Well I'm having problems synchronising and therefore putting mp3 files onto my PDA - so no Welsh on the move for me at the moment - not on the bike anyway. I have spent a few days walking on the Cambrian way in South Wales though. Lovely walking but quite disappointing in tersm of not bumping into ANY Welsh speakers, really. Now I know that there are not so many in those counties but I thojught we might have found a few - S4C must get its speakers from somewhere (they are not all South Waleians). Even so I was really interested to walk in an area of Wales I had never been to - except one trip to a Rugby match in Cardiff on a coach when around 17..................
We walked from Cardiff to Abergavenny over four days.
I felt that as I was in Wales I did need to do some Welsh hence kept up my walk diary in Welsh - so far it is just in a note book but I think that soon I need to be brave and start bloggin in Welsh. I have been looking at other Welsh blogs and have found some fascinating ones: more on that in a future post. But now I am back from my walk and without mobile resources am back to reading. The book I have completed most recently is William Jones by T Rowland Hughes. As with O Law i Law this is a somewhat abbreviated edition, with some notes for Welsh learners. But I think I am getting to the point where I might try the original (bit scary, though). Anyway, as with O Law i Law this is a fascinating and humorous story about a slate quarrier who decides to move to the "Sowth": that being South Wales - which enables the story to provide a commentary on the hardships, comradery annd humour of the South Wales mines (from the perspective of a North Walian) at a time of depression and unemployment. What I find fascinating about the books I have been reading from around this period - which includes Kate Roberts' work too is the social history, and moreover, a social history that feels as though it has a strong personal connection. Roberts, as I have said before was born in the same village as my father, whilst Hughes lived in Llanberis, a village some 7 miles away.
We walked from Cardiff to Abergavenny over four days.
I felt that as I was in Wales I did need to do some Welsh hence kept up my walk diary in Welsh - so far it is just in a note book but I think that soon I need to be brave and start bloggin in Welsh. I have been looking at other Welsh blogs and have found some fascinating ones: more on that in a future post. But now I am back from my walk and without mobile resources am back to reading. The book I have completed most recently is William Jones by T Rowland Hughes. As with O Law i Law this is a somewhat abbreviated edition, with some notes for Welsh learners. But I think I am getting to the point where I might try the original (bit scary, though). Anyway, as with O Law i Law this is a fascinating and humorous story about a slate quarrier who decides to move to the "Sowth": that being South Wales - which enables the story to provide a commentary on the hardships, comradery annd humour of the South Wales mines (from the perspective of a North Walian) at a time of depression and unemployment. What I find fascinating about the books I have been reading from around this period - which includes Kate Roberts' work too is the social history, and moreover, a social history that feels as though it has a strong personal connection. Roberts, as I have said before was born in the same village as my father, whilst Hughes lived in Llanberis, a village some 7 miles away.
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