Oh! What’s Occuring?

OUR blog headline uses the immortal words of Gavin and Stacey‘s Nessa Jenkins (Ruth Jones) to point you in the direction of our comprehensive Wales, Sports Wales and Third Sector Wales Charity events calendars for 2023.

At Ewegottalove, we want to keep you fully informed of what’s happening right across Wales and these detailed calendars are designed to do just that.

We will do our best to keep them up to date and accurate and we are calling on all secretaries and organisers of events big and small, local and national, to make sure we don’t miss a thing.

Any updates, alterations or corrections to listings can be e-mailed direct to [email protected] … thank ewe for your help!

Ewegottalove is Growing!

WE are continuing to add new content to the Ewegottalove website each and every day to make it your one-stop-shop for everything Wales and Welsh!

If you’re browsing around, check out the new Golf Wales and Studying in Wales sections which we hope will be popular both with Welsh golfers and students and those interested in coming to Wales from abroad.

If ewe would like to be featured, or place an advertisement in either section, please do email us for more information at [email protected]

EGL Editor

Made in Wales goes live on ewegottlove.com

OUR new Made in Wales section is now up and running on the website, with members of our Ewegottalove Wales Instagram Community (@ewegottalove) the first to be invited to showcase their services and products.

Feedback so far has been positive from the small business and online trading community, who are slowly emerging out of lockdown like an army of Welsh dormice waking from their long hibernation slumbers.

The first 50 Welsh small businesses to be featured on Made in Wales will be able to show off their wares completely free of charge as Ewegottalove does its bit to help companies and sole traders to re-establish themselves after 14 horrendous and damaging months of the pandemic.

Ewegottalove is keen to be involved in helping Welsh business back onto its feet and that is why we have been consulting with Business Wales for advice and support about the best way forward post-lockdown.

A walk around you local high street almost anywhere in Wales right now will demonstrate the devastating impact of the covid pandemic on businesses everywhere, with To Let signs posted outside many desolate premises, including some of the biggest names in the world of retail.

With close to a quarter of a million private sector enterprises in Wales, accounting for more than one million employees, there is a need to consider shopping local, buying Welsh and supporting small businesses wherever possible.

Ewegottalove has been offering free promotion to small Welsh business enterprises on its Instagram feed throughout the past six months and now we are stepping things up by offering more free support via Made in Wales during the first few months out of lockdown.

We are already seeing evidence of businesses helping each other out by engaging in new partnerships and collaborations, but we hope that the Welsh public will now step up and help them through these critical times by seeking out the many and varied gifts, products and services in our expanding Made in Wales section and help to put the ailing Welsh economy back on the road to recovery.

Gearing up for a fresh start for businesses in Wales

WELL, St David’s Day is here again, but there won’t be any of the usual parades, big parties, or family gatherings to celebrate our patron saint, thanks to the ongoing, but hopefully slowly receding, global pandemic.

Wales has been struck by over 200,000 covid cases and too many families have been devastated by the loss of loved ones to this cruel infectious disease, but the coming together of communities, coupled with the wonderful work of our care-givers and health workers, will see our nation emerge with a new togetherness and sense of purpose.

Businesses have taken a real battering over the past year; some will have been forced to close down altogether. However, like the shoots of Spring, which see the daffodils poking through, new home-run businesses and ‘cottage industries’ have emerged as resourceful Welsh men and women have rolled up their sleeves and found ways to make ends meet from their own kitchen or living room.

At Ewegottalove, itself rising from the ashes of the pandemic lockdown, we have connected with hundreds, maybe thousands, of burgeoning small businesses which provide us with hope of an economic recovery and a fresh start for Wales.

We intend to play our part by launching a Made in Wales section on our website to help promote small Welsh-run businesses through the slow, painful process of returning to some form of normality.

Already, our Instagram feed (@ewegottalove) is leading the way by offering free promotion to businesses, using the hashtags #supportwelshbusiness #supportlocalbusiness #supportsmallbusiness #freepromotion #madeinwales and #handmadeinwales. If you would like our help, simply Tag us in your best photograph and we will do the rest.

We will have more news soon about Made in Wales, but Ewegottalove has already marked St David’s Day, March 1, by launching a new My Wales section where anyone from around the world can tell us just what makes Wales special to them. Get in touch via the website, or our Instagram feed, telling us what Wales means to you, and don’t forget to let us have a few of your favourite photographs to illustrate your story.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus! (Happy St David’s Day)

Gavin Gwynne joins Wales’s Commonwealth boxing elite

MERTHYR boxer Gavin Gwynne joined a long and distinguished line of Welsh fighters to have won a Commonwealth or Empire title last night.

He defeated unbeaten pre-fight favourite Sean McComb with a seventh-round stoppage to follow in the footsteps of such Welsh ring legends as ‘Peerless’ Jim Driscoll, Freddie Welsh, Jack Petersen, Tommy Farr, Joe Erskine, Johnny Owen, Colin Jones and, in recent times, Lee Selby and Enzo Maccarinelli, in holding a Commonwealth crown.

Merthyr, of course, has an incredible reputation for producing internationally-renowned boxers like Owen, who tragically lost his life in a fight against Lupe Pintor in 1980, Eddie Thomas and World champions Jimmy Wilde and Howard Winstone.

Visit the Welsh Sport section of the Ewegottalove website to read all about Boxing in Wales and a special feature on Merthyr’s Lords of the Ring.

The strange tale of Merthyr and the Sinclair C5 electric car

ELECTRIC cars abound in modern-day Wales, but did ewe know that once upon a time the Hoover factory in Merthyr Tydfil was the home of a hush-hush operation to produce an early prototype of today’s quieter, more environmentally-friendly vehicles?

Indeed, during the 1980s, Hoovers set aside a portion of their production area – away from the washing machines and vacuum cleaners – to build a battery-operated vehicle which was designed to revolutionise commuting and popping to the shops… the Sinclair C5.

Sadly, the early excitement and hype which greeted the arrival of this little three-wheeler – which looked more like a cross between a dodgem car and a golf buggy than a car – quickly faded away and became the butt of many jokes, unkindly dubbed the ‘Hoover Hedgehog’.

Read about this little piece of Welsh industrial history in our ‘Around Wales’ section here.

Join our Insta community

EWEGOTTALOVE has a lively and fast-growing Instagram feed where we share links and images from our website, as well as featuring some of our followers’ finest pictures from around Wales.

Ewegottalove also wants to help promote small businesses in Wales via the #madeinwales and #handmadeinwales hashtags and we regularly post and feature some of our favourite followers.

We know what a difficult time it has been for Welsh businesses and want to help share the best of their products and services to the many hundreds of like-minded followers in our Instagram community.

The Ewegottalove elves are currently developing a Made in Wales and business listings section for our website which we believe can offer promotional support to small businesses across Wales, especially in the crucial coming months as we all try to get back on our feet in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So please join our Ewegottalove Wales Community on Instagram and follow, tag, like, share and comment to your hearts’ desire!

#ewegottalove #wales #madeinwales #handmadeinwales

Welcome to Ewegottalove Wales

CROESO, welcome, to Ewegottalove Wales!

Whether you’re a native of our glorious country, living in exile around the world, or seeking to discover Wales for the very first time – we are here for ewe all.

Our aim is to create a one-stop-shop for anything and everything Welsh, highlighting Wales’s rich heritage and history, outstanding natural beauty, iconic monuments and castles, and the people and events that have shaped today’s Wales.

If you’re thinking of visiting Wales we hope to provide everything necessary to make informed decisions about why to visit and where to find the tourist hot-spots. Importantly, Ewegottalove Wales will also take a stroll through those little-known ‘hidden gems’ off the beaten track!

So, why ‘ewe‘ gotta love? Well, Wales as a nation glories in the fact that its human population is heavily outnumbered by sheep; browse through any Welsh gift shop and ewe will find fluffy sheep among the traditional daffodils, leeks, lovespoons and miners’ helmets on offer.

Ewegottalove Wales will explore every peak and cwm, from Mount Snowdon to the Rhondda Valleys, from bara brith to Welsh rarebit, from Anglesey to Ystradgynlais, and, yes, from Max Boyce to Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Wales forever… Cymru am byth!