since the 1860s, when the world's perception of time changed. No longer could every town time itself independently and accurately in time with the sunlight. Instead the towns across Britain had to co-ordinate their clocks and watches with Greenwich mean time abbreviated to GMT.

From the port of Fishguard the ships left for the USA. In WWI the ill-fated Lusitania sank. Later ships left from the port of Southampton. The Titanic left in 1913, an unlucky year for her passengers, although lucky for anybody who missed catching the ship.

Today the train lines still take you from London, England, to Fishguard in Wales. The big hotel on the hillside overlooking the bay is Fishguard Bay hotel. By the bar are accounts and pictures of famous films made in the area. Moby Dick was filmed in the bay which you can see from the hotel's front windows and terrace. So was Under Milk Wood in 1971, starring Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and Glynis Johns who stayed at the hotel. The old newspaper accounts tell of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton staying at the hotel. In 1979 the hotel was designated a building of Historic and Architectural and Interest.

Fishguard Bay Hotel is a popular spot for weddings of local people. A bride was on the terrace greeting her guests, when I arrived in July 2015.

Her white dress contrasting with the green trees Wales, like England, is green from abundant rainfall. Wales is the land which inspired the best-selling book How Green Was My Valley.

The bride could have served a wedding breakfast of meet or fish, followed by a disco with a buffet of hamburgers. Not everybody wants to get all dressed up and then eat with their fingers, but finger food is the fashion nowadays and cocktail parties have always served canapes. As Marie Antoinette never said, Let them eat burgers.

Fishguard bay serves freshly cooked food. I was particularly partial to the plum tart with cream. Does the Fishguard Bay Hotel serve fish? (The phrase is the pope a Catholic springs to mind.) Yes, sometimes salmon, sometimes trout, almost always a meat dish a fish dish and a vegetarian dish.

The hotel is currently being upgraded. The sea view from the terrace and dining room are delightful. But the rooms are a mixture. A group of us were playing musical bedrooms. A previous year I was sharing a room so we had a front room with sea view and sea gulls looking through the window at us trying to get in.

I asked one of the seagulls if he'd been an unpaid extra in a famous film. But he didn't answer. I think that was before his time.

This year I had a room at the back, 119, no sea view, a sheer cliff of greenery. Ideal if you want to write a script for a horror movie. Things brightened up literally, when I discovered two spotlights over the bed. I complained that the light over the mirror was not working. Immediately up came a desk lamp. A day late (Sunday) the manager produced a replacement bulb. My room had a double bed and bath. TV. All day seaside music from gulls outside.

Several rooms are singles. One of the front single rooms has the view obscured by a tree which apparently has a preservation order on it.

The room with the least outside light is ground floor room number three, which has two high windows, like being in a castle with narrow high windowed, except you are on the ground floor. Oddly enough, I thought this was an ideal room for a honeymoon couple, romantic anniversary, or jolly dirty weekend, where you want total privacy. It was also the best decorated room, not that Victorian royalty carpet and with cream walls so loved by old hotels, and whoever decorated other parts of this hotel, instead bright white and brand new contrasting colours, delightful.

See the hotel whilst it still has the old atmosphere and creaking stairs. The downstairs front room with the magnificent decorated ceiling is already modernised at great expense. The old high ceiling has been replaced by a part false ceiling suspended to reveal the old high ceiling around the edges. The modernisation includes a handy a screen for showing football films, a screen which can be let down to conceal the view of the carved wooden fireplace.

The staff can't do enough for you. I asked for a couple of extra hangers and got half a dozen. Slices of lemon for the water jug. They have weddings many weekends in summer, just when two or more members of staff take off on their own holidays or family weddings.

The Visit Wales awards the hotel a 3 star rating. When the hotel first opened, it had a designated smoking room. Now it is entirely non-smoking.

Writers' Holiday is held here annually, attracting visitors from Wales, England, Scotland and as far away as Australia.

For the 2016 programme - see Writers' Holiday website.
writersholiday.net

(Writers Holiday 2015 July Monday 27 to Saturday Aug 1st courses include Writing Children's books and Travel photos.)
Writers Holiday Feb 2016 19-21 £229, or day delegate £129.
Writers Holiday Monday 25th July to Saturday 30th 2016 £499 full board and accommodation or day guest only rate of £299 (Courses include writing ebooks.)

www:fishguardtrains.info
wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishguard_Harbour_railway_station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel
Fishguard Bay Hotel
Quay Road
Goodwick
Pembrokeshire
Wales
SA64 OBT
Tel:01348 873571
email:reservationsfbh@gmail.com
Website www.fishguardbayhotel.co.uk

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, speaker.

Alaska, The Last Frontier: whales, icebergs, cabins and kayaks, what to see and read

Alaska is nicknamed The Last Frontier. I looked up Alaska. What do I already know about Alaska for travellers? I have seen TV programmes about driving for a living along dangerous snow-covered roads.

Members of my family have taken cruises on cruise ships (or cargo ships with cabins for a few fare-paying passengers). Every day is another different photo opportunity.

It's a good thing if you are good at photographing snowflakes and snow boots. A fish eye lens can be bought as part of a set for £12.

You might not see the larger and more distant wildlife you are seeking. In South Africa I spent a large part of an evening sitting in a safari bus in the dark trying to photograph a grey elephant hiding behind a mountain. (It was hiding behind the mountain. I was hiding behind plastic windows.)

Whale Trail Real Life
I have spend a week in Hawaii in the hotel famed for whale watching and sat on my balcony for hours watching the sea until I fell asleep. I didn't see a single whale. The whales were obviously hiding.

I wondered whether it was like parts of Asia, where nothing happens unless you tip the right people. Who do you have to tip to see a whale?

Fortunately, I was eventually forced by companions to spend money on a trip (in New Zealand) on a flight guaranteed to see a whale or your money back. I saw a whale's tail and had a whale tale.

Whales In Literature
I first read about whales as a child, hearing about whales in the bible. Jonah survived being swallowed by a whale. I am not sure where he was travelling from and to.

I suspect he was seriously off course. Either his map was wrong. Or the guides took his money and sent him on a ship going in the wrong direction.

Documentaries And Discovery Channel
Discovery programme and National Geographic usually investigate old stories and myths and manage to find links to some practical situation and place with a lesson from life which can be applied today. (Discovery Channel did a great program on the ten plaques and other documentaries have been done on the parting of the sea.)

Jonah And The Whale
I think this gives a misleading view (to children - and adults) of your likelihood of being miraculously saved from wildlife. God may have saved Jonah from the whale but neither God nor the guide were able to save a lady just died in a lion park in South Africa (Jun 2015). Maybe God was too busy saving people from whales.

Travel And Government Advice And Updates
At travel shows I have met crews of ships which take travellers to Alaska to see the sights, the land, ice, icebergs, glaciers, polar bears, polar people, endangered animals, endangered fish, endangered people.

When I went onto the Alaskan official government website I discovered 511 for travel alerts. Road are listed with symbols showing them as currently: good, fair, difficult, very difficult, and hazardous!

Alaska Wishlist
Alaska is still on my wish list. I have two wish lists: 1) Wish to go there. 2) Wish not to go there. The first list increases with each trip I take. So does the second list. Often once is enough. I prefer just to stay safely at home and read and research whilst other people take the risk and the video.

Frankly, the older I get, the less I like being bitten by mosquitos and stuck in snowdrifts. I never felt the film Titanic was good for the travel industry.

Landmarks and Sights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Historic_Landmarks_in_Alaska
Sites include: WWII, battles against the Japanese; Russian architecture including churches; mining for gold; fur trading; 'Eskimo' or native history.

Travel Films On Your Trip To Alaska:
North to Alaska. (Movie/film starring John Wayne.)
White Fang (Film of Jack London's book Call of the Wild.)
Titanic. (Not Alaska, but the villain is an iceberg.)

Travel Tales To Read And Discuss On Your Journey to Alaska:
Call of the Wild by Jack London. (About a dog taken to Alaska.)
Moby Dick. (Classic about hunting a whale and revenge.)
The Bible. (Jonah and the Whale - escape story from Old Testament? Apocrypha?)

Wildlife
Albatross - the short tailed albatross is endangered.
Bears: brown, black and white (polar)
Caribou: (In Alaska only the tame ones are called reindeer, think of deer on reins.)
Owls include snowy owls.
Whales:
Endangered whales include the Blue whale - think that you would feel blue if you were endangered.
The Orca is a dolphin misleadingly named the 'killer whale' which swims in groups to kill sea lions and whales.

Quick Facts On Cities And Travel:
Capital Juneau
Four major cities: Anchorage (largest), Fairbanks (second largest), Juneau
Connections by road - highway through Canada, constantly under repair in summer after/before and ready for winter
Package tours from Seattle and San Francisco
Airline connections to USA, Canada and Russia
Outdoor activities include trails, cabins and kayaking

Cruise and tour companies
audleytravel.com

Websites on Alaska
alaska.gov
511.alaska.gov
http://wikitravel.org/en/Alaska

Angela Lansbury B A Hons
Travel writer, author, photographer, speaker, comic poet.
PS I may update this later so check back every so often.
PS No penguins in Alaska. Penguins are Southern in Antarctica, south of New Zealand, where Scott went to the South Pole.