Daily photos no. 29: Gregynog

One of the highlights of my year since the early 2000s has been the annual conference of Cymdeithas Llên Saesneg Cymru / Association for Welsh Writing in English. It's my academic field in so far as I have one, and the people associated with it are a delight: intellectually curious, scholarly and democratic all. Living and working across the border, I don't often get to spend much time with people interested in the same thing, so the conference is like a slightly stressful holiday for me, especially as it was held (until this year) at Neuadd Gregynog Hall, a culturally significant Victorian stately home amidst the rolling hills of mid-Wales. A ramshackle, unmodernised, cheerful place, it could serve equally well for a Wodehouse or an Agatha Christie plot. I've had a cosy room above the stables and a cavernous one bigger than my house, miles from any sanitation, and can never decide which I prefer. I first went as an undergrad on an English department weekend - the first time I'd socialised with my lecturers, which was interesting, played croquet (while drunk and possibly stoned) and notable for bumping into an old school friend on an Aberystwyth Agriculture students trip, and realising that he was in fact a massively paranoid homophobe. And that's the last time I spoke to anyone from school!

The old department store in Trenewydd/Newtown

Some of the interiors are older than the house: the black-and-white is actually Victorian concrete

I will never not take photos of sheep

Dawn over Powys

The aforesaid hen doiled

The food is always terrible (as are my papers), you can't drink the water thanks to the miles of lead pipes, the cellar bar is cosy, there's a well-stocked bookshop and there's always someone playing jazz on the grand piano. Thankfully someone good. Sometimes it's full spring and lambs are gambolling, sometimes it's deepest winter - I could never understand why people were so scared of getting snowed into a massive mansion for a few days. All it needed was a body in the library to achieve perfection. Most people didn't have to go back to The Dark Place though.

Even if this year's conference hadn't been postponed we wouldn't have been there. The rising cost and lack of disabled access made us head for the bright lights and urban wickedness of Aberystwyth instead, after 30+ years in the same place, which saddens me.

I started taking a camera in 2011 and have become the unofficial chronicler, I suppose - I live-tweet the presentations I attend (it's my way of taking notes) and take pictures almost everywhere. I always go for a walk at dawn, partly for the birds and landscape, but partly because I never again want to meet my distinguished PhD examiners queuing for the bathroom in their pants. I didn't take any conference photos that year - wasn't sure what the protocol was - but I did take a lot of flower close-ups: I'd just bought a 50mm prime lens and wanted to find out what it could do. These days I rarely use anything else.