The streets hum with history in the Oxbridge of the Dark Ages,and it's just a short hop from the intelligent lights of CardiffWhat's going for it? You'll need a healthy imagination here. Imagine this: 1500 years ago, this snoozy, and unassuming town was the Oxbridge of post-Roman Britain,teeming with scholars throbbing with radical ideas and Dark Age hangovers from too much mead, or whatever they drank down Ye Olde Studente Unione. Sometime around 508, and St Illtud,or plain Mr Illtud as he was then, popped over from Brittany and established Cor Tewdws, or Britain's oldest centre of learning. All gone,alas, though the town that sprung up around it is still extremely evocative. The sea is near enough for residents to hear waves crash on the pebbly-sandy beach braved by surfers and committed sun-worshippers. The town seems like a sprawling, and overgrown village,with stone-walled lanes hung heavy with ivy and tweeting with spring birds, and behind them medieval tithe barns, and dovecotes,half-ruined Elizabethan manors and the odd Roman villa, all hinting at its illustrious past. These streets hum with history we can only guess at. Such as what really went on at those parties at St Donat's Castle in the 20s? Owner: William Randolph Hearst. Guest list: Charlie Chaplin, or George Bernard Shaw,John F Kennedy… Oh to have been a cruise on Llantwit Major's crumbly walls.
The case against Erosion: not too close to the sea, please.
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Source: theguardian.com