We are staying in a little village on the edge of the National Park called Trefriw. It’s a really lovely place, much bigger than our own home village. I imagine that one of the historic reasons why the village is bigger than our home village is that it’s home to a business that probably once employed reasonably large numbers of local people.

The Trefriw Woollen Mill has operated since the 1820s milling wool and making things. In today’s environment, it’s a beacon of environmentally friendly engineering because it’s powered on hydro-electric power from the river Crafnant. The water tumbles down the hill and drives a huge turbine that one of the assistants in the shop told me works all of their electricity. It’s a truly wonderful system although they are suffering at the moment because there isn’t enough water to keep their machinery going all of the time and they won’t use mains electric. How completely marvellous.

I’m sure that the business has probably been through patches where they’ve been less environmentally friendly – I expect that at some time in the history of the mill, dyes probably found their way into the river water and such like but even so, I reckon that these days it’s a beacon of light in a gloomy world where manufacturing has gone mad.

I got chatting to this chap and he was showing me the processes they use including the fact that they still use teasel to fluff up the fabric after weaving to soften the texture.....real teasel, not some artificial process that mimics teasel - the real McCoy!

I heard people say that they thought the products they made were expensive, which makes me very sad indeed. I couldn’t disagree more. Take this example…….

Since moving into our current home, we’ve bought two throws for our bed. The first, a fair-trade throw made of bits of old sari sewn together with a backing. It was colourful and jolly – just the sort of thing I love. It had sparkly bits in it too. It cost me £120. It lasted around two years before it was so badly disintegrated that it looked a mess because the stitching had simply fallen apart. Then we bought another throw. I thought it was much less likely to get tatty from the point of view that it was made from a shiny fabric (like a lining material for anyone who knows about fabrics) that was quilted. Great I thought – it can’t fall to bits like the last one. I bought it in a sale at half-price - £75. The quilting is now beginning to come unstitched.

So, what’s better value for money – the biggest Trefriw bedspread at £230, hand-made in a low-impact ethical environment that will last for a lifetime or the two cheaper throws I have bought in the last five years that cost me £195 and both will be long-gone by the time we’ve been here 10 years? And of course that’s only counting the actual financial cost because the second throw I bought was mass-produced in a far-away place that almost certainly didn’t give a flying whatnot for any environmental issues whatsoever.

It makes me very happy that this man is still there running his family-business and making these things of such great beauty. It also makes me very happy to know that this place exists because I know where my next investment in a bedspread will be made…..and it won’t be in the high street, it’ll be here in the Welsh mountains, where they deserve the money and I will get something exquisite to cherish. It makes me sad that I wasted such a lot of money on the two throws that I’ve bought in recent times.