Powys

the Justifarians had brought many more knights on horseback.

Though the bulk of Matilda's foot soldiers were leery Welsh spearmen from Gwynedd and Powys.

These Welsh infantry opened the battle, rushing in to overwhelm the King's Centre with a terrifying charge.

Yet this was not the Welsh way of war, not an ambush or surprise attack.

All investment in Wales is always going to be welcome.

Disappointed not to hear of anything coming to Powys or Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tower or anywhere else really in mid Wales.

I understand the frustration.

Labour came to town back last year when Keir Starmer was in power to announce £14 billion of rail funding and what we've seen in today is perhaps £30 million in rail funding for Cardiff Expressway which is really tinkering up the edges of what's required here in Wales.

Welcome to the Plodcast as I go through a very good Plodcast gate.

podcast is the weekly nature and countryside podcast from BBC Country Farm magazine and my name's Fergus Collins and I'm usually the host but this week I hand those duties to my good friend Annabel Ross who's heading deep into Powys to meet author Jay Griffiths who's written a wonderful book entitled How Animals Heal Us which is a really fascinating exploration of how wild animals and pets have such a huge positive impact on so many of us.

Well it's an intriguing conversation and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Lots of brilliant anecdotes and really curious stories.

But for now, as I head into a field of rather beautiful horses, let's find out how animals heal us.

Today I'm with Jay Griffiths, author of many books, and we're going to talk about one of them.

Jay, could you just tell us, can you tell us where we are? We're in a sheep field, right in the middle of Wales, in Powys.

So, but where are we near in Wales? I mean, we're in the middle of Wales.

But obviously within that, a lot of the local lads weren't playing for them and they got a lot of lads in from across the border.

One of them being across the border in Powys, which is your friend of mine, Chris Venables, the legend that is.

But obviously a lot of scousers, a lot of Brummies, a lot of people coming in.

The local lads weren't getting opportunities to play.

Swansea.

We mentioned in Wales, Bobby, who I spoke to last night, Bobby Townsend, it was, I think, the third guest I've had who misunderstood or misheard what I've said previously and thought I lived in Paris rather than Powys.

Oh, Powys, okay.

I can't think of many similarities between Paris and Paris.

It's

Ah, another beautiful morning in Powys.

There really is nowhere like Wales on a sunny morning.

The sky, the countryside, the castle.

animal's...

I'm not sure we need a confidence machine just yet, Luca.

We are in Powys, though.

There is an animal that struts freely around here with extreme amounts of confidence.

Who do you mean, Ranger Ray?

And that traces the Cromwell family back through Richard's ancestors.

So that's Thomas Cromwell's sister's husband's family, the Williams family, who hailed right back to the mythical Welsh princes of Powys, which was quite extraordinary.

But on this family tree, right in the middle, you have the heraldry and the name Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex.

So clearly the family were quite proud of him at this point, the turn of the 17th century.

Um, we've got seven health boards that provide maternity care.

Uh, one of those is Powys, so it doesn't actually have a district general hospital.

Uh, a lot of the care is outside of Wales or, um, in neighboring health boards in Wales.

So there's quite a lot of movement with pregnant women across health boards.