Cymru am byth! The things we love about Wales

In the Napoleonic Armies they used Nostalgia as a medical term to describe why some men would lose the will to fight. In some cases it is listed as the cause of death. It isn’t a uniquely Welsh feeling, we can all have it but each persons particular experience of it is and of course, only a Welsh person would feel homesick for Wales.. I have been asked many times to send photographs to Welshmen abroad of the grass on an an autumn morning or the valleys at sunset but I can’t magic up a bottle of Corona Dandelion & Burdock or Ferrari’s cream cakes to complete the picture for them. The concept of Hiraeth is lamenting that you don’t have a time machine.

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If we actually realised what Wales have achieved would be amazed. With a little research would find somewhere in the world where the Welsh or those with Welsh ancestry have quietly made their mark without fanfare or recognition. For example. Who knew that it was a Welshman Griffith J. Griffith from Betws , Glamorganshire, who gifted his land to the people that all after became Holywoodland aka Hollywood. He also built the famous Hollywood boulevard. What about Welsh. Celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He was Welsh-American was responsible for constructing one of the most iconic buildings in the 20th century naming it Taliesin after the Welsh bard because he was proud of his Welsh ancestry. In fact. He gave all his houses built Welsh names. Did you know. It was a Welshwoman first to photograph a picture of a snowman. She also captured the first person ever to recorded to smile in a picture. And between the years 1840 & 1850 Mary Dillwyn, of the Dillwyn family Cambrian Pottery fame, took numerous photos capturing many pictures including the two world firsts mentioned. The world's earliest photographs of the moon were taken on Wales. Relative of Fox-Talbot, John Dillwyn Llewellyn, who also invented the process of taking photos in stereo, in 1856 devised means of preserving photographic plates for several days so they could be freely transported and developed in other studios. Wales invented the words first fee paying passenger railway in 1802, some 18 years before Stockton and Darlington Railway opened. The railway line normally used to transport materials to the coast initially ferried along the promenade in Swansea by horse and cart fee paying passengers to enjoyed the sights & scenery. Then in 1807 were transported using the world's first steam powered train built by Cornishman Robert Trevithick. So the small examples given just scratches the surface of what we've done as people under such duress. Imagine what we could do if free and independent to express ourselves. Sadly, we in Wales tend to make other countries better not our own. Time we put ourselves first for once and celebrated our achievements.

1 - it's not England. 2 - we welcome strangers.

A landscape born out of a brutal past.