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Episode 2

The author continues his embrace of all things Welsh with a trip to Caldey Island, where his uncle, now known as Teilo, practices as a monk.

"You have to pay to get in. The current cost, if you're in a car, is 拢5.30. Pressing a note into a fleshy female palm, I deploy the lone word of conversational Welsh in my locker. 'Diolch'. Thanks. Then I push my right foot down and accelerate into the land of my fathers. I'm not really sure where I'm going."

Author and journalist Jasper Rees rises to the challenge of embracing his 'inner Welshness'. His grandparents on his father's side were Welsh. So it's partly in recollection of times spent at their house on a hill in Camarthen that he opts for full 'immersion'. This means learning the language and putting to paper to some of his grandparents vivid stories about Wales. It also means travelling around, setting himself various tasks - singing in choirs, sheep-shearing, coracling, coal-mining. Some tasks are accomplished with deftness, some not, in his wry travelogue, which is abridged for radio by Katrin Williams.

2. The author continues his embrace of all things Welsh with
a trip to Caldey Island where his uncle, now known as Teilo,
practices as a monk. Life starts at half past three in the
morning and it's often a revelatory time of the day...

Reader Ben Miles.

15 minutes

Last on

Wed 10 Aug 2011 00:30

Broadcasts

  • Tue 9 Aug 2011 09:45
  • Wed 10 Aug 2011 00:30

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