Insufficiently Welsh by Griff Rhys Jones

in Pontiago. Jack carried the name of his own village: not something that a newcomer could easily aspire to.
    Andrew’s spoken Welsh was not great, he confessed. He understood more than he talked. Pembrokeshire has a line across its middle, guarded by castles. Below it is the Englishry, occupied and colonised by the Normans and Flemish, where the English language is traditionally spoken. In this part of North Pembrokeshire, however, Welsh is the first language. One of my problems with Macsen was that Macsen understood no English at all. The only commands that the very Welsh dog understood were Welsh ones. It was a portent.
    â€“ FISHGUARD UPPERS –
    Hedydd lived on Strumble Head too. She called the Welsh language she spoke “the language of Heaven”. It was her first tongue. “When you want to make a programme about that you should come and see me again,” she said.
    We were to meet on a bench in Lower Fishguard harbour. First we had to film the place.
    There are two Fishguards: Upper and Lower. It is difficult to sort out which is the lovelier and which the more ruined by traffic. Many of the smaller Welsh towns have missed out on spanking new shopping centres and traffic calming schemes. Of course Welsh councils are councils and they long to catch up. They are only restricted from “modernising” by lack of funds. But instead of building new cul-de-sacs and “modern” bleak housing estates on the outskirts, they could save these wonderful places if they restored them and then completely sealed them off from cars (like modern housing estates). The refurbished centres could become close-quartered living areas.
    Some hope. The little village of Lower Fishguard straddles the main road along the coast so closely that people have actually abandoned the houses on either side of it. If you turn away towards the sea though, and venture further from the road, you will find a long, tidal quay sitting quietly under high cliffs, and the best view of this sublime harbour is from Upper Fishguard, on the other side of the bay. Tudor and Chris and Gary had set up on one of the footpaths that snake along the far cliff and I tried to find them. “We’re in front of the houses,” they told me on the radio.
    â€œWhich houses?’
    â€œYou take a right past the cinema and then right again.”
    â€œOK. Let me sort this. We took a right by the deli, and I left the car in the car park down there. I thought you were along here.”
    â€œI think we’re probably somewhere above you.”
    I thought so too, but an impenetrable wall of gorse and bracken blocked the way. I wasn’t going back. And I certainly wasn’t asking for directions. I was a late middle-aged man. I don’t ask. And I wasn’t clambering through the brambles. I could find them. Ten minutes later (a long time in television filming terms) and a flight of concrete steps I finally did.
    â€œThis is a great view of Lower Fishguard.”
    â€œThe view down there is even better.”
    â€œWe’re higher.”
    They were indeed, and now we were gazing down on the row of pretty fisherman’s cottages and the quay and the cliff rising up on the other side. Few towns as underrated as Fishguard can boast such vistas. It was why it became a film star.
    â€“ FILM FUN –
    John Huston’s “Moby Dick” was filmed in Fishguard first, or some small part of it. Huston, living in Ireland at the time, was apparently unwilling to fly back to the States, and so chose Wales as a stand-in for Nantucket. (He also employed Ireland and a bit of Guinea as well.) New Bedford and the East Coast of America had become heavily industrialised so Huston sought a “port that hadn’t changed materially for the last hundred years”.
    Mind you, Nantucket is a flat, featureless, empty sandbank off New York while Fishguard is an ancient, cliff-bound rocky cove. Huston admitted later that, despite