COVERING the Eisteddfod for this week’s Vale Advertiser (R.I.P) was easily one of the trickiest tasks I’ve had so far.

Why? Not because it’s an especially challenging event to cover, or even one with a mountain of tales to be told, but just because every last crumb of correspondence came in Cymraeg.

Before anyone writes in to point it out, I know it’s meant to be a Welsh language festival. I just wasn’t expecting even the supposedly bilingual bits of press releases to trickle out with about ten words of English and ten paragraphs of the home tongue.

It makes me feel bad, because I love Welsh culture. Some of my best friends are Welsh, I go on holiday in what’s now my extended back garden, and I can even trace some of my own genes back to this green and pleasant land.

But I’m still an English immigrant with little understanding of complicated Welsh phrases and someone who gets mocked at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch station. Top marks if you can pronounce it but if not, join the club.

Events like the Eisteddfod end up looking hugely interesting but almost impossible to completely comprehend without the benefits of a whizz Welsh speaker to guide me.

I’m not saying we should shun Cymraeg completely just for the benefit of lazy English people like me, and in fact I admire the Eisteddfod’s efforts to keep the language alive. I just think it needs to be more accessible to everyone, and especially the four fifths of the Welsh population who don't speak it.

The quickest way I’m winning with Welsh is by actually having both languages written alongside each other, a policy which works on road signs, in shops and on websites.

But I reckon the Eisteddfod – by accident or design – risks alienating outside audiences by ignoring that idea at its peril.

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