Being a Welsh MP is a funny thing - every Monday they make the four-hour train to Westminster, bringing your concerns, pleas and outrage in their pockets via letters, emails and petitions.

As the jagged mountains and rolling hills flatten, the MP's presence is expected for debates, votes and committees to decide how the UK is run.

They have to balance the ponce and ruffles of parliament with the constituency surgeries, turning up to the local events that matter and keeping connected with the people who elected them and the issues they were elected to tackle.

In January the Cambrian News took the same route to Westminster to track down your MPs and see what they were doing to make their country a better place for their constituents.

Plaid Cymru MP for Ceredigion Preseli Ben Lake was sitting in the House of Commons that Friday 24 January to vote on the Climate and Nature (CAN) Bill before being seen just hours later at an Aberystwyth meeting against potential hospital downgrades.

He commented as he walked through the door, umbrella in hand having battled storm Éowyn to get there, that the road he had just driven from Carmarthen to make it was barely fit for drivers, let alone patients and loved ones trying to attend Glangwili where stroke services could be moved to.

The work of country-specific parties like Plaid Cymru, SNP in Scotland and the DUP in Northern Ireland is an odd one.

They’re never going to be in power at number 10, that’s not their goal – so they’re not distracted by the jostling and ego games many MPs in the major parties are embroiled in.

This can mean their voices don’t get heard, but it also means they are immune to ever needing to take on the difficult task of running the country so they don’t hold back on criticism of those in charge, and how they can do better.

This year marks Dwyfor Meirionnydd Liz Saville-Roberts' 10th year as an MP – but she said she’d be “foolish to think she knew how the place operates”: “There are some things that are easier because you know a bit more about what to expect than new MPs.

“At the same time, you’re alert to the risk in a place like this of getting drawn in because you feel you know the protocol – you can forget what you’re here to do.

“But because Plaid is never going to be in power here we use it as an opportunity to promote Plaid policies, using it as a sounding board for Wales, and to represent our constituents – that's a lot more satisfactory than the highfalutin stuff.”

The ‘highfalutin’ stuff she’s talking about includes things like the silence that must fall when the Speaker of the House walks through the halls with his entourage of men – as if witnessing a brief and unspectacular scene from a period drama.

It also means things like the seemingly arbitrary chamber etiquette like not drinking milk in the House of Commons – something which shockingly had to be pointed out to new Labour MP for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr MP Steve Witherden.

This was an embarrassing interlude to the high turmoil of his first six months in parliament, now dubbed ‘milk-gate' and earning him the nickname ‘Earnie’ after the Fastest Milkman in the West by Benny Hill.

Though Ms Saville-Roberts hasn’t earned herself any nicknames yet, she’s not been immune to the drama.

She says one of the lowest points in her 10-year political career was getting locked in the chamber after the terrorist attack at the Houses of Parliament on 22 March 2017.

She said: “I remember it very clearly, I was sat by Caroline Lucas [Green] and Angus Brendan MacNeil [SNP] sat in front turned around to us and said, ‘Something’s happened’.

“As he said that, someone came through the door and spoke to the Sargeant at Arms – his face dropped.

“I’d just missed [the attack] by coming up the stairs rather than through the palisades.

“They were afraid there were people in the house.

“Once you’re in, security then is not very good – it's like a rabbit warren.

“They really feared someone was inside so they locked the whole place down for hours."

She remembers not leaving the chamber until 9pm – the attack occurred at 2.40pm.

A car had mounted the curb on Westminster Bridge, mowing down pedestrians before crashing into the railings of New Palace Yard outside the Houses of Parliament.

The attacker Khalid Masood then ran through the entrance of the palace and stabbed a police officer before he was shot dead by armed police.

Six people died including Masood, with at least 50 people injured.

Ms Saville-Roberts remembers a food trolley being brought around, mobile phones dying and Lindsay Hoyle, now the Speaker of the House, “making sure everyone was alright”.

She conveys this over lunch in a restaurant you can only get into seemingly if accompanied by an MP – it looks over the river Thames and offers silver service.

But she apologies about the lack of dessert – she's been informed by a WhatsApp message from MP Kim Leadbeater that a snap debate has been called on the controversial Assisted Dying Bill which Saville-Roberts has inadvertently been put on the committee for.

The Bills cross-party opponents tried to push through a vote to restrict the Bill before the committee for it had even sat for the first time.

Though our day-long visit was cut short sharply at two by this interruption – we managed a quick three-minute video interview in Westminster Hall, one of the only places cameras are allowed - the movement is quashed and the bill continues to committee unaltered – such is the life of an MP.

Saville-Roberts explained that her highlights have been the small wins for constituents – and changes in laws for those who really need it, like the Widowed Parent’s Allowance, which Saville-Roberts worked to see amended in 2019.

The DWP benefit for widowed parents wasn’t given if the parents weren’t married – a point she successfully argued “discriminated against children on the basis of their parents' decisions”, significantly impacting poorer grieving households.

But successes aren’t often as cut and dry as this one – rural Welsh MPs are often pulled in two directions between climate and nature advocates wanting more renewable energy investment (but not built on their hills, mountains or peat bogs), more rewilding and tree planting, versus numerous farmer constituents who represent the backbone of Welsh rural economy, Welsh language communities and arguably rightly feel told what to do.

Though this ‘divide’ is oversimplified and messy – many farmers believe in protecting the Welsh landscape and either lead in or welcome the changes to practice that brings – this black-and-white rhetoric is being used more and more.

Ms Saville-Roberts says the CAN Bill is an easy target to stoke these divides: “It’s being weaponised by the far right.

“It hasn’t even been published yet so we don’t actually know what’s in it [that may affect farming communities].

“Everything that’s being said now is being said at best in anticipation and at worst making it up as they go along.

“Net Zero will be one thing I think the far-right will go for particularly now that Trump is in power.”

Some farmers already upset at the farming inheritance tax changes – something Saville-Roberts is against – have voiced concerns that the CAN Bill may mean more costly changes for them when they already face this new tax and rising costs of living.

The Bill was instead ‘shelved’ that same week as Labour ministers were instructed to oppose the Bill or face losing the whip.

However one Welsh Labour MP seems unconcerned with that potential consequence.

All but one Welsh Labour MP – Powys' Steve Witherden - abstained from voting on a Bill which would force the government to give compensation to WASPI women – those affected by the sudden changes to the State Pension age.

Witherden, who voted in favour of the Bill, said he is also concerned about the polarisation of politics and how it may affect the UK since the Trump inauguration: “I found [Trump’s inaugural speech] extremely distressing and unpleasant in the rhetoric [he used].

“You always hope with a speech like that, that they’ll be statesman-like and a little bit less partisan.

“That was for me such a polemic - I've never heard an inaugural speech like it.

“It wasn't conciliatory, it wasn't reaching out to the vanquished.

“If you look at the actual content of what was said - it was incredibly disturbing and worrying, I have big fears for the future.

“If we get into a tariff war and barriers and tariffs are erected against our exports that's going to have a horrendous effect on the cost of living on standards of living.”

Though Witherden was on his own in sticking his neck out for his WASPI constituents, he has many advantages in belonging to the party in power.

Now there are more ‘small parties’ - Plaid, Green, SNP and DUP were this summer joined by Reform for the first time – they have to take turns weekly asking questions in Prime Minister Questions.

But the Plaid team are well-versed at this dance – the new MP for Caerfyrddin Ann Davies hasn’t held back in her first six months, only last week leading a Westminster Hall Debate on the impact of the farming inheritance tax on farmers with her booming Welsh tones instructing the Treasury to “listen carefully” - the first-time MP holding down a dairy farm at home in Carmarthenshire.

Though her skilled oration is obvious whenever she has the opportunity to speak in the chamber, she doesn’t take herself too seriously.

As she sits in her small shared office in the Plaid Cymru section of Portcullis House – picture one small low-down window and spare office furniture in a corner – she stares the camera down as she waxes lyrical on underground cabling versus pylons benefiting the Welsh landscape and being more robust against storm damage, only to burst out into giggles at herself as the camera is switched off.

She can only be serious for so long and her larger-than-life character comes out between takes.

Her colleague Ben Lake for Ceredigion has a similar approachable energy with his fresh face (being only 25 when he first was elected to his seat in 2017).

After Saville-Roberts he is the longest-serving Plaid MP currently in post, but his team are ultimately plagued by the constant question for parties like theirs as to how much can they actually do in Westminster, with a devolved parliament at home.

Their hands are tied often by the amount of money Wales is given by Westminster, worked out by the infamous Barnett Formula which Lake has been tackling since he got there.

Speaking from his new office (he got Saville-Roberts old one – three windows instead of one - whilst she now gets a corner suite): “I’ve pleaded this with the new government and previous one to start a review of the formula.

“I understand why they don't want to - it's scary and would fundamentally change the way the UK operates.

“But ‘change’ was on [Labour’s] ballot so I am pushing them to do more.”