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A day without rain, the Met Office predicts. There’s rejoicing in Beaumaris. All our guests are gone this morning, and C, H and I wait again outside the Spar for the 9:05 bus to Llanddona. This time the driver’s too…
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Wales Coast Path, day 88: Bangor to Llanfairfechan
Heavy rain is forecast until the afternoon. We put off making a start to Bangor as late as we can, but set off from the city centre along Ffordd Ddeiniol towards the Pier around 11:30. The rain’s falling steadily, and…
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Wales Coast Path, day 74: Beaumaris from Llanddona
The rain has stopped, and none is forecast for the rest of the day, as six of us wait in Beaumaris for the bus to Llanddona. The driver looks dubious. ‘Llanddona? Are you sure? There’s nothing there’. But we are…
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Wales Coast Path, day 72: Caernarfon to Bangor
Caernarfon to Bangor isn’t one of the Wales Coast Path’s happier stretches. On a day of near continuous rain it really can’t be recommended. And if, on top of that, you get lost not once but three times, it can…
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Wales Coast Path, day 73: Menai Bridge to Beaumaris
Anglesey has more than enough cars – far more than enough. This struck me the last time I was here a few weeks ago, when it took an hour and a half to go a few miles, and it’s even…
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Is it time for a National Trust of Wales?
There was a time when the National Trust was invulnerable and beyond criticism. Its aims are so obviously virtuous, and the experience of visiting its sites so rewarding that anyone bold enough to question its ethos or ways of working…
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John Ystumllyn: an African in 18th century Eifionydd
It wasn’t his real name, ‘John Ystumllyn’, but one the locals gave him. Another was ‘Jac Du’ or ‘Jack Black’. How he arrived, unwillingly, in north Wales is obscure. What is certain is that his origins were in Africa,…
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Reading and silence
I’m working my way, slowly – that seems the best way – through Sara Maitland’s A book of silence, and I’ve reached the part where she discusses the paradoxical relationship between reading and silence. On the one hand, reading the…
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Y Llwybr Madyn, 30 mlynedd ymlaen
Y tro hwn, y syniad oedd cyrraedd copa Cadair trwy ddilyn y Llwybr Madyn. (Angen arna i edrych yn y geiriadur i weld bod ‘madyn’ yn hen air am lwynog neu gadno – y ‘Fox’s Path’ yw’r fersiwn Saesneg.) Dewis…
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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…