Author: Andrew Green
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Snowdonia Slate Walk, day 7: Penmachno to Capel Curig
If yesterday was Mountain Day, today is the Day of the Three Rivers, Afon Machno, Afon Conwy and Afon Llugwy. And because the Trail, on the whole, follows the course of the rivers, the going promises to be much less challenging than yesterday’s. The other factor is that yesterday’s furious wind has dropped to a…
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Snowdonia Slate Walk, day 6: Llan Ffestiniog to Penmachno
M has left us for Cardiff, so we’re now reduced to a trio. Our taxi turns up on time today, and takes us back to Llan Ffestiniog. We leave the village and drop down through fields to make for the Cynfal Falls, whose waters cut a gash of white though the dark stony ravine. The…
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Snowdonia Slate Walk, day 5: Tanygrisiau to Llan Ffestiniog
In my crueller moments I like to think that Dr Richard Beeching is still suffering in purgatory for his destruction of the Welsh railway system. He left it in such a state that you can’t travel by rail between the country’s two main concentrations of population without a long diversion into England. Despite that, C1…
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Meinciau coffa
Os ewch chi am dro ar hyd Llwybr yr Arfordir tua’r Mwmbwls o’r gorllewin, oni bai eich bod chi wedi codi yn y bore bach, dych chi’n rhwym o gwrdd â llawer o bobl – cerddwyr (hamddenol a phellter hir), rhedwyr, syrffwyr ac eraill. Hynny yw, pobl fyw. Ond byddwch chi hefyd yn pasio heibio…
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Port Talbot, the novel: Jon Doyle’s ‘Communion’
Port Talbot has waited a long time for the novel it deserves. Now it has one: Communion, the first long work of fiction by Jon Doyle, who was brought up in the town, and still lives there. If you know Port Talbot you’ll soon recognise many of the places that feature in the book –…
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Whistler in Venice: etchings
By 1879 James McNeill Whistler was 45 years old and in a bad way. He’d won his libel case against John Ruskin’s accusation that he’d ‘flung a pot of paint into the public’s face’, but was awarded only a farthing in damages. He’d lost an important and generous patron, Frederick Leyland. In fact, by now…
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Geoff Dyer grows up
Geoff Dyer is one of those authors who never writes the same book twice. He’s produced around twenty of them so far, on a kaleidoscopic range of subjects, including the history of photography, India, Soviet film, the First World War, jazz heroes, Roger Federer and war movies. My favourite is Out of sheer rage: wrestling…
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St Illtud’s Walk, day 8: Afan Argoed to Margam
It’s taken four bus rides, via Swansea, Port Talbot and Pontrhydyfen, but by ten o’clock I’ve reached the visitor centre at Afan Argoed, where C. and I ended Day 7 in July 2024. I can’t really explain why it’s taken over a year and a half to reconnect with St Illtud. The weather’s often been…
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On active travel
Who could object to ‘active travel’? Who could possibly deny its health, environmental and economic benefits? Who could be in favour of being unfit or overweight, or encouraging unsafe roads, traffic jams, potholes and pollution? So, if it’s so obvious a virtue, why is active travel – walking and cycling as the natural mode of…
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Mae Sion Trefor yn pendwmpian
Mae gwedd y dyn hwn yn fy atgoffa o Wncl Jack, yn ei hen dŷ yn Howden, Swydd Efrog ddwyreiniol, nôl yn y 1960au. Wedi i’n mam-gu glirio’r ford ar ôl pryd mawr canol dydd a dianc i’r gegin, dyma ein tad a’i frawd yn encilio i stafell dawel yng nghefn y tŷ i orweddian…