Author: Andrew Green
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Snowdonia Slate Trail, day 3: Y Fron to Beddgelert
There’s no room for doubt. The Met Office’s app shows black clouds and two black raindrops, every hour from mid-morning to the end of the day. Other weather apps say the same. But we’re stoical, as we wait for the taxi to take us back to Y Fron for a twelve-miler to Beddgelert. The taxi’s…
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Snowdonia Slate Trail, day 2: Llanberis to Y Fron
Today’s a rare day: no waterproofs needed, and sun forecast for the afternoon. We set off from Llanberis and climb up the lane towards Waunfawr. On average, each day of the Trail crosses two watersheds, and this is the first of today’s two ascents. Sheep outnumber people by some margin, as usual. Their fleeces are…
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Snowdonia Slate Trail, day 1: Bethesda to Llanberis
I’ve had my eye on Llwybr Llechi Eryri, the Snowdonia Slate Trail, ever since it opened in 2017, and especially since two seasoned long-distance walkers, Eirlys Thomas and Lucy O’Donnell, told me in 2021 that it was one of the best long treks they’d ever tried. So the three of us, C1, C2 and I,…
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The artist from behind
What’s happening when artists choose to portray themselves in their work? The self-portrait was an invention of the Renaissance, but it’s just as common today, in painting (Jenny Saville’s work, now on show in a big retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, is a striking example) and in many other forms. Perhaps the most famous…
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On the buses
A couple of weeks ago Transport for Wales invited people to come along to Swansea Bus Station to give their views on the routes that buses in the city should take, once TfW takes over full responsibility for decisions from the existing bus companies. We went along and had some interesting chats with TfW staff…
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George Bowring: murdered by Welsh magic
The Victorian writer R.D. Blackmore, if he’s remembered at all today, is known for his three-volume novel Lorna Doone. It’s an adventure story, set on Exmoor in the seventeenth century, about the feuding and violent Doone clan and the love between the narrator, John Ridd, and the eponymous Lorna. The book sold badly on its…
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Bye bye, Brinley
Doedd y newyddion am farwolaeth Brinley ar 3 Awst ddim yn syndod – roedd yn 96 mlwydd oedd ac yn fregus yn dilyn strôc – ond daeth ton o dristwch mawr drosto i, o feddwl yn ôl dros y blynyddoedd o’n cyfeillgarwch. Aeth fy meddwl yn ôl yn syth i’r diwrnod cyntaf welais Brinley, yn…
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Dawn dweud
Bu tipyn o sôn yn y wasg yn ddiweddar am sgiliau ‘dawn dweud’ neu ‘medrau llafar’, neu ‘oracy’, i ddefnyddio’r gair Saesneg anhardd – y gallu i fynegi eich hun mewn ffordd rugl a gramadegol, ac i wrando ar yr hyn mae pob eraill yn ei ddweud wrthych chi. Yn 2024 cyhoeddodd comisiwn annibynnol ar…
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The Tower of the Nets
How many Swansea people, when they stroll along the sea wall past the Observatory (the Tower of the Ecliptic) in the Maritime Quarter stop to look closely at the diminutive building that sits on its own on the other side of the path? (I say ‘Observatory’, but that building ceased to be the home of…
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Deep in Carmarthenshire
If you’re in love with green – I mean chlorophyll-saturated green, the lightest and deepest greens that nature can offer – there are fewer better places to find it than north-west Carmarthenshire. To wander through the fields and woods on the hills either side of the Tywi valley and its tributaries is to soak your…