The Wales study tour was planned for a whole week, May 16th to 23rd 2025, both Fridays for traveling.
Friday 16th: Our host, Gillian Thomas, had to prepare the EWA stand at the Welsh Spring Festival with the help of two participants of the tour: one English craftswoman, Karen from Cattywumpus Crafts who was going to present her hand crafted mittens and other items, and a German woman interested in anything woolen. The third participant arrived at Newport in the evening. As this study tour group was so small, Gillian offered that we could stay at her house, so that she didn’t have to pick us up at the hotel but we could just start all the excursions from her home in her car.
The EWA stand consisted of four parts:
one area was equipped by three women from the group ‘The thread of time’, distaff spinners dressed in historical clothes, and a sheep from Kennixton Farm from South Wales. The second area was occupied by the Wool & Silk Art Studio with a lot of beautiful shawls, lamps, hats and other artwork: Svetlana also showed the process of felting during the days. The third part was an exhibition of different woolen products that we had samples of: pieces of carpets from Texel, duvets from the factory in Texel, ropes for growing mussels, cloth as plant potholders, wool pellets as fertilizer, solid wool for furniture…. And last but not least, the fourth cubicle was filled with warm sweaters and jumpers from Icelandic Leader Sheep wool: Daniel had come from Iceland to represent their special sheep and woollen products.
Saturday and Sunday, 17th /18th: Early arrival at the Spring Festival at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells.
As the showground covers 150 acres, it took some time to orient oneself: the festival is all about rural life and offers constant livestock and equine competitions. One of the highlights was the wool sorting competition where three women competed against each other, throwing the big fleeces onto the sorting tables, rolling up the fleeces and cleaning the working space. Other very interesting events were the livestock competitions of the different sheep breeds.
Apart from the different sheep breeds brought to the show by smallholders and farmers, the British Coloured Sheep Breeders Association, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, and the Ryeland Flock Book Society had stands there, among others.
On the fairground, there were big sheds with cows and bulls, sheep, and goats. All of these had their own competitions and the farmers were busy preparing their animals for them. As we were there because of European wool, I was mainly interested in the different sheep breeds. It’s impossible to cover all of them here, so I just post a few and the poster with the various color combinations in Shetland sheep.
Monday, 19th: We were driven to the British Wool Depot Brecon: The master grader in charge explained that they collect the Welsh wool from farms in South Wales in spring, early summer and at high times they have up to 20 people grading wool and baling it into lots. They grade each fleece, not the breed that fleece came from. That means, that there might be quite a different number of sheep breeds in one lot of wool but the wool characteristics are the same. During the whole process, the origin of the wool, that is the farmer, is encoded and is traceable through each step. We were shown the baling and then how they extract samples of each bale by punching the bale with a machine. The samples are collected into a plastic bag that is then sent to a laboratory where more details about the wool are measured. The lots of 24 bales are offered online via the British Wool Board and can be bought all over Europe.
Tuesday, 20th: Again, we had quite a long drive up to the National Wool Museum of Wales in Drefach Felindre near Carmarthen. Susan Martin showed us the dyeing plants garden next to the museum and the book she had written about her experiences. After a small lunch we met local wool producers and processors. Each gave a little talk about their business: Jonny King from Garthenor Organic told us how to start a spinning mill from scratch, Suzi from Cambrian Wool showed us the cloth made from Welsh wool and explained the challenges that come up during the process, Sian Lester offered us her insights working as a textile artist with Welsh wool and natural dyes, and Sharon from Wild Welsh Wool also shared her textile adventures using the wool of her own sheep. Gillian had invited the members of different weaver, spinners and dyers Guilds to the meeting at the museum and some of them also listened to the talks. In the end, everybody found this exchange of experiences very inspiring and necessary.
Wednesday, 21st : After these three intense days of woollen matters, we decided to visit the open-air-museum St Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff instead of the National Sheep Association Wales Show because we wanted to enjoy the exceptionally good weather and avoid more long driving for Gillian. The museum consists of more than 40 re-erected buildings from various locations in Wales. Some of the houses are equipped with real people doing the crafts such as shoe making, weaving, milling etc. In the weaving house, the weaver was just preparing some bobbins and he said he would card some wool the next day.
Thursday, 22nd: Our last study tour day was meant to be relaxing: we opted for a sightseeing tour into Cardiff by train. We had a stroll through the arcades of the city’s centre and admired the outside of the castle and its wall with the animals. We enjoyed an afternoon tea at Barkers and were back at Newport before the rush hour.
On Friday 23rd, everybody had to get to the train station or the airport. We left with a lot of inspiring ideas and only sunny landscapes of Wales in our heads. A big thank you to Gillian for organizing such a great tour and doing all the driving (four hours each day).
We hope to see you on the next EWA study tour!
