Living in Norfolk I had barely come close to Wales for month and months. And months. Now I've ventured into it's green contours twice in two weeks. First for work, then for play. Since working a few weeks ago around the Moray Firth and learning about the native Picts, I'm becoming more and more enchanted by the Celts. Perhaps it's my ancestry (there's much Welsh in me) or just the seductively romantic legacies they've left behind. Their art, their ballads, snippets of an ancient language and their (eventual) minority status...
Still the weather is clement, and so is the sea. We took a rib out around Ramsey Island to spot Manx Shearwaters. It was like floating on molten mirror.
I drove out of Wales via Lampeter to see Kaffe Fassett's exhibition at The Welsh Quilt Centre. His colourful, fanciful quilts are a joy (see pics below) as was the whole gallery and shop. I loved that his vivid patchworks looked so at home alongside the unmistakable, good old traditional Welsh blankets.
There's also a sweet adjoining cafe, with handy wifi and walls sprigged with great work by local artists, including the folky landscape paintings of Lyndon Thomas.
Close-by is Strata Florida. It may sound modern and ugly, but it's old, old and beautiful. And once you loose the Latin, it means simply 'Vale of Flowers'. It's famous, still, for it's mighty abbey. As you'd expect, the Cistercian monks of the Middle Ages found a wild and lonely setting to practice their doctrine, but now their legendary abbey is in tatters. A ruin. But it remains the burial place of medieval Welsh princes. Beside them rests (allegedly) Dafydd ap Gwilym, one of the best known of Wales’s medieval poets. It seems to me he was a pretty racy bard, coming close to writing poetry porn, but in Celtic spirit his words tell of nature and love.
