Small Town, Big Cars: Our First Proper Laugharne Sports & Classic Drive
- The Sticker Queen
- Aug 14
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 25
If you’d told me a year ago that Laugharne would end up with its own little car club, I’d have laughed but here we are Laugharne Sports & Classic, a WhatsApp group that’s already turned into meet-ups, drives, and a growing collection of shared adventures.
We’ve been down to Creswell Quay a few times for the monthly classic car nights, a few of the group made it up to the Cardigan Classic show, and back in July we somehow squeezed a barbecue and a driveway full of cars into our place on one of the hottest days of the year.
There’s also been a bit of heritage thrown in, like our trip to Pendine to see Bluebird on the sands which we wrote about here.
But this post is about our first proper planned drive, one that took us across some of the best roads Wales has to offer.
Setting Off from Laugharne
On a bright Sunday morning, we gathered in the castle car park. With six Porsches and two Lotus cars lined up, it made for quite a sight in the middle of our small town. I had Katie (Sticker Queen Junior) riding shotgun as DJ, with a perfectly judged playlist for the drive.
A last-minute route change from Alan and Andy in the Lotus cars turned out to be a gift with sweeping, unfamiliar backroads out of Nantgaredig that made the run to our first stop even more fun.
We pulled in at West End Café in Llandovery, a biker haunt that also attracts car folk, for coffee, snacks, and a quick leg stretch before heading further north.
Roads, Detours, and Horns
From Llandovery we climbed up over Sugar Loaf towards the Elan Valley. Somewhere along the way, Andrew and Tim’s 911s went missing from the group but in true road-trip fashion, we “acquired” a Jaguar XJR instead. Waiting in a layby for the stragglers, we got chatting with the XJR man – while he was enthusiastically sending photos of our cars to his Porsche driving son!
Just before we set off again, a small convoy appeared — a 992 Targa, a 996 C4S, and a Macan. They papped their horns as they passed, a friendly acknowledgement that we were all out enjoying the same thing... later we learned they’d come all the way from Windsor and Wolverhampton for their own mid-Wales drive.
The Bridge Moment
The highlight of the route was the famous wooden bridge at Afon Elan, a favourite of car photographers and motoring journalists alike. We lined the cars up, sent the drone skyward, and grabbed plenty of shots.
The timing was uncanny: as we positioned Karl’s Tahoe Blue 964 Targa on the bridge, the blue 992 Targa from earlier rolled up. Two Targas, decades apart, both in blue, parked on a bridge in the middle of rural Wales - pure coincidence, but one of those moments you can’t stage.
Sunday Lunch at Devil’s Bridge
Our final destination was The Hafod at Devil’s Bridge for a Sunday roast that was the perfect finish to the day. The staff couldn’t have been more accommodating despite us running late — though the cauliflower cheese had long since disappeared, they made up for it with endless pigs in blankets.
For me, the vegetarian option was a cracking nut roast with veggie gravy. We tucked in, cleared our plates, and swapped stories of the ride up, as well as the sea of bikes we’d encountered along the way. Devil’s Bridge was rammed full of them, and more than one of us mentioned the hair-raising overtakes we’d witnessed on the drive too.
Heading Home
The return to Laugharne was less straightforward than the outward run. Tractors, tricky junctions, and inconsistent satnav routes meant we got split into smaller groups. Even so, in a moment of perfect timing, we all ended up converging on the A40 around the same time, cars popping out of side roads within minutes of each other.
Back in town, we put the cars to bed and rounded things off with a pint, buzzing from the day and already swapping ideas for the next drive or road trip.
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