During his stay here, he said, he is trying to build a mutual exchange that he hopes will "bond our two towns and nations closer together."
Walker said he has been impressed with the people he has met during his stay here.
"Welsh people are naturally warm and sincere, and I have found the same warmth and sincerity in this Narberth, in fact to the extreme. It has touched my heart deeply on many occasions. Everywhere I've been I've received a welcome - not a show welcome like a lot of people would give you, but a genuine, sincere, from-the-heart welcome," he said.
"I would expect to offer that welcome to anyone who comes to visit our town," he said.
Walker, who has visited a Borough Council preparatory caucus meeting and Monday's council meeting while here, said he was impressed with how the Narberth Borough Council conducted its affairs, "in a very businesslike fashion." He added, "I respect your mayor greatly. He's a wonderful chap and we have got on well," he said of Dennis Sharkey.
Local government is run quite differently in Walker's country, he said. A mayor in Wales is present at all official ceremonies, wearing his robe and chain of office. As mayor, he serves as the chairman of a council of elected officials; in Britain, the executive and legislative branches of government are thus combined.
Although Walker allowed that he was a member of the ruling Conservative Party, he expressed his firm conviction that "politics should never enter local government." As a local elected official, "you are there as a servant of the people who put you there," he said.
Walker offered some of his more informal impressions, too. He still hasn't gotten used to the light switches in this country, which go up to turn on a light rather than down, as in Wales. Naturally, too, "the terms of language are different," he said. When his razor wouldn't fit the American plugs, he had to go to the "chemist," he said. Fortunately, he was not directed to nearby Haverford College, but to the local drugstore.
As Walker talked about his impressions of his stay in Narberth over drinks at a table in a Narberth restaurant, the waitress brought over a complementary drink from one of the patrons at the bar.
"I heard your speech," the patron said, when Walker introduced himself. Walker bought the man a drink himself later that evening. In the important ways, it seems, Welsh Narberth's culture isn't all that different from the Main Line's.
