The reopening of Talyllyn Railway in its 70th anniversary year has begun.
 
King’s Café at Wharf Station is open with heated outdoor seating under the main station canopy, as well as further covered space under a pair of marquees. 
 
The shop and café in Tywyn and tearooms at Abergynolwyn are now open daily from 9am and 10am respectively
 
Daily passenger services have also restarted, with certain Covid restrictions in place to ensure the comfort and safety of the staff and passengers
 
Details of the timetable may be found on the railway’s website. All bookings must be made in advance through the website, which has full details of special Covid arrangements in place. 
 
Picture captions:
 
Under canopy dining tables for Kings Café on the platform at Wharf Station.
 
Marquees situated opposite the main station building at Wharf for patrons wishing to purchase take-away refreshments from Kings Café.
 

The picture has been chosen for the first year of the partnership with Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown and two other venues, Carmarthenshire Museum in Abergwili, Carmarthen and Beacon Museum in Whitehaven.
 
The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour 2021-‘23 offers three non-London museums, galleries or art centres the opportunity to partner with the National Gallery for three years and to display one different major work from our collection each year.
 
For the first time in the tour’s history, the partner venues have been selected for a three-year period. The paintings for 2022 and ‘23 will be chosen jointly by the partners and the National Gallery.
 
Oriel Davies Gallery will display Chardin’s ‘The House of Cards’ alongside two new
commissions - a kinetic work by the artist Charlie Cook, which will examine the concept of the ‘fragility of human endeavour’ and the idea of playful persistence as shown in the loaned painting.
 
A recent Glasgow School of Art graduate, Cook uses cabinet making skills to create kinetic works that playfully explore balance. This will be shown alongside ‘Building a Future’, a collaboration between Oriel Davies, local communities and illustrator Alyn Smith.
 
A Cardiff‐based artist, Smith has been commissioned to create a set of 15,000 cards which will be completed by contributions from local communities and built in the gallery exploring the relationship between dreaming and reality through play.
 
Steffan Jones‐Hughes, Oriel Davies’ director, said: “We are delighted to have this opportunity to work with the National Gallery and show historical work from the collection as a starting point for a contemporary dialogue with artists and our audiences, making connections between the work and Newtown’s people and places.”
 
National Gallery director Dr Gabriele Finaldi said: “Caught somewhere between curiosity, determination and fragility, the boy in Chardin’s painting is engrossed in his house-of-cards construction.
 
“The host museums have conceived some highly original and intensely participatory approaches to how this picture will be displayed in the context of their spaces and collections and I much look forward to working closely with them to reach new audiences outside London.”
 
Ian Jones, Head of Leisure for Carmarthenshire County Council, said: “We are excited to be a National Gallery Masterpiece Tour partner and want to involve our communities in developing the exhibition as much as possible. The Creative Curators – open to anyone interested in taking part – will have the amazing opportunity to get up close to museum collections and curate the exhibition around the centrepiece from the National Gallery.
 
“The partnership with the National Gallery is enabling this opportunity to try out a new way of creating exhibitions, as part of their commitment to promoting understanding, knowledge and appreciation of Old Master paintings.”
 
Picture caption:
 
Jean-Siméon Chardin’s ‘The House of Cards’.
© The National Gallery

Q. Please tell other members a bit about you and your business
 
A. John Lloyd of Aberllefenni Slate Mine and I formed Corris Caverns Limited with a view to developing the Braichgoch Slate Mine in Corris into a visitor attraction.  We were well aware of the appeal of exploring underground slate workings but we were equally conscious that the story of slate mining was well told elsewhere.  Eventually we decided to draw on the wealth of Welsh myths and legends as a theme using the underground workings as a dramatic backdrop. 
 
We were able to capture the water running through the tunnel to create an underground river and we commissioned a specially designed boat from the boatyard in Ynyslas to carry visitors along the river, through the magic waterfall and into a time of myth and legend.  So King Arthur’s Labyrinth was born and it welcomed its first visitors in the summer of 1993.
 
The Labyrinth is located adjacent to Corris Craft Centre which had been developed by the then Development Board for Rural Wales (DBRW) and we were able to rent one of the studios as the reception for our new venture.  A couple of years later DBRW put the Craft Centre on the market and, thanks to a friendly bank manager, we were able to buy it.  The Craft Centre now accommodates eight independent craft producers, the Dyfi Distillery, a café and a Welsh food shop, and the receptions for both the Labyrinth and Corris Mine Explorers.

Thank you, Ian.

Click here to visit King Arthur's Labyrinth' website