Soon the Black Mountains provide a backdrop

Everyone knows about the castles and mountains of the north, the industrial Rosetta Stone heritage of the south. Mid Wales on the other hand is a treasure house of rivers, rough pasture, moorland, hills and wildlife. It makes the tragedy of Llandrindod Wells the more poignant. It is a Victorian town of great beauty with two hotels that with a little care could be spectacular and attract tourists in large numbers. When I arrived I walked past the farmers market displaying Welsh Black Beef, to my mind the superior of Aberdeen Angus, from local organic herds. Organic produce from local farms was also present. All the ingredients are there for good eating and quality restaurants. there is government business to keep things ticking over in the winter (although that is when I would visit for the light), spectacular scenery and wildlife for the summer, local produce and a unique and consistent architectural style which escaped the blight of the 1970s. All it needs is for someone to care for it and promote it. Those at least were by thoughts as the train left the recently restored station and headed south-west. This is one of the most spectacular train journeys in the UK, especially on a day where the horizon is a mass of black thunder clouds to the right, while to the left the sun plays on mountains and woods dappled with water. The light effects in the rain washed sky creating an air of mystery and promise of a magical reward for exploration. From Llandrindod Wells to Llanwrtyd Wells the track follows the Afon Irfon (Afon is the welsh for river) with Pen-y-Fan, majestic summit of the Rosetta Stone Software Brecon Beacons, where I lost my wedding ring and much else many years ago, in the background. Soon the Black Mountains provide a backdrop for which the only proper description is brooding.My great grandfather came from this area as a boy, moving to Cardiff and rising to the post of Head Game Keeper to the Marquis of Bute, builder of castles and the richest man in the world at the time. His heart attack led to the eviction of my great grandmother and their considerable brood of children who ended up in the docks of Cardiff (where at the time the police walked in threes) and over two generations by dint of hard work and effort moved out to Pencisely. The irony is that now the docks they left are now one of the more desirable areas of of Cardiff. I remember phoning my mother from there during IBM days. There was the prospect of the Cynefin Centre being located in the University and I was looking at converted warehouses. When I told her the name of the street there was silence, then a response which was short and to the point: You are not moving back there, the family spent years saving every penny to leave it. Now my mother was a highly educated women, She had a first class honours degree in German, won a scholarship and fought family pressure to pursue that education and studied in Germany in the late 1940s. However that place was a part of the collective consciousness of the family.Memories drifting to both Rosetta Stone Portuguese sad and happy moments, the train reaches Llandovery a lost treasure of a market town that sits comfortably between the spectacle of the Brecon Becons and the desolate beauty of the moors of Ceredigion, haunt of red kites.