Haf Bach Mihangel

Photo: Nigel Brown / CC BY-SA 2.0

Out today with a group of Welsh-speaking walkers and naturalists. This is a qualitatively different experience from walking with an English-speaking group, not just because all the conversations are in Welsh, but also because, walking in Wales, there is more of an engagement with the land as a place that has been lived on for generations. We stopped often, sometimes to look at particular plants or trees, but also to be given an account of different field systems or to be told about people who had lived there. Family histories were related, that farm there had been occupied by the same family for generations, that one was the home of a famous bard who wrote this -: and an englyn was recited. Because the walk leader and several of the walkers were local, farmers didn't ignore us or eye us suspiciously but stopped the tractor for a chat as we went through the field where winter silage was being cut.

It was a beautiful day. High pressure is sitting over Britain and all the low pressure systems which roll towards the island over the Atlantic, giving us our mild, wet climate, are being diverted around us. It is a 'Haf Bach Mihangel' as such weather at this time of year is called in Welsh.

We traversed a small, quiet valley with very steep sides and through the woodland along the stream on the valley floor there were blackberries and hazelnuts to pick. On the valley sides hawthorns and rowan trees were a blush of autumn red with their berries all on show. It is not dramatic landscape in spite of the steep valley sides. We had begun up on a plateau and wound down into the valley across the slope. Coming back from further down the stream the ascent was steeper. But these narrow mid-Wales cwms are intimate places. You feel contained in them. As we did, too, by the September sunshine and the lush green that the high rainfall also brings. The stream rushes along the valley floor to a much wider valley running at a right angle to it some miles away. There it joins a river and has not far to go to the sea. Back on the plateau the coast was visible in the distance over the hill tops in the clear air. But it was of the quiet valleys between the hills that I thought as I journeyed homewards.

The Kerry Ridgeway / Fforddlas Ceri

The village of Llanfihangel yng Ngheri from the Ridgeway

The village of Kerry (Llanfihangel yng Ngheri) in Mid Wales with its 12th century church, sits in a valley below high moorland that runs west towards the Cambrian Mountains and east across the Clun Forest to the border with England. This high ground is crossed by an ancient track which passes Bronze Age remains and is known today as the Kerry Ridgeway (Fforddlas Ceri). To walk this track on a clear day is to have a panoramic view of a great swathe of Wales and the English border counties. Up at the highest point on Kerry Hill, watched by a huge herefordshire bull guarding his herd of cows, we identified the peaks and high places that receded to the horizon in every direction. Eastwards towards the English county of Shropshire we could see 'The Long Mynd' , the jagged profile of the Stipperstones clearly outlined against the sky, and Breidden Hill. Southwards the Black Mountains receded into a haze. To the West and moving North we could clearly identify the outlines of Pumlummon, Cader Idris and the Rhinogs. Further North the mountains around Snowdon were hidden from view by lower hills nearer to us, but turning nearly full circle to the North-East the Berwyns rose to some low-drifting clouds.

To be human in such a landscape is to be small. Smaller certainly than the bull that ambled towards us as we returned to the path from the viewpoint and continued our traverse of the ridge with more immediate views of the field systems either side. The descent back into the valley brought the world in closer. A hedge of rowan trees was already red with berries and sprays of blackberries offered ripe refreshment in the hot, sticky afternoon as we left the cooling breeze of the ridge. Summer almost imperceptibly drifted - as if that very afternoon - towards Autumn. The stone benches in the porch of the old church were refreshingly cold as we sat and drank from our water bottles before entering. Inside it was cool, semi-dark and mysterious. The oak roof and the stone walls enclosed a space that had nothing spectacular about it but contained an atmosphere that hinted at hidden depths in dark corners. I pondered this a while and left, ambiguous as ever in my attitude to such places. There was still some walking to do across the valley fields to Newtown and a deadline for a train home.