Wales Coast Path, day 82: Valley to Rhosneigr
It’s still and warm as we deliver C to the railway station at Rhosneigr for the absurdly long train journey back to Swansea (including an enforced bus journey between Cwmbran and Newport). Someone has scratched the words ‘… is shit’ as a predicate to the platform sign for Arriva Trains Wales, the unlamented rail franchise […]
Wales Coast Path, day 83: Rhosneigr to Aberffraw
Rhosneigr is a bloated seaside village, with some forgettable seafront houses, but once past them we’re walking south into the morning wind on a long, dune-edged beach, Traeth Llydan. The sun has gone today and the distant mountains are reduced to grey silhouettes. A wind surfer races across the water of the bay. Reaching its […]
Wales Coast Path, day 84: Aberffraw from Malltraeth
There’s a royal wedding on, but we’re somewhere else entirely. Ca and I point the car towards the far north, through Talley, Temple Bar and Llanrhystud in the bright May sunshine. Coffee in Pysgoty in republican Aberystwyth, where protests quickly forced Oxfam to remove pictures of Harry and Meghan from their bookshop window, and a […]
Yn eisiau: Arlywydd Cymru
Mae ein Brenhines cyn wydn â lledr. Nid yw’n dangos chwaith unrhyw awydd i ildio ei lle’n fuan. Ond yn hwy neu’n hwyrach bydd ei gorsedd yn wag, ac oni bai am ddamwain, neu benderfyniad annhebygol iawn, Charles Windsor a fydd yn dilyn ei fam, fel Brenin Charles III. Neu fel ‘George VII’, os nad […]
The Powysland Club: its origin and early development
1 Foundation The first county archaeological society in Wales was the Caerleon Antiquarian Association, founded in 1847 and renamed the Monmouthshire and Caerleon Antiquarian Association in 1857. It was twenty years before a second local archaeological society in Wales was founded, in 1867. The gap is puzzling, especially when one considers that this period […]
‘Civilisations’ and museums
The big BBC series Civilisations has come to an end. It was designed as a remake of – and a challenge to – the famous Kenneth Clark series Civilisation, first shown in 1969. The challenge was directly reflected in the plural form of the new title. While Clarke was concerned almost exclusively with ‘Western civilisation’ […]
Hints and helps for every-day emergencies
On the book table in the RISW coffee morning I find a drab, battered paperback. It looks much older than the other books around it. The faded cover has three overlapping circular pictures featuring a housewife, a small child and a man digging with a spade. What takes my eye is the title, Hints and […]
Helen Dunmore’s Catullus
When Helen Dunmore died at the age of 64 in June 2017 her readers mourned the loss of one of most sensitive and versatile writers of recent years. Many of them will have known her for the novels, short stories and books for children. The first work of hers I read was the first novel, […]
Who is the happiest of us all?
The answer, of course, is Finland. Cris Dafis, in this week’s Golwg, reminded us about the World Economic Forum’s recent report on the ‘happiness’ of people living in individual countries. In this country we still judge national success in traditional, narrowly economistic ways – typically in terms of GDP or economic growth or productivity. From […]
On the naming of bridges
Unsurprisingly the announcement this week by Alun Cairns, Secretary of State for Wales, that the Second Severn Crossing is to be renamed the ‘Prince of Wales Bridge’ has caused uproar. Perhaps it was intended to. Some have even suggested that the move is a dry run for the future announcement of a Welsh investiture of […]