I have been working for quite a while on a fascinating story and I have finally managed to get it on my website - Stories in Welsh Stone. The address is at the foot of this blog. You can find it in the Shorter Tales section because there are too many gaps in my knowledge for me to publish it at present.It is about Robert Everett a fighter pilot who died when his Hurricane crashed on the beach at llanddona in Anglesey in January 1942. He had an eventful life. In 1929 he won the Grand National horserace at Aintree leading home the largest ever field to contest it on Gregalach. He might also have been involved in the great MacRobertson airrace from England to Australia in 1934.However what interested me most was the part he played in the development of the Catapult Aircraft Merchantman, a design born of desperation in an attempt to protect Allied Convoys from U_Boats and long-range German aircraft.Here is an extract from my piece about Robert Everett...Convoys bringing supplies across the Atlantic were vulnerable not only to the U-boats but also to long- distance planes that could attack shipping and act as a spotter for U-boats. It also reported shipping movements and locations to the U boats, so they could intercept in areas where it was not possible for the Allies to provide any air cover. The Focke Wolf 200 Condor was extremely effective and sank nearly one million tonnes of Allied shipping in a few months. It was the first military aircraft capable of flying within range of the East coast of the USA, with a range far in advance of any planes the Allies could use to provide protection.In fact in 1943 a Junkers long distance patrol aircraft flew from Mont de Marsan in occupied France to a point 12 miles north of New York City and was completely undetected before it returned. It was too expensive to produce but it revealed a technological potential the Germans possessed. If they had persisted the plane would have changed the American perception of the war completely.As far as the convoys were concerned they were effectively alone in the Atlantic without the benefit of air cover.Their solution was the Catapult Aircraft Merchantman.Ships were equipped with a single catapult-launched Hurricane fighter a Hurricat or a catafighter. It was essentially the worlds first rocket-propelled fighter. Battleships already had steam powered catapults to launch spotter planes, but these catapults were not powerful enough to launch a fighter. So a rocket sled, using solid fuel rockets was developed at Farnborough.The planes though were not fitted for landings. A bit of a disadvantage you might think. But then there was actually nothing to land on. The pilot would have to ditch in the sea at the end of the flight and the plane would be lost or occasionally recovered and hoisted aboard. It seems to be a desperate rather than a practical measure, a one-way mission in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to land.Everett was the first to test the strategy on 3 August 1941. He was launched from CAM ship Maplin which was part of convoy OG. 70...If you want to find out more about this fascinating story then go to my websites and follow the links to the story.www.storiesinwelshstone.co.uk

I have just returned from my holiday in France and found that there had been some activity in my absence about Hedd Wyn, the Welsh Poet who was killed in the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. I was pleased that there was recognition for him, for he is a highly significant figure, another artist of huge potential cut down before his potential could be realised. But I was alarmed that his family home is under threat, as if Ellis Evans somehow no longer has relevance for us today. How wrong that is. We need to remember our past and preserve what we have, or the future will forget. And if the future does forget, then it will be our fault.Look at Huw Davies' pages on Americymru and you will find out more about the threat that hangs over the family farm, Yr Ysgwrn.In November 2005 I wrote an article for Welsh Country Magazine and I thought it would be appropriate to put it here so that those who are unfamiliar with him and what he represents can find out a little more.Hedd Wyn The Black BardOur grave this month takes us overseas. To Belgium and the site of the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917. But it is a journey that begins on the hills of North Wales above Trawsfynydd. For this is the story of the Black Bard.We visited his grave on a cold February afternoon. Artillery Wood cemetery, at Boesinge just outside Ypres. A mass of white headstones, each an individual life snuffed out too soon. The occasional poppy left by a relative who can now never have met the fallen. So many lives. I am sure it was only the biting wind that made our eyes water.But one grave stands out. More acknowledged than the rest. And the grave register too is full of childrens projects and tributes.For this is the grave of Private Ellis Humphrey Evans, 61117, Royal Welch Fusiliers, the great Welsh poet. He became known as The Black Bard. But to begin with he was known as Hedd Wyn. White Peace.He was born in January 1887 at Penlan in Trawsfynydd and he spent his childhood on the family farm, Yr Ysgwrn. He left school at 14 and worked as a shepherd but was determined to continue with his education. He would walk to Bala to borrow books from the library and he would spend his days on the hills writing poetry. His bardic name of Hedd Wyn was awarded at a local poetry festivalHe did work as a miner in the South Wales coalfields for a while but he realised that his vocation was out on the hills, writing poetry. His reputation grew and he won his first chair at Bala in 1907, followed by others at Eisteddfodau at Llanuwchllyn, Pwllheli and Pontardawe. It was his ambition to win the National, and in fact he came second at Aberystwyth in 1916. Always his bardic name was Hedd Wyn.Evans did not embrace the war. He was a pacifist. Here are the first two lines of his poem Rhyfel (War.)Gwae fi fy myn mewn oes mor ddrengA Duw ar drai ar orwel pell(Woe is my life in such a bitter age,/ As God fades on the horizons canopy.) There is no sense of glory or triumph here. Only the thought that God had turned his back on man.He had no desire to join the army and was protected initially by his occupation. Some farm workers were exempt on the basis that theirs was a vital occupation.But even in the hills the war scarred families, their sons never to return home. His contemporaries were dying and he was writing poems in their memory and working on he farm. However as casualties mounted, the rules were changed and Ellis Evans fate was sealed. The army needed more men and there was not enough work at Yr Ysgwrn to keep all the Evans boys at home. Someone had to go.In order to spare his more enthusiastic younger brother he joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers in February 1917 as a private. From Wrexham Barracks the new recruits were sent to Liverpool but cut unconvincing military figures. Coming down from their farms they would have seemed like foreigners, reluctant to speak English and all at sea in an alien world. Soldiers they were not. It was said of Ellis, He was a silent fellow. It would appear he could speak but little English, or if he could, he did not. The army represented a world he did not wish to join. He was only there out of duty and he was more concerned to complete his poem Yr Arwr (The Hero) in time for the National Eisteddfod in September.It was to be held in Birkenhead. Outside Wales of course, but home to many Welsh people working in the city, either in essential war industries or teaching and nursing.His chance to refine it came when he was sent home after basic training for 7 weeks. This was the last time he would see his family and his home.Private Ellis Evans, of the 15th Bn. Royal Welch Fusiliers, was despatched on active service to Flanders on 9 June 1917. It was a grim place. He wrote in a letter home, Heavy weather, heavy soul, heavy heart. There was, he said, a curse upon the land. He wrote in his poem Y Blotyn Du.We have no right to anythingBut the old and withered earthThat is all in chaos.The rhythm and the certainties of the seasons that he knew so well and that he had just left, had been replaced by mud and blood.The poem was submitted just in time, sent from France on 15 July 1917. It describes the realities of war for both the soldiers and their families at home. It escaped censorship by the army since, naturally, it was written in Welsh. All the subalterns were English.It was his misfortune that the 15th Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers was part of the 38th Division which had been selected to lead the assault on Pilckem Ridge. This would be the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchendaele. The division was regarded as having under-performed in the action at Mametz Wood in the Battle of the Somme. This was a chance for them to redeem themselves.They practised their role on a replica of the German trenches built behind the front line in France during June and they were moved up for the attack on 30 July. In the assault the 15th Battalion were required to attack a regimental headquarters and a telephone exchange. They succeeded in this objective, but every officer in the battalion was killed. So was Evans. General Haig described it as a fine days work. 31,000 soldiers were casualties on that fine day.A plaque made of Welsh slate on a brick wall at the Hagebos crossroad now marks the place where the wounded Evans was taken on 31 July 1917. The first aid post received him with chest wounds from shrapnel. He died 4 days later. Although his first language was Welsh, his last words are said to have been English. I am very happy. And so he died, so far away from the hills of north Wales. In their peace and solitude he had reflected and written. In the noise and chaos of Flanders he died, like so many others.Back in Liverpool a group of refugees from the Belgian town of Mechelen were given warm hospitality. One of them was Eugene Van Fleteren who made reproduction furniture. In an act of gratitude for the help he had received, he made the traditional carved chair for the National Eisteddfod. It was to be awarded on Thursday 6 September 1917. A Flanders chair for a Flanders casualty.As a day of celebration it was not a success. Of the two choirs from the Royal Welch Fusiliers who had sung to such acclaim two years earlier, only the conductor had survived and he was badly injured. And when Archdruid Dyfed announced the winner of the bardic chair, for his work Yr Arwr, there was no reply, for Hedd Wyn had died six weeks earlier.Instead of the usual chairing ceremony the chair was draped in a black pall amidst death-like silence and the bards came forward in long procession to pace their muse- tribute of englyn or couplet on the draped chair in memory of the dead bard hero. (The Western Mail.) Hedd Wyn. The Black Bard.After the ceremony the chair was taken away by train and cart to the family farm, to a room set aside in his memory.At the end of the war Hedd Wyns poems were published as Cerdir Bugail (Shepherds Songs) and a statue was erected in Trawsfynydd, not as a soldier but as a shepherd, which is probably how he would have liked to be remembered. It was unveiled by his mother in 1923. A petition to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was granted so that his grave in Artillery Wood does not read simply as E.H. Ellis but Y Prifardd Hedd Wyn -Principal Bard, Hedd Wyn.He has not been forgotten. His old school in Trawsfynydd is now called Ysgol Hedd Wyn in his honour and school projects take children to his graveside. A Welsh -language film of his life was nominated for an Oscar in 1992 and in the same year, on the 75 anniversary of his death, a joint venture between the people of Trawsfynydd and Ypres produced a slate plaque on a wall at Hagebos crossroads, where he received his fatal wounds. In Welsh, English and Flemish it is a fine Welsh slate on fine Flanders brick. Made to last, like memories.At the base of Ellis Evans statue in Trawsfynydd there is a tribute he wrote for a friend killed earlier in the war. He could have written this about himself.His sacrifice will not be forgottenHis face so dear will ever be rememberedThough Germanys iron fist by his blood was stained.Every November our thoughts turn to the past, to the awful destruction of a generation. The world would never be the same again. We should never forget what happened and what the world lost. All that potential, all those possibilities, snuffed out. Forever. Andamongst all the other things we lost, Wales lost a great poet.Published in Welsh Country Magazine, November 2005 (reproduced here with permission.)Since I wrote the article I have come across some additional information which is held in the National Museum of Wales. It is an interview from 1975 with Simon Jones of Aberangell, who saw Ellis fall on the battlefield."...we were going over the top at half past four. We started over Canal Bank at Ypres and he was killed half way across Pilkem...I saw him fall and I can say that it was a nosecap shell in his stomach that killed him. You could tell that. You couldn't stay with him - you had to keep going you see...there were stretcher bearers coming up behind us, you see. There was nothing - well, you'd be breaking the rulkes if went to help someone who was injured when you were in an attack. Your business was to keep going."In Trawsfynydd there is a memorial to Hedd Wyn. I shall include some pictures of it on My Page.

Finally our summer holidays have arrived and we are off to France on Sunday (26 July 2009). For the last couple of years we have gone on holiday with our eldest daughter Laura and her family, but this year it is just the three of us- my wife Liz and myself and our son David.We are looking forward to it immensely, for all the usual reasons. The beautiful peaceful countryside, the dramatic scenery, the fantastic food and the lovely wine.We are particularly looking forward to some sunshine! We had a good spell of weather in June here in Swansea but since then it has been rain all the way. After a busy year at work for both of us, we need to feel the warmth.We are driving right down to the south, to Bacares, which is on the Mediterranean near Perpignan, about 20 miles from Spain. It is a long drive but it gives us an opportunity to stay at two of our favourite hotels, Val Moret near Troyes in the Aube (www.le-val-moret.com) and Chez la Rose in Julienas in Beaujolais (www.chez-la-rose.fr)As always we will be crossing via The Channel Tunnel. This will be our 38th crossing under the sea. It is so easy and generally trouble free, though we have had some memorable delays. But usually you sit in your car, you sway gently from side to side for a while and then suddenly you emerge into the sunshine of France you hope!The Channel Tunnel is a wonderful thing, an engineering marvel. It had been talked about for many years. The Victorians talked of a tunnel to match the achievements of the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. The geology under the channel was checked during the 1870s and trial tunnels on either side were dug in 1881 and within the first year each side had bored almost 2 kilometres of tunnel. But the political will didnt exist for its completion, especially since there were vociferous objections from the military about the possible compromise to national security that it would represent.It was over 100 years before it was eventually completed in 1994.The French developer of the Suez Canal, speaking in Dover in July 1882 said that the one day England and France would be equally desirous of it, seeing the benefits to both countries.Well we certainly see the benefits, for it speeds us so quickly towards our holiday and still represents the perfect cure for sea sickness!As a result of our holiday I wont be around for three weeks, so my pages will remain untouched until the middle of August. But I am sure I will return warmed and refreshed and ready to throw more stuff at Americymru in a random sort of way!So thanks for reading and enjoy your own holidays if you have the chance, swine flu permitting of course!

You never know what you will find when you start rooting about in old newspapers. I came across this beautifully written piece quite by chance. I was looking for details of a ship that brought Yellow Fever to Swansea and instead found in The Cambrian a story about a ship taking German and Jewish emigrants to America. It is absolutely fascinating.The story comes from July 1882 when The Polaria docked in Swansea.The ship had been launched on the Tyne in the north of England by Mitchell and Co. in February that year for the Carr line of Hamburg. It was 300 feet long, 38 feet wide, with one funnel and two masts. It was built of iron, with a speed of 10 knots. It had been specifically designed for the emigrant service between Hamburg and New York and had accommodation for 1100 passengers. The company was contracted to carry 18,000 people over the subsequent six months and The Polaria was an important part of the huge fleet populating America. Crossings normally took between 17 and 19 days. This was its second trip, the maiden voyage docking in New York on 15 May 1882.Swansea has always been a busy port and sailors from all over the world have always come ashore, but it was unusual to see foreigners in such large numbers as this. Early on Monday morning the passengers from the ship were suddenly on the streets, no doubt grateful to feel the solid ground beneath them for a while. They still had a way to go, across the Atlantic. Few of them would ever have travelled this far before.The Polaria was docked for three days, during which time it became the object of the highest interest on the part of the local community. It was a drama from another world with 731 characters, which had called briefly into Swansea to pick up tin plate and coal from Wenallt and Resolven collieries.The paper tells us that he majority were Germans from various areas of the newly constituted but not as yet well consolidated German Empire. Whilst the cargo was being loaded, the passengers became a local curiosity. They were, we are told, stared at and joked about by the small minded and the thoughtless idlers which is very reminiscent of Shakespeares Merchant of Venice where all the boys in Venice follow Shylock and laugh at him. Certainly, Swansea has never been the most cosmopolitan of places. Soon the locals gathered at the docks for a closer look and many were taken on a tour of the ship, as if it were some kind of entertainment.The ship is described as a small town, with a most diverse population. There were nearly 200 Russian and Polish Jews from the troubled dominions of the Czar where they had been cruelly treated. They are of a very degraded standard dressed in rags. Their faces and hands would be all the more seemly for a freer use of the soap and water which are so liberally supplied on board ship. Their fares were paid by international relief committees, which seem to suggest to the reporter that he can treat them as curiosities.The newspaper adopts a rather superior tone throughout, with a curious mix of sympathy and outrageous prejudice. The odours that ascend from their quarters are not of the sweetest kind. The writer was not at all troubled by the sort of restrictions we have today and at times there is an awful cruelty in some of the things that are written. He is confident that no one will see anything improper in what he says. He tells us that the Jewish emigrants may not be as poor as they look, he writes about the Semitic type in their physiognomy and their peculiar genius for petty bargaining and money changing.The reporter is more comfortable with the Germans, who are respectable working class, clean in habits. They paid about 5 for their passage, though 140 of them had tickets pre-paid by family and friends who had already made the journey. There were new passengers as well, for two children were born, one off Mumbles Head and the second whilst the ship was in dock.Thousands of people gathered to see the departure of The Polaria at 9.00pm on Wednesday. It was apparently a touching sight. The poorer spectators allegedly expressed their wish to join the emigrants. 30 men went to the captain and offered to work their passage. 50 loafers and would-be stowaways were found and sent back in the steam tug. Is any of this true? It is hard to say. The reporter adopts a narrative style throughout and perhaps such details just helped to make it a good story.The article ends with some reflections on emigration and how it is most successful when families and neighbour hoods go together. There is no loneliness, no misery save through the unavoidable accidents of life. For this reason he appears to be encouraging entire Irish villages to relocate across the Atlantic.Sadly I have been unable to find the passenger list for this particular voyage. However, the list for the maiden voyage of The Polaria which docked in New York on 15 May 1882 is available on-line and it brings all the stories about emigration to life. You can see whole families desperate to improve themselves. They uprooted themselves completely and headed into the unknown. For them it was a new beginning in the New World.Back in the Old World boys still laughed at strangers in the street.You will find a longer version of this piece, containing additional information, on my website - www.storiesinwelshstone.co.uk.You will find it in the Shorter Tales section.

I havent been able to get on to the website for a while because I have been so busy in school. As always the summer months are a particularly busy time. I am sure it is the same in America. As teachers approach the end of the school year there is so much that needs to be done and everything else, like normal life, takes a back seat. But at last things have started to calm down and I have been able to get out into the countryside once more.My wife Liz went up to see our daughter in Chester and I travelled to the half way point to meet Laura and her family and bring her home. That half way point, right in the middle of Wales, is Llandrindod Wells.It is an unexpected place, a Victorian town that seems to erupt unexpectedly from the beautiful isolation of the green countryside around it. As the name suggests, Llandrindod is a spa town.It owes its status to the medicinal waters from a spring with the wonderful name of Ffynnon Llwynygog- which means The well in the cuckoos grove. This was a saline spring, though some of the others in Wales were, and remain, much more pungent. Many of the spas across the country provide water which is rather unpleasant and sulphurous but is widely believed on little real evidence at times to be very good for you, apparently based on the premise that the more vile it is the better. The most southerly of these at Llanwrtyd was very smelly indeed. The spring was in fact called Ffynnon Drewllyd which means stinking spring.In Wales there are a number of spas, all very close to each other at Llandrindod, Llanwrtyd, Llangammarch, Builth now all include the word Wells in their name. It is Llandrindod Wells that is the only one which is still commercially operative. You can still take the water by the glass in the Pump Room.The saline spring was in use in the 17th century. In the next century Mrs Jenkins discovered sulphur water close by and started offering cures. Some verses which appeared in The Gentlemans Magazine in 1748 started to attract interest and soon people were travelling to the developing town.The real boost to visitors however came in the 19th century, with the development of the railway. A line linking Llandrindod to South Wales was opened in 1865. So, where there were about 180 people living there in 1817 by the end of the century there were over 80,000 visitors. The town flourished and became a fully-inclusive holiday resort. There was musical entertainment from early in the morning, exercise and visits to the spa. You could even sit in radioactive mud if you wanted. All the time you were surrounded by those beautiful Victorian buildings.In those days the water was a penny a glass. However, since it was generally believed to be necessary to drink as much as a gallon a day, it was better to buy a day ticket. For a small fee you could then drink as much as you liked. Some authorities felt however that it was better to bathe in it.There were warnings though. On no account should visitors take the water in the afternoon, since it had, shall we say, a purgative effect. It was certainly more than capable of ruining your evening.What it offered was an apparently natural remedy for a whole range of complaints including skin disease, kidney trouble, rheumatism, bladder disease and gout.There was a genuine belief that taking the waters worked and I suppose in the end that is what mattered. Personally I find a glass of champagne to be far more effective in all circumstances, but perhaps I am just weird.I had a pleasant walk around the pretty town whilst I waited for Liz to arrive. It was quiet and calm. The hotel guests were sitting on the verandas enjoying the warmth and the soft evening light, as people have done since the waters became important. It seemed a very civilized sort of place. In the past it was a much racier, full of fashionable gamesters and libertines. On summer evenings like that one it was hard to imagine it was ever like that. And although its grandeur appears to be fading, I think I prefer it as it is.

When the reputation of politicians here in the UK is at a very low ebb, it is good to know we can turn to the past for a better model of how things should be. I found this instructive extract in the Swansea newspaper, The Cambrian, of October 1900 about the canvassing techniques developed by Judge John D. Holt, the Democratic candidate for the post of Governor of West Virginia.He may have been campaigning on the other side of the Atlantic but The Cambrian was mightily impressed by his determination and his versatility. To be frank there appears to have been nothing he would not do to secure a vote. In the first place he was an accomplished fiddle player, who plays quadrilles, waltzes, reels and two steps to the entire satisfaction of young people in the country districts. Apparently, as soon as he arrived anywhere on his canvassing tour he was playing away at a dance.Clearly it was hard work getting elected in West Virginia. You have to ask yourself, was it worth it? Was it really worth the humiliation of being the major attraction at some kind of ancient disco full of clumsy adolescents?But there was more. He was a good cook and handy at all kinds of housework. He didnt stop at kissing a baby. He could soothe it even in its most tempestuous moments. Obviously a man of real talent. His blackberry roll was apparently the best anyone had ever tasted. He would peel potatoes if it got him a vote or sweep the house or even undertake essential needlework in a way that defied criticism from the envious.What does this suggest? Madness? Desperation? Were there such advantages in getting elected that made it worth nursing someones ugly child to sleep? As a father I have always been uncomfortable with the idea that a politician might want to kiss any of my babies. But I know now that what I really wanted was for them to clean my house. Certainly it would have given me a real basis on which to make an informed judgement. Forget about their position on foreign policy. Lets see if they clean behind the sofa. In fact if you had lots of candidates you could get your house cleaned for a week on a rota basis. It works for me.I know nothing more about Judge John D. Holt but I am grateful to him. He has given me a model on which I can judge our current political leaders. Forget policy. Consider their pastry.Would I have given Judge Holt my vote? I would have given him a room in my house on the basis of his blackberry roll alone.

When I look at the stories I have written so far I am convinced that some of them will never be finished. There are always new and important details to be added. Time has frayed the details sometimes and it isnt easy to restore them in their entirety. The tales are not complete and probably never will be.It is part of their attraction I suppose. I was made aware of this a few weeks ago when I had new information from a direct descendant of the murderer Henry Tremble that added to my understanding of his actions. I reported this new information on my own website, www.storiesinwelshstone.co.uk. (See the blog entry 20 April 2009 Henry Tremble)Well, I have had more fascinating information today (26 May 2009). I started the day with a radio interview on our local station Swansea Sound. They only wanted five minutes from me so it was over very quickly and so I went off to the Central Library to meet the convenor of a local history group, Marilyn Jones. They have asked me to speak on Saturday 20 June 2009 and I wanted to look at the room where I will be speaking. I was completely reassured. Not only does it have an inter-active whiteboard but also an absolutely fantastic view across the bay to Mumbles, so if the audience get bored when I am talking at least they will be able to take in the view.During our conversation Marilyn told me something very interesting. It was all because her husbands family came from Felindre, where I found the story of Eleanor Williams, who appears on page 84 of Volume One.Now this story gave me a lot of trouble when I was writing it because there never seemed to be enough detail about her. She was murdered and thrown into a well on Llwyngwenno Farm in Felindre near Swansea in 1832 but apart from that the poor girls trail was very cold indeed. In the end, I based my writing upon the startling similarities between her death and that of Margaret Williams in Cadoxton, the very first story I ever researched. Two servant girls, both from Carmarthenshire, both pregnant and both murdered.If you have read the piece, either in the magazine or in the book, you will remember that I speculate about why the gravestone in Nebo Chapel names the farmer for whom she worked as a servant, Thomas Thomas. Well of course it is a very significant detail, and once more it reflects the Cadoxton murder in an uncanny way.Quite simply the community in this rather small and enclosed little village believed they knew who had killed Eleanor. It was the son of Thomas Thomas, just as the Cadoxton Community believed that the farmers son Llewellyn Richard had killed Margaret Williams nine years earlier. Indeed Felindre modelled its response on their reaction. They were convinced they knew who had done it. They couldnt prove it but they didnt really need the law. What they wanted was justice. So they erected their accusatory gravestone, just as they had done in Cadoxton. They might not have had the revenge they wanted, but they never forgot. Marilyn told me about the people painting the gates of the Nebo Chapel red on his wedding day. She said that they painted parts of the road red too. Even at that moment he could not escape from what he had done. Or at least what they thought he had done.These are not the sort of details that normally find their way out of the oral tradition. I am sure there is more information like this waiting for me. Just as it was with the story of Sara Hughes in north Wales in Brithdyr (Welsh Country Magazine May 2009) there is a residual memory of these dramatic events in local communities that needs to be captured.That means that this project of mine is still a work in progress and about this I am extremely pleased.(Because of the additional information I include about the story of Eleanor Williams, I will post this blog on my own web site and on the Welsh Country Website.)

Cnapan means two things to me. The first and perhaps more important is that it represents an excellent restaurant with rooms in Newport Pembrokeshire. It is a beautifully elegant place, a listed Georgian townhouse on East Street and I love going there. It is so relaxed and comfortable. You are made to feel at home from the moment you walk through the door. The bedrooms are full of character and we sat in ours for a while before our meal on Friday (15 May 2009), watching the wind drive the rain in from the sea. From the window we could see the church looking down on us and Mynydd Carningli behind, drifting in and out of the low cloud.I can recommend Cnapan without reservation and I can definitely suggest the fish stew, whilst Liz would recommend the chicken cooked with puy lentils and chorizo. The wine was good too. Then the weather, which had been wet and miserable all day, unexpectedly lifted. It was suddenly a lovely spring evening and we walked down to Parrog and watched the sunset. It was beautiful. I have added three pictures of Fridays sunset to my page on the website. I really enjoyed it.Here is the Cnapan website. http://www.cnapan.co.ukHowever, Cnapan is also the name of an ancient and vicious game which was popular in medieval and Tudor times. It is an ancestor of rugby apparently. It didnt spread much outside Pembrokeshire and you can understand why. Modern re-creations of the game have not prospered largely because no one will provide insurance cover. When it was revived for a match between Wales and England, the Welsh won easily, as a consequence of not explaining the rules. Not that here are many to be frank.It must have been quite an event, with the game stretching for miles. It was played with a hard wooden ball, rather like a cricket ball. It was perhaps a little larger than a tennis ball. This was the cnapan. The object was to take the ball back home to your own parish church. Simple really.Opposing teams were huge, with hundreds of players. In fact a team was usually the entire male population of a village.There was an annual grudge match between Newport and nearby Nevern. The game would start on the beach Traeth Mawr and the game would rage its way along roads, across fields and through hedges. Players were on foot, although the gentry took part on horseback, armed with staves and cudgels. Their objective was probably to remain fully clothed in order to preserve a little of the dignity appropriate to their position. The others played in only trousers or breeches since any other clothes would be ripped off. It was a good idea to keep your hair and beard short, apparently. You might ask yourself how in such circumstances you could distinguish members of the other side but I dont suppose it mattered that much. Injuries were common as you might expect, and deaths not unusual.There were tactics of a kind. There were positions like backs and forwards, and tacklers. There was passing and marking. But mostly it was fighting.The game usually ended either when darkness intervened or when the players went home because victory for one side seemed inevitable.In the still and peaceful sunset on Friday it was hard to think that this village had once been the home of such mayhem. To be honest, as an outsider who doesnt carry the rugby gene, cnapan doesnt seem a great deal different from its modern-day counterpart. But then what do I know? What I do know is that I have no doubt as to which particular Cnapan I prefer.And we shall be going back.