Except at high tide, you can follow a path along the shoreline below the castle, then up some stairs to a lane that leads to the boathouse where the poet lived from 1949 to 1953 with his wife Caitlin and their three children. It's a beautiful setting, looking out over the estuary with its 'heron-priested shore', silent except for the long, liquid call of the curlew and the urgent 'pleep pleep pleep' of the oystercatcher, birds that appear in Thomas' poetry of that time.
The parlour of the Boathouse has been restored to its 1950s appearance, with the desk that once belonged to Thomas' schoolmaster father and recordings of the poet reading his own works. Upstairs are photographs, manuscripts, a short video about his life, and his death mask, which once belonged to Richard Burton; downstairs is a coffee shop.
Along the lane from the Boathouse is the old shed where Thomas did most of his writing. It looks as if he has just popped out, with screwed-up pieces of paper littered around, a curiously prominent copy of Lives of the Great Poisoners and, facing out to sea, the table where he wrote Under Milk Wood and poems such as Over Sir John's Hill (which describes the view).
