I'm sitting on my hotel bed, savouring my Penderyn "Madeira" variety single malt whiskey, produce of this principality and wholly appropriate as we are in the Lleyn peninsula: that long, lean witch's finger of North Wales which points to its Celtic neighbour across the Irish Sea.
We have so far been blessed with clement weather, by no means a certainty in a region boasting up to 100 inches of rain annually. Thus we have been able to visit a 5000 year old megalithic dolmen, as so often situated in a position to command stunning views of the surrounding countryside. The ancient Celtic people built these graves with great care: how else could they still be here to fill us with awe all these centuries later? Makes you wonder how many structures the present generation has built will still be extant in 7013... The Lleyn is an amazing place: a profusion of long extinct volcanoes jutting out above stunning granite coastlines; ancient trackways in continuous use since those dolmens were built (and even better, delightfully free of traffic). I tell you there's enough material here for a month of holidays and not just the 3 days we have allowed ourselves.
I live in Cardiff, where about 10 percent of the population speak Welsh. Of these, the vast majority are from the middle class intelligentsia, or the "Taffia" as they are known. But up here, in the heartland of rural North Wales, the figure rises to over 80 percent. And it's not just the well to do either. We were wandering the mean streets of the little resort of Abersoch this afternoon, when we espied a gaggle of hoodied yoof, all going in to a local hostelry and jabbering away furiously in the language of their forefathers. Who said Welsh was a dead language?
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