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.