It's All Very Wales by Amy Rosen

Wales is an enigma: a riddle cloaked in mystery and soaked in non-carbonated warm ale.

First there's the language: Welsh is one of the world's oldest living (and no doubt misunderstood) tongues, with roots in Breton, Gaelic and Cornish and a phonetic dialect whose alphabet relates to, but doesn't imitate, English. Here's how some friendly elders tried to teach me their language while I enjoyed a few licks of Welsh ice cream on the picturesque bridge overlooking the River Dee in Llangollen:

"F is pronounced as a V, as in English 'of,' like Felindre [veh-lin-dray]," starts the gent.

What the? (That's me.)

"Y has two different pronunciations," he continues. (Oh, an easy one, encourages his grey-haired mate.) "In all but the last syllable of a word it's pronounced as a 'U,' as in English 'fun.' When it is the last syllable of a word it is pronounced as an 'I,' as in English 'is.' For example, our word for mountain is mynydd [mun-ith]."

I've never wanted to slap someone so badly in all my life.

After this little encounter I also wanted to hold my Welsh guide's hand (whose name, Idwal, I never did manage to pronounce) for the remainder of the trip, for fear I would get lost and have to find my way back to Allt yr Ynys in Abergavenny. Please! Or rather, in Welsh, os gwelwch yn dda!

And then there's the food. But it's not what you think, if indeed you were thinking that Wales is a backwater culinary punchline. I dined high and low, eating everything from pink, tender roast leg of Welsh lamb (nicely salted by nature, thanks to the wet hillsides and salt marshes where they're raised) and Welsh black beef (again, thank you, lush organic pastures). I inhaled a full Welsh breakfast at the West Arms Hotel (since 1570) in the microscopic village of Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog, amid the rolling foothills of the Berwyn Mountains. They were "eating local" here about 500 years before it became hip to do so.

My kicked-back breakfast included local bacon (from down the road), David Keegan's homemade pork sausages (Keegan is the town butcher), sauteed, "just foraged" mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, Welsh black pudding, eggs with yolks the colour of the sun and fried bread, which I realize now is how all bread should be prepared.

But Wales, like all spots with history and charm on their side, has food quirks, and here we must look to that other famous Welsh breakfast: laverbread and cockles. Laverbread is not, in fact, bread. It's an almost black seaweed that grows in the brackish waters along the rugged coastline. Traditionally spread on toast with oatmeal and malt vinegar, it reeks of the ocean and is said to be a potent hangover remedy. Cockles, meanwhile, are raked from the muddy flats and cleaned, cooked and deshelled, their meat most often fried in bacon fat and set off by a dash of vinegar. They just happen to be laverbread's perfect foil.

But it's not only the language and food that are a little idiosyncratic here. Known as the Welsh axis of oddities, Llanwrtyd Wells, in the heart of Wales, is considered to be the smallest town in Britain (to be deemed a town, you must have a working church, pub, school and town council complete with mayor), a fact of which locals are very proud. At last count the population had swelled to 623, and the townsfolk were getting antsy because a couple of residents were pregnant, which, you can imagine, is something of a mixed blessing around here.

We stopped by the Drovers Rest, a fine restaurant, bar, B & B and cooking school, as well as a favoured stop during some of the town's signature sporting events, such as the 35-km Man v. Horse Marathon, which pits competitors on foot against man on steed. In 2004, for the first time in the competition's 25-year history, a bloke by the name of Huw Lobb was implausibly victorious, beating the horse by two minutes and taking home the cumulated purse of more than $50,000. To keep visitors coming to Llanwrytd Wells, this tiny town runs a full roster of events throughout the year, from the Real Ale Wobble to the World Bog Snorkelling Championships.

But what I like most about Wales, besides the people and the lambs (seven ewes to every man, they say), is the stories. Here's one: In northern Wales, on the Isle of Anglesey, sits a town once called Llanfair, where no more than 4,000 people live. Way back in 1852, the railway arrived and, excited by the prospect of an influx of tourists, the town shined its proverbial shoes and waited. Alas, none came. So they did what anyone with a bit of home spirit would do: They hatched a plan. They had things to offer, they did. They had the Red Cave, a fierce natural whirlpool and a medieval church, and you don't see those every day. To trumpet the news of these wonderful attractions, the town passed a bill to add the trio of crowd magnets to the end of its name.

Now they were on to something: Not only was the town's new name very interesting, it was also the world's longest. Or so they thought. But it would seem that somewhere in Siberia was a town with an even longer name. So, doing what anyone with a bit of home spirit would do, they stretched their newly elongated name even more by adding "gogogoch" at the end, which means nothing, really, but gets the job done.

And so it was that Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (or the Church of St. Mary in the Hollow of White Hazel Trees near the Rapid Whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the Red Cave) became the longest place name in the world. Local sign-makers made a killing, and the triple-long train tickets became collectors' items. In the end, though, the record-breaking name did nothing to improve tourism.

But they did get a pretty good story out of it, didn't they? If You Go
For high-end Welsh cuisine, stop by the Foxhunter (thefoxhunter.com), in the village of Nantyderry, then stay at Llangoed Hall (llangoedhall.com) in the Wye Valley, with its garden maze and five-star service. Drovers Rest offers a great introduction to Welsh cookery and products (food-food-food.co.uk/courses.htm). While there, check out one of the many festivals and events such as Man v. Horse (man-v-horse.org.uk).

As well as natural beauty, there are man-made wonders such as Powis Castle, with its famous gardens (nationaltrust.org.uk), and a canal trip along the Pontcysylite Aqueduct, by way of horse-drawn canal boat (horsedrawnboats.co.uk/index.htm). But my favourite place of all was the West Arms Hotel (westarms.co.uk), the kind of place that just wraps its arms around you.

www.visitwales.com.