Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). I get letters every now and again that just say ‘Kate Rusby, Barnsley’, and they actually find their way, which is lovely! Asking me about it, we had this lovely chat, him saying, ‘When I sing somebody else’s song, I like to get right inside somebody’s head, and it’s like going through the front door and having a walk around the house. In 2001, work was completed on the extension of the A55 North Wales Expressway from the Britannia Bridge to Holyhead, giving the town a dual carriageway connection to North Wales and the main British motorway network. Like the rest of Wales and the British Isles, Holyhead has a maritime climate ( Cfb according to the Köppen climate classification) with cool summers and mild winters, and often high winds exacerbated by its location by the Irish Sea.

But I went along and did it, played for about half an hour, was nearly sick with fear, came off and went, ‘I’m never doing this again. We did a big tour in the spring, through April and May, and then the festival season felt quite lovely and normal, so hopefully … we can’t wait to get back out on the Christmas tour.When I was growing up, I remember GCSE and A-level time, everybody seeming to know what they were going to do. Holyhead railway station is the terminus of the North Wales Coast Line and is currently served by Avanti West Coast and Transport for Wales services.

Holyhead High School (previously County Secondary school) was the first comprehensive school in the UK. Yes, we have mutual friends in and around Sheffield, and he’s asked me to do a thing he does at Christmas in Sheffield every year, featuring three or four bands.My mum did the accounts for the record company for years, my sister now runs the record company and has worked for us 20-odd years, and my younger brother Joe did sound for me until recently. Holyhead Port is a major employer, most of the jobs linked to ferry services to the Republic of Ireland operated by Stena and Irish Ferries. And this Mercury Prize nominee and four-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards winner clearly knows where she’s at, having sat in the corner of those crowded public houses as a child, feeling the songs she brings to these shows are ‘in her bones’. Winter is supposed to be the season of barrenness, of Jack Frost nipping at your nose and of needing your big coat.

Obsession can lead an individual down many different paths, it has drawn Kate to her fifth festive long-playing offering. In the early nineteenth century, it was still undecided which port would be chosen as the primary sea link along the route from London to Dublin: Porthdinllaen, on the Llŷn Peninsula, or Holyhead in Anglesey. Yeah, I grew up going to those carol singing sessions, because my parents took us as kids, and we’d be just sat with the other kids, colouring, eating crisps, drinking pop, you know, in the tap room while all the adults were crammed in, singing away.Do you see your true arrival as the day debut album Hourglass was released in 1997, when you reached the UK top 40 for the first time with Awkward Annie a decade later, got even higher with 20 in 2012, or before all that? I grew up in a musical household, my parents both sing and play, there were always instruments, they were teaching us songs when we were young, and me, my older sister and younger brother all started the fiddle when we were six or seven.