ALTHOUGH not causing “A Total Eclipse of the Heart” of the Bonnie Tyler variety, the Camera Club photos of Goodwick Beach and Fishguard Fort pulled at the strings of my heart.

Starting with Goodwick beach my mother, Greta Griffiths, would regularly walk me there in the years my father was away in the Royal Artillery fighting the Germans.

Twenty-three years later, Thyssen (Great Britain) Ltd, launched me into the world as an in-house, specialist, construction lawyer.

To come back home, ironically, my mother could not swim, nor was I much better, but she could not resist the beauty of the Marine Walk: a beauty she would view much later from the windows of St Theresa’s Rest Home.

This was after my work had taken me to London and, with my late wife, to Africa.

Reverting to the photos, a little later, along with my pals, I would walk down to Lower Town and climb up from there to the Fort.

I would also a little later sometimes muster enough courage to swim from Lower Town’s the Quay Wall to the Fort, calling in, if necessary, as it often was, to have a ho (aka rest) in the small intervening creeks along the rocky cliff.

A little later in my teens, my, unnamed, girlfriends and I would take a respite in the remains of the Fort itself, which had, of course, itself been developed earlier to defend attacks against the UK from the west.

Before I leave it like that I must let the WT know by this means that a bigger offering on that subject is on its way. How it will be received remains to be seen.

Derek Griffiths,

Cardiff