There was near panic on the Llanelli coastal path last Tuesday after a local man was reportedly seen smiling before 9am.
Witnesses feared he’d either won the lottery or managed to get an NHS dentist appointment.
As it turned out, he’d simply gone for a summer walk towards Burry Port and accidentally experienced joy.
“Yes, the weather was that nice,” he confirmed, shielding his eyes from what experts identified as “the sun.”
With schools soon breaking up and half of Carmarthenshire currently posting airport pints on Facebook with captions like “Here we gooooo!”, the annual debate has returned: why are thousands of us paying £1,400 to sit sweating beside a hotel pool in Benidorm when Wales is sitting here looking like a live action tourism advert?
Local economists estimate the average family now spends roughly the GDP of a small principality on airport parking alone.
Meanwhile, in Wales, parking is only mildly traumatic and comes with free sea air.
Take Mumbles seafront.
One sunny afternoon there and suddenly your blood pressure drops faster than a politician’s promise after election week.
Add an ice cream and a gentle breeze and you’re basically in a mindfulness retreat, except nobody’s charging you £87 to “reconnect with your inner self.”
Even the seagulls here have character.
In Spain, they steal chips.
In Llanelli, they look you directly in the eye first, like tiny feathery debt collectors.
And let’s not ignore the scenery.
The coastline between Llanelli and Burry Port is so beautiful it genuinely makes people stop mid-scroll on TikTok. Scientists are calling it “rare.”
So now comes the challenge: give your top three reasons people should spend summer in Wales.
Bribery, emotional blackmail and exaggerated claims about the quality of local chips are all welcome.
Because, honestly, who needs a delayed Ryanair flight when you’ve got sunsets over Carmarthen Bay and only a 20-minute queue for a 99?