Llangollen

One such person is Paul Evans.

I went along to the Llangollen Railway earlier in the year and met Paul.

He shared a story of his father's railway work that raised my hopes of finding something out about my own dad's railway work.

Paul pointed me towards the National Archives.

And they went to Tisley Locomotive Shed, which is now the home of Vintage Trains in Birmingham.

They spent two years there.

I took him down there for a day out because I was involved in building Beton Grange so when it moved from Llangollen for the boiler fitting it went to Tisley Works so when I used to go down there I got to know Alistair and you pointed out certain things and Dad came with me on a couple of occasions and he'd tell me that that's where the hostel was and that's where Mrs Jones' house was where I was in lodgings and that they used to go around the roller skating and the cinemas and he'd go and watch Aston Villa play And then from there he did his national service and came back to Croisneau Inn in Wrexham.

So he worked the line up until the closure, the Beech Inn, Marples Cuts.

You know, at the top end of that table, I think we're gonna be fighting up there with, um, the rest of them, and it's gonna be interesting.

And for Llangollen as well, and they're, they're, uh, they've always got ambition, I know.

So it's gonna be a...

Yeah.

[singing] Oh, I hate women.

In 1955, he went to the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales, with the Modena City Chorus.

They won first prize, and he began serious vocal study.

Imagine a sort of old-timey high school musical glee-type vibe.

She was making a joke, but she was also telling the truth.

They wander for a while, six weeks or so of coaching inns and hillsides and looking at houses, and then they come down into the valley of the River Dee in the north of Wales and find a village called Llangollen.

Say it slowly.

Llan-goth-lin.

A curious neighbor, a traveler on the road to Ireland who has heard about the odd cottage on the hill.

And then it grows.

The valley of Llangollen is beautiful, and it lies on the main road between London and the Irish ferries at Holyhead.

And word spreads that in this beautiful valley live two Irish gentlewomen who eloped together, who read in five languages, who have made a Gothic fairy cottage out of a farmhouse, and who are, by all accounts, perfectly happy.

And so at the moment, for me, UAPs, non-human intelligence, all that kind of stuff belongs within that space of genuine mystery.

Today I'm joined by Reverend Father Lee Taylor, a church in Wales, priest and vicar of three churches in and around Llangollen in North Wales.

Hopefully I've pronounced that correctly.

Lee isn't perhaps your typical vicar.

It's lopsided and painful because he can see now a correlation between himself and Sophie.

He told her earlier he didn't understand what she was doing in Llangollen, running around trying to discover patterns and evidence that might prove a reason for her twin's death.

He wondered why she didn't just go home, mourn, grieve.

But now he understands with absolute clarity because, in his own way, he is doing the same thing as she is with his own studies.

"'As soon as Kai crosses the border into England, "'he feels his feet back on solid ground.

"'This, he knows, has nothing to do with science "'and everything to do with belonging.

"'He simply doesn't feel like he belongs in Wales, "'particularly in the strange town of Llangollen, "'and he wonders where Sophie belongs.' Her accent isn't anything he can pinpoint.

Her voice is a sad song, the lonely chirp of a small bird at midnight, displaced, unsettled, untethered, lost.

I think they were a bit afraid that it would become an overly sentimental sort of Welsh, like kind of like on a rugby international where everyone's wearing daffodil hats and stuff like that, you know.

So, yeah, it was incredible in Llangollen to hear that for the first time recently.

And, you know, it's still the biggest selling Welsh language album of all time.

It was raised in Parliament, you know, as being this sort of seismic shift in Welsh cultural confidence, you know, so, yeah.