Hiraeth

Because of the restrictions on travel, this year – for what I think is the first time in 40 years – we won't be going to Mid-Wales at Easter. Which is particularly annoying, as for the first time in several years we had managed to book our favourite accommodation, a large, comfortable barn-conversion on the top of a hill near Penybont. It goes by the name of Hiraeth, which is one of those Welsh words that seems to have no direct equivalent in English, but lies somewhere in the region of "homesickness", "nostalgia", "longing", and "regret", that heady brew of mixed feelings exiles have for a homeland lost in time and space: you get the picture. So, as a name it seems very appropriate at the moment, even though I don't have any Welsh ancestors [1]: like your elective family, it seems you can adopt a new Heimat.

Hiraeth the ex-barn is ideally placed to experience and photograph the full range of landscapes in the area. Not least because, being perched high on one side of a SW-NE oriented valley with a handy balcony outside the bedroom, you get to see the sort of scenic sunrises and sunsets usually the preserve of the hard men of landscape photography, with their bivouac bags and thermal underwear, and go back to bed afterwards with a cup of tea. It is also nicely situated between the cultivated valleys around Llandrindod Wells down below and the austere uplands of the Radnor Forest up behind, as well as within a comfortable drive of a number of attractive destinations either side of the border, not to mention at least one Michelin-starred restaurant.

But not this year. Or at least not, as is our tradition, at Easter, when the farms are loud with all-night lambing sheds, the long-distance ramblers are out on the Offa's Dyke Path, and there could be snow or there could be sunshine, depending on the mood of the weather. So, instead, I'll continue to raid the landscape backfiles and put up some galleries of Radnorshire [2] scenics, perhaps even including some of the truly nuclear sunsets I have watched going down beyond the far side of the valley.

1. AFAIK. My maternal great grandfather is unknown, but must have been in Liverpool around March 1896, so not impossible.
2. Technically, Radnorshire no longer exists, having been subsumed into the mega-county of Powys around the time we started visiting but, like the Ridings of Yorkshire, it continues an outlaw existence as a necessary geographic and cultural category.

NOTE: I have now received a paper copy of Byrne and Swinton's Guide to Edinburgh, and it is good to go, so I've made it available for purchase. I know how much you'd be waiting to hear that!