Magic Harbours Cont... (From Western Telegraph)

Magic Harbours Cont...

On this trip he's been at sea for thirteen days and they've caught five tons of fish. His wife, a local woman, meets him on the quay. The trawlers are Anglo-Spanish, and to comply with EU law a portion of the catch must be landed and sold here. The skipper launches into a tirade over fishing quotas and says he doesn't want his kids to go to sea, because the glory days are over. I ask him for his solution to the crisis in fish stocks. 'Smaller boats and an end to the factory ships,' he suggests. Dirk says his crew are leaving to work on the dredging boats back home because it's more lucrative. None of them goes to the electronic auction - they don't need to ask the market prices for their catch.

A stone's throw from the trawler, the fishmarket is a soulless affair. It's a large modern barn in which buyers sit on plastic chairs at computer desks, drowsy at their terminals but with one eye on a projection on the wall of shifting prices and ships. Around Europe, buyers log on to a Dutch auction and press return on their keyboards when they like the price. The whole process is conducted in silence. I'd expected sellers shouting prices and throwing cod.

Sitting on the quayside looking across Milford, I have a view which takes in the major themes of Wales's maritime story, or at least, the latest chapter in that story. On one side of the docks are the fishing trawlers, with their crews mending their nets and painting over rusty metal in blue, black and yellow; on the other side is the new marina, full of expensive yachts. Milford is nearly thriving again, and pleasure not work, is one of the new businesses. The other big business here is oil, turning thick crude black stuff into fuel for cars, trucks and planes. The nerve centre of Milford Haven Port Authority looks like air traffic control - full of radar screens - and its job is just as indispensable. The oil tankers coming in and out of here every hour are difficult to manoeuvre and almost impossible to stop. This office has the impossible task of balancing the industrial development of the port with the environmental conservation of the waterway. Talk this morning is of the missing swimmer who disappeared last night, trying to cross Milford Haven after a good night in a bar. An all-night search found their man safely asleep all along, albeit in somebody else's bed. At the end of the Port Authority's jetty are a couple of pilot boats, tied up ready for work. These are the modern equivalent of Mascotte. Tony, Will and Paul would have liked to have seen these but cooker duties detain them. This is the business end of bringing huge boats safely to harbour. It's as simple and terrifying as it ever was. A small boat delivers an experienced local man who knows the waters, on board a huge ship. He leaps daringly across the water, climbs a rope ladder and then, with a skilled and experienced hand, brings the vessel safely to her berth. On board the pilot boat we meet the skipper, then we're off immediately to collect a pilot from aboard a supertanker docking at the jetty nearby. Within yards of this massive concentration of heavy industry flutter the triangles of twenty yachts in reds, whites and blues on a day's sail. This waterway is an odd mix of business and pleasure. The pilot, Captain Andy Darlington, is a modest man just doing his job, jumping on and off ships at sea, but both crew and cargo depend on his skill for safe passage.

On our return into Milford, porpoises play off the bow but, infuriatingly, whenever our camera is pointed at them, they'll switch to another quarter of the boat. Cameraman Jon Rees and director Sara Allen are convinced the actors' union EQUITY must have a porpoises' branch, but these animals have no contract. Jon and Sara begin pleading with the creatures to appear in the programme - much to the amusement of the pilot boat crew. Eventually the porpoises oblige and their show is delightful. On the quayside, Gordon Parry, a family friend, rolls up to wish us well. He grew up around here and remembers a harbour full of fishing boats in his childhood. Gordon once stood for Parliament in Pembrokeshire and my father helped him with his campaign. I remember walking around housing estates delivering Gordon's election literature. My brother Huw and I could only just reach the door bells. We would tap the doors on one side of the street while Dad did the other. I've no idea if the voters thought we were two sweet little boys or that their prospective MP was a promoter of child labour!

We head up the river Cleddau. Over the water is Hobbs point, Pembroke Dock, which is where we used to catch the ferry when I was little, before the bridge was built. My parents took us to the nearby hill after school one day to see where the box girder bridge had fallen into the water in mid-build. The bridge was rebuilt successfully, of course, but ever since, West Walians have always been slightly sceptical about people with big plans. This is where I grew up, so I've spent my life leaving Pembroke Dock one way or another. My Dad was born and brought up here; he loved the town with a passion that I never understood. In my childhood it felt like a place forgotten and left behind in the slipstream of history; unemployment and poverty were never far away. Although we had a privileged upbringing, Dad's solicitor's practice and Mum's work as health visitor highlighted the difficulties this community faced. People dealt an unlucky hand were regular visitors to our house. It was a community that waited in suspense for a big jobs announcement that would be salvation for an economy far from the wealthy cities. I remember feeling despair when, years later, I had to read the news on television of the loss of the much-heralded 1,000-jobs call centre in the town. I knew how much it would hurt this small community. Big idea, badly thought out and short-lived. To me, as a youngster, the old home town

seemed a dump best escaped from as soon as possible for the bright lights of anywhere else. Visits home were always filled with Dad's hope for the declining town. After years working in London and then Cardiff I still didn't understand his deep affection for Pembroke Dock. The town's heyday had passed generations before, when PD, as it is affectionately known, was a Royal Dockyard. After that closed in 1926 the town would never again enjoy the prosperity that it had known then.

When my father died a few years ago I walked into St John's church behind the coffin, deeply moved to see that six hundred people had come to pay their last respects to the solicitor who believed law was to help people not to make the lawyers rich. He'd probably helped everyone present buy a house, make a will, sort out bereavement and probate or start a business. He wasn't much good on divorce. He'd light his pipe with St Bruno Ready Rubbed, and smoke the warring parties into a truce, then try to help them patch up their marriages. I'm convinced the thought of weeks of meetings with the smoke treatment kept many Pembrokeshire couples together. Most petty criminals were on first-name terms with my father. And hundreds of people in that church would still be waiting for the bills he'd forgotten to send from his shambles of an office. It was only when he'd gone that I understood why he loved the place. A long way from the opportunities and certainties of city life, this was a town that could still call itself a community. Each mourner here would know everyone's name.

Under the bridge we sail, past Burton - the fairy tale Benton Castle hiding in the trees - around a bend in the Cresswell river and on to Lawrenny, famous in Tudor times for its oysters. We progress onwards up the Daucleddau. We used to motor up here in a little dinghy when we were kids. The cheap outboard engine would generally overheat at this stage and then we'd face the long row back to Pembroke Dock. My father said it was character-building, and he was right: I've made a point since of not buying clapped-out secondhand outboards. At Llangwm we drop anchor. John, Paul, Will and I haul the punt over the side of Mascotte for the short journey to the shore. Thirty feet off the beach the punt's outboard motor breaks down, its propeller wrapped in thick, green weed. It is just like old times. Ellen Skirm is in her 90s. Sitting on the bench looking across Llangwm beach, she remembers this village when it was a busy little port. Her grandmother was one of the original Llangwm women who still have legendary status in these parts: the Llangwm Cocklewomen. In her childhood, she says, the men of the village would fish and collect cockles and mussels, but it was the women who would trudge around the towns of Tenby, Haverfordwest, Pembroke Dock and Tenby selling their wares, gone for days at a time. The men, she said, would remain in the village or on the boats. Further up river is Landshipping. Set back beyond high-water line, in amongst the trees, is a huge, centuries-old ruin of a once great house. This will one day be home to Alun Lewis and Sarah Hoss - they live in a couple of mobile homes behind their restoration project. But before I tap on their door, I wander around to see what they've let themselves in for. They are braver than me - this will take a lifetime of love and lots of money. Alan bounces out of their temporary accommodation with all the conviction of a man who knows there's no going back on his grand design. He runs diving and fishing trips. Sarah was a former colleague of mine in television, but she's given it up to come and live the good life on the banks of the Cleddau. Watching their children play in their huge garden on the side of the river, who wouldn't desert city life? Sarah offers to make dinner for us on the condition that we go and catch it. Alun and I wander over their garden to the wooden fishing boat his father and grandfather used. Watched intently by his spaniel - with its head cocked to one side - Alun pushes us off the mud and we spend an hour fishing with compass nets as generations of his family have done.