Why Jimmy Carter had a life-long love affair with Wales

Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president who has died aged 100, had a life-long love affair with Wales.

It was mainly fuelled by his passion for the legendary poet Dylan Thomas.

President from 1977 to 1981, the former peanut farmer from Georgia visited Wales five times - in 1982, 1986, 1988, 1995 and 2008.

Perhaps his best-known trip came in June 1986, when he went fishing in mid and west Wales just two months after his successor Ronald Reagan bombed Libya.

Although not involved in the decision to bomb Tripoli and the Benghazi region, Carter was viewed as a potential retaliatory target.

Alun Lenny, a former BBC Wales reporter, received an anonymous tip-off that the former president was about to arrive in Tregaron, Ceredigion.

Arriving at Soar-y-Mynydd Chapel with a cameraman and a sound engineer, Mr Lenny said everything was quiet and he "began to think we might have had a bum steer".

"Then a car with three enormous American security guards pulled-up," he said.

Mr Lenny said the car was driven by PC Owen Lake from Dyfed-Powys Police, who he knew previously and could allay their fears at a time of heightened security.

"Owen vouched for me, so eventually they let me get within shouting-distance of President Carter, and he agreed to give me an interview after he'd come out of the service.

"He had nothing to do with Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, but nevertheless he was still seen as a key terrorist target, especially in Wales as planes from RAF Brawdy in Pembrokeshire had assisted in the raid on Tripoli," Mr Lenny added.

Mr Lenny said the former president was "most gracious with his time", speaking of how in 1977 he had campaigned for Dylan Thomas to be recognised in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, and even attempted a few words of Welsh for S4C's Newyddion bulletin.

As well as Dylan Thomas, Carter's passion for Wales was fuelled by Peter Bourne, an Oxford-born academic who had previously led the US crackdown on drugs while Carter had been governor of Georgia. He was also influential in encouraging Carter to run for president.

In 1980, Mr Bourne bought Llanio Isaf, a Tregaron farm that had been in his family for generations.

Carter was so captivated by Mr Bourne's stories of what he described as "this magnificent green desert" that he had to come and visit for himself.

The former president's true passion was fly-fishing.

In his 1988 autobiography, An Outdoor Journal, he described how on every foreign trip he would try to find a little time and space to indulge in his hobby.

During his 1986 visit to Wales, he fished on the River Teifi and the Clywedog Reservoir, accompanied by the acclaimed fisherman Moc Morgan and his then-19 year old son Hywel.

Hywel said: "On one hand it was so natural - just the group of us sitting in a rowing boat talking the international language of fishing – and then you had this wakeup call that the Clywedog dam was surrounded by sharp-shooters, and you're actually in the water with the former president of the USA."

He recalled how his father had warned him that he was not to hook more fish than Carter - however the former First Lady Rosalynn was not on the same page, landing the only catch of the day.

However there were some things even a former president could not get away with.

"It doesn't matter who you are, to fish in Wales you need to have bought a rod licence. So we drove Jimmy – as he insisted we called him – down to the local post office," Hywel said.

The shop was run by Hywel's mother, Meirion.

"She was seriously confused when three enormous men scoped out the shop - which can't have been much bigger than my front room – and then she was utterly slack-jawed when Jimmy strolled in and slapped his cash down on the counter," he said.

To round off the trip, Tregaron's Talbot Hotel put on a night of Welsh folk music, where internationally acclaimed opera singer Eirioes Ayres was among the performers.

"We sang 'Ar Lan y Mor', and afterwards Jimmy was almost moved to tears," she said.

"He was so down-to-earth, when we'd finished he just walked around us and had a kind word to say about everyone.

"You had the impression that he'd really enjoyed the night and was really humble that it had been put on in his honour," she said.

In 1995, Carter was the guest of honour at the opening of the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, and in 2008 he gave a lecture at the Hay Book Festival.

His final contribution to Welsh life came in 2014, when he gave a telephone interview on his love of Dylan Thomas for Nicola Heywood-Thomas' Arts Show on BBC Radio Wales.

"My own belief, and many people share this with me, is that he was the best poet of the last century," he said.