This is a personal account of how one man, working alone from Kidwelly, came to build a nationally archived body of Welsh heritage research using nothing more than a mobile phone and free digital tools.

It begins where everything begins — with Linda, with grief, with a dog named Lizzy and a road with no fixed destination. It follows the journey from the Wild Atlantic Way in 2018, where Google My Maps was first discovered as a navigation tool, through the chance conversation at a churchyard gate in Llandyry in 2023 that led to the first Coflein accession, through the world-first Pembrey and Burry Port War Memorial project, through 272 aircraft crash sites across South and West Wales, to a proposal sent to People's Collection Wales in 2026 suggesting that the same tools could unlock Welsh heritage for a generation of young people who already have them in their pockets.

At Ballycroy National Park in County Mayo in 2018, a plaque on a wall read: In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. And we will understand only what we are taught. Those words contain the complete argument for everything that followed.

For the full methodology and practical guide see: www.peoplescollection.wales/items/2239466

Graham Tudor Emmanuel · Kidwelly · 2026