Wales may be small in size but her influence is mighty. She is an ancient civilisation with Europe’s oldest language and earliest seats of learning. Her collection of castles is the finest in the world and speaks of a rich and turbulent history. Wales gave us Britain’s greatest Royal dynasty, the Tudors. A Welshman gave his name to America, Richard ap Meryk, who became Sheriff of Bristol and sponsored the Cabot brothers in their voyages of discovery to the New World.
Wales is the Land of Song and Poetry and brings the peoples of the world together in friendly competition. Her music soars around the globe and her musicians and actors mesmerise and win awards with their passion and their range.
Wales was the world’s first industrial nation. Her coal and iron and back-breaking toil drove the Industrial Revolution and built the modern world. Her people fought for social justice, for dignity and for fairness.
The beauties of Wales, her wild mountains and moorlands, lacustrine valleys and glorious coastlines, inspired the Picturesque movement, the first landscape painters, and the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
For all this, Wales does not strut or boast or preen, but quietly nurtures her plentiful treasures behind mountains or in deep valleys. She is full of surprises, constantly delighting the traveller with the unexpected, one moment vast, magnificent panoramas, stately cathedrals and castles and giant monuments of industry, then tiny, exquisite chapels, ancient burial grounds, cottages, waterfalls, green woods and dales.
In Wales there is nowhere that is not wondrous, nowhere that fails to amaze and charm, nowhere that does not bring forth the exclamation ‘I never knew that!’
Wales is like nowhere else.