Going Dutch in Ceredigion

I went to Aberteifi/Cardigan today for the first time in ages. I needed to pick up a spade that I'd left to be re-handled back in the summer.

This is my favourite town in the area, accessible via a 40 minute bus ride which follows a glorious coastal and valley route, finally cresting a ridge and descending towards the Teifi estuary where the former seaport lies. The town represents an emulsion of the traditional and the new age/alternative, with old-fashioned butchers and bakers trading cheek by jowl with the perfumed candlestick makers.

A town-edge Tesco almost killed the spirit some 20 years ago and it took Cardigan a decade to recover with the loss of many well-loved shops but the arrival of new ones including the arty-crafty and the eco-friendly. I bought an excellent saucepan in a charity shop, a couple of books and and some olives, then discovered that since I was last here a weekly community market has been established. A variety of good produce stalls in a cavernous old garage included this one selling my favourite local cheese.

"Caws Teifi Cheese is an artisan cheese made from raw milk, and the farm owners have won numerous national and international awards for their cheese. Their most renowned cheese, Celtic Promise, is a raw milk washed-rind cheese which is only one of two cheeses to have (so far) clinched the most prestigious prize in British cheese-making twice - Supreme Champion at the British Cheese Awards in 1998 and in 2005. Teifi has also won, on four occasions, the prestigious Dougal Campbell Memorial trophy for the best Welsh Cheese."

The cheese maker looks justly proud. He and his partner make their cheeses in the Dutch tradition, similar to Gouda. This reminds me of a joke of my father's that I found highly amusing as a child: a Dutchman arrives in London from the Netherlands and is accosted in the street by a religious proselytizer who asks 'Do you love Jesus?' 'Yes' replies the visitor in heavily-accented English, 'I love our round, red, Dutch chees-us!'

No red cheeses here but one of the little white cylinders (Gwyn Bach) at the front is now residing in my fridge.