Relive Roald Dahl’s Easter holidays
The Cabin: The quayside family holiday home
One hundred years after his birth and with the release of Stephen Spielberg’s “BFG” , you can now relive Roald Dahl’s Easter holidays. His quayside family holiday home in Tenby in west Wales is available for rent.
The famous Welsh story-teller spent every Easter there from 1920-36.
“The Cabin” was part of the Welsh walled seaside town’s old assembly rooms, water baths and “recreation rooms”. It is now owned by Dahl’s niece. On a wall of one loo is a quote from his posthumously published book, “My Year”: “We adored Tenby”.
For Dahl, no Easter was Easter without Tenby. He holidayed there from the age of four to 16. His summer holidays were spent in Norway. His parents were Norwegian. His father was a wealthy timber merchant.
Sadly, the first floor Atlantic-front holiday apartment has no lick-able wallpaper or edible marshmallow pillows. But complimentary rock pooling nets and winkling paraphernalia – a bucket and spade- are provided.
Cardiff-born Dahl was a compulsive and self-confessed winkle-hunter. As the loo wall proclaims : “We hunted for winkles on the rocks and carried them home and boiled them and got them out of their shells with bent pins and put them on bread and butter for tea.”
The Cabin’s kitchen looks out over the harbour to the sailing school and tiny 1878 St Julian’s fishermen’s church on Penniless Cove Hill.
Through the next window you look over North beach and Carmarthen Bay. On the ground floor below is “Caldey Island” storehouse. The ferry to the monastic island (and its chocolate factory) leaves from outside the Dahl house along with the seal and mackerel safaris.
A bedroom at The Cabin
Out of the Grade 11 listed Cabin’s bedroom windows are two lifeboats stations – one renovated as a private residence and featured on “Grand Designs”.
On the headland is a statue to Prince Albert. It was originally intended for Lord Nelson until Queen Victoria discovered that her mother had been incarcerated in nearby St Catherine’s island. Nelson and Lady Hamilton schmoozed in Tenby when it opened as an upper-class health resort.
Beatrix Potter , who celebrated her 150th anniversary this summer as well , visited Tenby a few times. She based the illustrations to Peter Rabbit on the garden of the house she stayed in.
Wales, which Dahl left in 1927 when his family moved to Bexley in Kent, will be celebrating “Dahl 100” in many ways. Close to Tenby, in St Clear’s , you can have a Dahl-themed afternoon tea. The “Lolfa Cynin” working dairy and sheep offers snozzberries “with whipped cream whipped with real whips.”
“We’ve been amazed by the response. The adults get into it as much as the kids,” says Gwawr Davies whose father, Dyfrig, also gives lambing workshops on the 440-acre family farm.
“The Dahl centenary has put us on the map.”
Dahl attended Repton School near the Cadbury chocolate factory. “ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (1964) was his third book. His first was “Gremlins” , published in 1943.
Picture perfect: Pastel-shade buildings that dot Tenby in west Wales
He worked for “Shell” in Kenya and Tanzania. He was a fighter pilot ace in the war , being one of last Allied pilots to withdraw from Greece. He fought in the Battle of Athens.
“The much-loved children’s author” wrote in a hut in the garden of Gypsy House in Great Missenden , Buckinghamshire. Two hundred million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. He also wrote adult fiction and the screenplay for the James Bond film, “ You Only Live Twice” as well as Ian Fleming’s “ Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.
He died in 1990 and was buried with his snooker cue, HB pencils, a saw, a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates. The Dahl Museum and Story Centre opened in Great Missenden in 2005.
On arrival at the Cabin you are greeted with a bottle of “Jacob’s Creek” Shiraz and a copy of “Boy – Tales of Childhood”.
The Dahl Easter holiday home sleeps six. It has all mod cons vital to any Dahl self-catering holiday. Copies of his classic “Revolting Recipes” abound.
It may not be possible to make bird pie, “noodles made out poodles” and “smelly jelly made from armadillo toes”. And your children may prefer a pizza or fish and chips to “wasp stings on a piece of buttered toast”.
But – as a non-stick skillet and plenty of pots and pans are provided – you can always whistle up a batch of “pishlets” (for kids who can’t whistle ) or rustle up some scrambled dregs , cavity-filling caramels, three-course dinner chewing gums and other delumptious delights.
For growing giants as well as grown-ups. Before going down to the beach, singing the” Oompa-Loompa Song” all the way.