The Mumbles - Wales

This is The Mumbles - a lovely seaside town in the south of Wales just out of Swansea where my Great Grandfather was born.

We stayed at a lovely B&B run by a lady who when greeting us at the front door in her raggy clothes and unwashed, unbrushed hair and apron said, "Hi, I don't do neat" - to which we all thought 'no, but do you do clean?'. We had asked for rooms with a seaview. We were given one on the very top floor - the attic actually, which Jodie took even thought she couldn't stand up straight anywhere in the room except on the stairs, but had a fabulous view and gorgeous sea breeze flowing through some enormous windows. Jen and I shared a room on the ground floor where they were doing renovations just outside our door and although we had seaviews, we couldn't open the door or window or curtains for that matter because of the sun, the traffic noise and the fact that people could see directly into our room. Other than that it was very comfy.

Here is Jen enjoying our sea view patio

We had done some research before we arrived about where my great grandfather lived, and were quite confident that he was born in Norton House. We even found our great great grandfather's name in a book linked to the house. We found the house and set about asking questions about the building's history. People were giving us lots of information and we even went in and looked around imagining what it would have looked like back in that day. We tried to book our accommodation there and which didn't pan out and so we thought we'd have dinner there instead. But because of a fabulously beautiful evening we decided to walk into town rather than have dinner in a darkened dining room and in hindsight, what a fabulous decision that was because on our last day, just after breakfast and just before we were packing the car to head out of The Mumbles - we were looking at a map of the town and noticed that there used to be a Norton Lodge across the road from Norton House..... when we went back and checked the book where we had found our GG Grandfather's name it turns out that it actually said Lodge - not House. So we nearly left the little village of The Mumbles without actually seeing the place we had gone there to see! Our car was parked about 20 metres from the property gates, it is now an elderly folks day centre. We popped in and spoke to a lady there and explained who we were and asked if we could have a look around the garden and bless her - she showed us around the whole house. Some of the house - the staircase, the stainglassed windows and the doorframes are the originals. It was fabulous. And...... here it is!

Norton Lodge

P.S: Catherine Zeta Jones is also said to have been born here - we didn't see her though.