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Originally Posted by Russ D
She's either lying to you or that estate agent wasn't interested in the sale. It's possible that sort of thing occasionally happens in North Wales but it's definately rare down south. With the M4 we have a LOT of English people here. The only time it can cause a problem is in pubs if people are monged off their face and and an English person is speaking a little loud - and in those cases all that will happen is petty words might be spoken. This happened a few years ago when Neil and a few others came down to Swansea and we went to a pub - no trouble, just a few curious chavs.
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I lived in Lampeter for three years, at University. There were several pubs it was understood students (specifically, English students) did not go into. The aftermath of the England v Wales Five Nations (as it then was) match was always a dodgy night to go out on the town, although the year Wales beat us (1993 IIRC) was the worst, as the local chafs (geddit) were roaming the street, steaming drunk, and picking fights with anyone passing by asking them 'are you English?' Nearby there was a farmer who resented there being a public footpath on his land and whose wife one day accosted a group of my friends who were out walking, yelling at them, 'I wish the IRA would bomb your f***ing college!'
Before and since university, I lived close enough to North Wales to be familiar with it, and the holiday home / estate agent firebombings that occurred during the 1980s, and I have English friends who live in Bala and who know that if they go into certain pubs in the outlying villages, they will get a hostile reception and any conversations taking place in English will immediately switch to Welsh. I have also driven the length and breadth of that magnificent country and have come across plenty of roadsigns whose English has been carefully painted out to leave them in Welsh only.
Bitter, anti-English nationalism is a sad reality in Wales today. I am sure it is a minority pursuit, and I love Wales, and have several Welsh friends. I have never met a Welsh individual I didn't like (apart from that farmer's wife). But I think it's a mistake to believe it is confined either to the 1970s, or the north.