The next stop is Llandeilo

From now on the land is more pastoral and the rivers are larger, angry with flood water and Rosetta Stone Language the debris of a harsh winter. The sun reflects from barn roofs as much as from flooded fields and human habitation is more frequent. The language of people as they get off and on the train is a mixture of welsh and english. We have mothers taking young children into Swansea for shopping, farmers moving between market towns and students returning home for the weekend from Universities in England.To the right of the train, south-west of Llangadog by the banks of the Afon Tywi I see my first lambs of the season, sat patiently at the side of their mother looking curiously at the still novel passing of a train, a phenomena ignored by the ewe. The next stop is Llandeilo and here we depart the increasing swollen Tywi and head south towards the coast . From this point the scenery is increasingly industrial and modern, although as in the whole of South Wales you are never far from moorland, river banks and woods.We stop in Llanelli for ten minutes as the train has to reverse direction. This is a town seeped in rugby history and defined to the world by its team and the failure of non-welsh commentators to grasp the "Ll" sound (shared between Welsh and Zulu). The driver walks down the platform as our carriage has two driver cabs and we head for Swansea, crossing the spectacular estuary of the Loughor. From Swansea a much larger train, the Great Western to London, passes the Osprey's new stadium half way to Neath our first stop. From there to Language Learning Software Cardiff (with a conference call to Washington about a new project a brief intrusion on my nostalgia). As we approach the capital I can see the new Blues stadium being built at Leckwith, before the Arms Park and Millennium stadium emerge on my left as we cross the Taff. The next stop is Newport and as we leave the station and cross the Usk, Rodney Parade is visible on the right. The tide is out and the river a narrow thread between banks of mud. The Norman castle which once guarded this crossing is now reduced to one overgrown tower, but can sense how its white washed walls would have dominated the area in the early middle ages . In the space of an hour I have now passed the grounds of all four Welsh Regional rugby sides. Welsh rugby is in intimate affair of war being between neighbours until the six nations unites us. A week tomorrow with son, daughter and boy friend and probably sixty thousand fellow welsh men and women I will head for Edinburgh and the opening match of this important ritual against the Scots. We are installed as favourites for the first time in twenty years and all the talk in Wales is of back to back Grand Slams. I think only the New Zealanders (and possibly Munster) can really understand the degree to which national identity and self confidence is based on the performance of 22 men in red over the months that span the transition of winter into spring.All of those grounds, both the old and the new carry many memories over more than forty years. I attended matches with my mother as my son now does with me. When we lived i North Wales we paced the floor in front of the television willing that kick to go over, the pass to go to hand or the key tackle be made. I remain convinced to this day that the collective act of will of watching a match life influences the result no matter how physically separated you are from the turf. The hills that I have passed through I have climbed, the rivers (less frequently) have been the pathways of exploration by canoe. I have drunk Portuguese Learning Software in the pubs and tea rooms, visited the cattle markets and the farms suffered from depression and elation in its Rugby grounds..We are now leaving Wales through the Severn tunnel. It is time to draw this indulgent narrative to a close. Soon we will past Bristol to Wiltshire and thence home assuming my daughter remembers to pick me up from the station. I say home but maybe I should really say abode. Wiltshire has been good to both me and my children, but it can never really be home. There is a welsh word hiraeth which indicates a desire or longing to return to ones roots, the Cynefin and today I know what it means, I want to return to this land and live in it.