La dolce vita

You could be forgiven for thinking that leaving behind la dolce vita in Italy for the drizzle-cloaked hills of mid Wales was, well, a strange decision. To do it twice, perhaps falls into the category of needing your head testing.

Those tempted to agree with that assessment have not reckoned with the pull of the green, green grass of home. The word hiraeth in Welsh expresses an indefinable feeling of missing something; a longing for something from the past.

Charles Dark, owner of the Wynnstay Inn in Machynlleth, may have been brought up in the Surrey hills from seven but he is from a Welsh family, and Wales made a lasting impression. His longing was such that he