Author: Andrew Green
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Alma-Tadema’s uncarnal classics
Alluring women in chiffon and sandals, bright marble benches, azure seas, flower petals falling like rain. This was the recipe Lawrence Alma-Tadema hit on for his paintings of scenes from ancient Rome. Thousands were drawn to buy them, or at least reproductions of them, in late Victorian and Edwardian England. It was all a long…
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Mr Skates’s ring cycle
The row over the ‘Iron Ring’ proposed for Flint Castle seems to be over, so the time is right to think more calmly about what we’ve learnt. First, a quick summary of what happened (there is an ignominious prequel, which I’ll skip). Cadw, responsible for safeguarding scheduled historic monuments in Wales, together with Visit Wales, the…
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‘The Llanboidy molecatcher’ gan James Lewis Walters
Sylwais i ar y llun am y tro cyntaf llynedd. Ar y pryd roeddwn i’n chwilio am bethau eraill yn Amgueddfa Sir Gâr, yn hen Balas yr Esgob yn Abergwili. Hongiai’r llun yn swil, mewn lle anamlwg y tu ôl i ddrws. Ei destun eithriadol ac arddull medrus a ddenodd fy llygad gyntaf. Arhosodd y llun…
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Wales Coast Path, day 71: Dinas Dinlle to Caernarfon
Ca has joined us from Swansea. Yesterday it took her almost ten hours to make the journey of 150 miles by train (Swansea to Carmarthen), bus (Carmarthen to Aberystwyth) and train (Aberystwyth to Pwllheli), including two connection stops of an hour each in Aberystwyth and Machynlleth, and a serious train breakdown in Machynlleth. To put it…
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Wales Coast Path, day 70: Trefor to Dinas Dinlle
We knew today’s trip wouldn’t be a popular choice – it’s just the two of us again. The stretch from Trefor to Dinas Dinlle mainly follows the course of the busy A499 and must count as one of the Wales Coast Path planners’ biggest failures. Presumably they were unable to engineer or negotiate either a…
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Wales Coast Path, day 69: Nefyn to Trefor
Now we are two, C and me, for the toughest challenge of the week, a mountain trek from Nefyn to Trefor across Yr Eifl. And here’s our favourite driver for the Bysus Nefyn trip, talking non-stop with the same workmate. It’s a quick journey: there are no deviations and, like all Llŷn buses, this one…
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Wales Coast Path, day 68: Tudweiliog to Nefyn
Bus journeys to the start of walks are always welcome. Today we’re off, the five of us, to Tudweiliog with Bysus Nefyn. Strangely, the bus visits Nefyn, our final destination, before rattling along to Tudweiliog, but otherwise doesn’t deviate from the road to reach remote villages on either side (there aren’t many of them), so…
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Wales Coast Path, day 67: Porthor to Tudweiliog
Finding the way to Tywyn in our two cars isn’t easy. Turning off the road to Tudweiliog we miss a minor road to the right. We realise the mistake and trying to correct it, but go wrong again and end up on a narrow farm track behind an alarmed family of ducks. Retracing our steps,…
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Wales Coast Path, day 66: Aberdaron to Porthor
We’ve stayed in cottages, houses and old chapels in previous walking weeks, but never in a penthouse. But here we are, in The Penthouse, in a building that’s part of the sea front at Pwllheli. It’s a replacement for the old West End Hotel, built by Solomon Andrews, the original developer of the grand seafront…
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Remembering Walter Conway
In the last couple of weeks I’ve been in and around Tredegar – Tredegar as it is today, but mostly Tredegar as it was in the first part of the twentieth century. Most people know about the town’s best known resident, Aneurin Bevan, and many know about Bevan’s pre-War experience of the pioneering services run…