Bethlehem

The Christmas post and the Old School

Every December, hundreds of Christmas cards make their way to a former village school on a Carmarthenshire hillside so that volunteers can stamp them by hand. The postmark is a royal-blue cachet carrying a Star of David and the village name, devised by a group that included Des Oldfield to raise money for the community association. Bethlehem earned the attention honestly: it took its name from the Welsh Independent chapel down at Dyffryn Ceidrych, one of many Nonconformist chapels given biblical names, and the postmark later attracted a following of its own.

The building doing the stamping is the Old School, built in 1864. It once held 76 children across two classrooms; by the time it closed, only six remained. Residents formed an association in 2000, bought the school in 2004 and refurbished it with a Big Lottery grant. It now has a hall, a kitchen, accessible toilets and baby-changing, and a Royal Mail mobile counter still stops outside. "The hall is now the social hub of Bethlehem," Des Oldfield told a visiting journalist, and on the evidence of the December post it is hard to argue.

A hillside above the Tywi

The village itself is a scatter of farms above the south side of the Tywi floodplain, reached on narrow lanes that leave the A4069 near Felindre and cross the Sawdde. Garn Goch rises directly behind it, its bracken turning red through autumn and winter, with the Black Mountain filling the view across the valley. There is a pottery at Farmers, but no grocery, deli, bakery or farm shop within the village itself.

Two forts and two long-distance trails

Behind the houses, the hill is the reason to walk. Garn Goch is two hillforts, fortified in the Iron Age on ground settled earlier still: the smaller Y Gaer Fach and the much larger Y Gaer Fawr, one of the largest in Wales. The National Park reads it as a major settlement of around 2,500 years ago; the stone-faced ramparts, now tumbled, once stood up to ten metres high and five thick, and Y Gaer Fawr has at least six entrances. A small car park at the foot of the hill puts you on a well-trodden path through both forts to broad hilltop views. The village also sits on the final leg of the Beacons Way, the day that drops down from Carreg Cennen Castle, and route 12 of the Heart of Wales Line Trail lets you walk station to station and take the train home.

Food and drink in Llangadog

For food and a pub you go down to Llangadog. The Castle Hotel is a three-storey Georgian coaching inn on the square, run by John and Fiona; a recent guest called it "a real find in a small village" and reported steak and mussels in a cream sauce. The Red Lion stands on Church Street, and the Bridge Coffi Shop does soup and a roll, baked potatoes and sandwiches. L J Bailey & Sons, the butcher at Provision House, is known for its sausages and pies. A few miles on at Myddfai, the community hall café turns out homemade cakes and afternoon tea.

Arriving by rail and ranging further afield

Llangadog's unstaffed station, step-free with four free parking spaces, is the practical way in by rail, and the 280 bus links it to Llandeilo and Carmarthen. Further afield are Dinefwr's deer park and Carreg Cennen's castle on its limestone crag. But it is worth timing a visit for December, when the cards come in and someone is inking a stamp by hand.