Reptiles, Writers And A Prime Minister

The pretty little resort of Abersoch lies in a sheltered spot facing east at the hinge of 2 sandy bays on the Lleyn Peninsula's southern shore. I didn't linger there long. I wanted to climb the small hill of Mynydd Tir-y-cwmwd (at 132m the highest ground on this section of coastline) from the even prettier nearby coastal village of Llanbedrog.

It was ever cold but the sun shone in blue skies and the vistas were wide-ranging. A steep flight of steps curved up to the top of the cliff and I took the coastal path round the headland. The view back over Llanbedrog (1st pic), the broad sweep of the bay and the panorama of the Snowdonian mountains (2nd pic) were pulse-racing sights. Or was my heart beating faster because of the short, sharp shock of the ascent? On the way to the top of the hill I passed what I thought were 2 shed adder skins - transparent, crinkly, ultra-thin sloughs patterned in black and white (3rd pic). The habitat here seemed just right for this snake, the only poisonous snake in Britain - heathery heathland strewn with gorse bushes and smallish rocks.

On the path down I saw lots of springtime flowers - primroses, wood anemones, violets, bluebells and wood medick (which is really a grass, but very attractive) in the shady margins of woodland; rubbery navelwort clinging to the high, stone walls; and celandines and Star of Bethlehem on the grassy banks.

Driving back along the peninsula, I paused briefly at the village of Llanystumdwy near Cricieth. Here is the home of the National Writers' Centre for Wales at Ty Newydd (see 4th pic) - run by Sally Baker whom I met at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival a few years ago. The Centre holds residential writing courses. Its location is idyllic. If writers can't be inspired here, I don't know where they can. Ty Newydd was the final home of the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George who lived in Llanystumdwy until the age of 16. He's also buried here in a lovely place by the river on the outskirts of the village, in a grave designed by Clough Williams-Ellis of Portmeirion fame (5th pic).

Welsh Italianate

The next morning I woke to the boom of thunder, the flash of lightning and the pelting of hailstones. The storm lasted intermittently for several hours. I stayed snoozing in my sleeping bag. Mid-morning I reluctantly made an undignified, backward exit from the tent. Hailstones were banked up around it several inches deep. I decided to head for the southern coast of the Lleyn Peninsula which is the northern arm of Cardigan Bay. If it's bad weather in the mountains, it's often sunny there. And so it was.

The Lleyn Peninsula juts out into the Irish Sea for about 30 miles and is one of the most atmospheric and ancient parts of Wales. The Peninsula was trod for centuries by pilgrims en route to the sacred site of Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli in Welsh) about which I've written before. On the way there I stopped for a couple of hours at Portmeirion. This is a fantasy village in the Mediterranean style (it's said to have been inspired by Portofino on the Italian Riviera) created by the Welsh architect Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1973 (1st pic). The estate is now a registered charity and is managed by his grandson.

Clough Williams-Ellis was a passionate conservationist and wanted to develop this naturally beautiful site (a peninsula in the estuary of the River Dwyryd) without spoiling it (2nd pic). In this he largely succeeded, though the place is open every day of the year and attracts a huge number of visitors especially at holiday times and during the summer months, when it's best avoided. The village looks like a filmset - indeed, it has been used extensively by film and TV companies, most famously in the 1966-1967 cult classic TV series The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan as ex-secret agent Number Six. How I used to love this series in my early teens. 2 lines of Number Six have passed into TV film legend: I am not a number; I am a free man! and I will not be pushed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered! My life is my own.

You can wander through 70 acres of sub-tropical garden and woodland at Portmeirion - which I did. I came across this Japanese bridge and gazebo (3rd pic) and this exotic-looking yellow flower (4th pic) - I think it's the Yellow Arum aka Skunk Cabbage - all of which provided a bright contrast to the surrounding muted greens and greys. I had my picnic in this temple overlooking a tranquil pond (5th pic). Could there be a more delightful spot for lunch? Someone had left behind 2 carmine flower heads in the centre of the circular stone table.

A Rough Day In The Rhinogs

The Rhinogs have a reputation as being some of the roughest walking country in Wales. Although I like to think I returned from my big Camino walk in December reasonably fit, since then I've done little strenuous activity and have put on some weight. It would probably have been sensible to have worked my way in gradually and taken on some easier walks for the first day or 2. But sensible? Me?

After Friday night's deluge the campsite field was sodden. Driving off I promptly got stuck in the mud. Luckily a party of Duke of Edinburgh's Award schoolkids, who'd arrived very late the night before, were able to give the car a push. I crossed over from Cwm Bychan into Cwm Nantcol, the next valley, along a narrow, winding road until it became a farmer's track and I could go no further. On the way I managed to hit very hard a large stone on the edge of the road. This had the effect of gouging out 2 chunks of rubber from the wall of both my nearside tyres. As you can see, things were going very well so far!

I set off on foot past the stone cottage in the 1st pic and headed for a slight dip in the skyline just to the left of Rhinog Fawr, at 720m the 3rd highest of the Rhinog summits. The weather was cold and cloudy. I made the classic mistake of vaguely following 2 other walkers along the sketchy, relentlessly uphill path. The terrain changed from tussocky grass and bog to slippery stones and mud. It wasn't until the path levelled out, and I glimpsed the gleaming lake of Llyn Du to the north-east, that I realised I had overshot the cairned path on the left flank of the ridge as described in my walking guide.

Having no desire to retrace my steps, I carried on for a while until I came upon another hint of a path zigzagging up the northern face of the mountain. As I climbed, the path became more and more snow-covered. Halfway up I looked back and saw the southern edge of the Lleyn Peninsula bathed in sunlight. But I was struggling up into the deep cloud which clung to the higher tops of the Rhinogs. Suddenly, and unexpectedly quickly, I gained the summit plateau where there was a cairn, a wind shelter and an OS trig pillar ( 2nd pic). I ate my sandwiches resting my back on the eastern side of the stone shelter out of the wind. Ravens cronked overhead.

Now I had to get off the mountain. A surprisingly clear path led south-east in the direction of the next peak, Rhinog Fach. I followed it. I was ankle deep in snow. The path terminated at a cliff edge above a steep, snowy, bouldery gully. I didn't fancy clambering down this way at all. My walking book became very unhelpful at this point. The author had written that he always got lost here and had never taken the same route twice. Later someone told me I should have picked up a faint path to the left of the gully. But I veered to the right, contoured across heathery, rocky, ankle-twisting slopes to the south-west, and eventually faced a steep, pathless, extremely rough descent down tumbling, rocky stairways and raking, heathery inclines.

There was a lot of scrambling - using hands as well as feet. I took it slowly. I didn't want to hurt an ankle or tear a muscle. I had to be very careful as the ubiquitous heather often disguised the presence of hidden rocks or depressions beneath. As so often happens, halfway down the angle of declivity increased before it lessened. But I had committed myself, and was much too tired to go back and find an easier way down. After what seemd a very long time I reached the pass of Bwlch Drws-Ardudwy. The 3rd pic shows my slope of descent.

In relief I relaxed and set off down the pass back to Nantcol Farm and the car. Rhinog Fach would have to wait till another day. Here I made another classic mistake. I relaxed too much and didn't check the map. Assuming the return path would be obvious, I blithely followed a sheep track alongside a wall at the far side of the valley stream, thinking this was the correct way. It soon brought me into difficulty. The track abruptly vanished. Too late I realised that I was on the wrong side of the stream - which now flowed powerfully and had widened considerably.

After a long period of slow, uneven progress through marshy fields and tight, rocky defiles, I eventually found a place to breach the wall and ford the stream. There was another steep, awkward rise to to the place where I thought the correct path should be - this time knee-high, spiny thorn bushes were the obstacle. Still no path. Field after boggy field later I found the path - along which 2 other walkers were quickly and cheerfully making their way. They seemed rather surprised to see me emerge from a field of goats looking wild, wet and exhausted.

An hour later I was sitting in the National Milk Bar in the seaside town of Barmouth drinking a welcome mug of tea. National Milk Bars, like Spar supermarkets, are a national institution in Wales. It had been a rather gruelling slog for my first walk of the week. But, as is often the way, when I reflected back on it I realised how much I'd actually enjoyed it. In a masochistic kind of way. Outside, gulls rode the wind in Cardigan Bay and jackdaws made their chack-chacking calls from house chimney stacks. And later still, snug in my sleeping bag, tired but content, the rich and lilting repertoire of a song thrush soothed me to sleep.

Molehills And Peacocks

...You cannot live in the present,

At least not in Wales.

There is the language for instance,

The soft consonants

Strange to the ear.

There are cries in the dark at night

As owls answer the moon,

And thick ambush of shadows,

Hushed at the fields' corners.

There is no present in Wales,

And no future;

There is only the past,

Brittle with relics,

Wind-bitten towers and castles

With sham ghosts;

Mouldering quarries and mines...

From Welsh Landscape by R. S. Thomas.

I've been camping on my own in Wales for just over a week.

I wanted a break from the flat, ploughed fields of the grey-skied English Midlands, and its congested roads, shopping plazas, retail parks, industrial estates. I needed to de-stress and chill out. I craved a simple life for a while, far away from computers and hypermarkets and the niggling, ever-present problems of work and society and family life. I had an overwhelming urge to take myself off to some wild countryside and blend into nature. An ancient landscape called me, a landscape of many different margins: sea and shore, mudflat and sand dune, river and estuary, cliff and heath, rock and heather, valley and hill, sheep pasture and moorland. This was the landscape of West Wales - its coastline, and its mountains rearing up just inland from the coastal rim. From the cliff path high above Llanbedrog on the Lleyn Peninsula I was soon to see these splendid mountains in a line before me, stretching in shapely profile from Snowdon and Moel Hebog in the north, through Cnicht, the Moelwyns and the Rhinogs, to the great bulk of Cadair Idris in the south.

But that comes later. First I had to drive there. On the morning of Friday 11 April I set off with maps and rucksack, warm walking clothes and camping gear. I stopped off near Llangollen for an hour and explored the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct which carries the Llangollen Canal over the River Dee and was built by Thomas Telford (see photos). The view westwards from the aqueduct was very fine.

It was late afternoon when I pitched my tent on the no-frills campsite at Dinas Farm which is situated in the stunningly beautiful valley of Cwm Bychan east of Llanbedr. A red kite soared above me. A buzzard perched watchfully in a tree. The campsite was green grass dotted with the little black mounds of molehills. Every now and again a herd of strikingly marked feral goats (black head, white body, long brown tapering horns) would stealthily appear to crop the grass. Then they would vanish just as suddenly. I pitched in the lee of an old stone wall and some windswept birch trees. There were no other campers. Apart from the bellowing of distant cattle the only sounds were some unearthly wailing cries I couldn't quite place. It was like a band of souls being tortured in hell. Einir, the campsite owner, enlightened me. " They're peacocks," she explained, rather disdainfully. "But they're not natural. Like buzzards and kites are natural." Whereupon she zoomed off on her quad bike to flatten the molehills.

It rained all night. An owl hooted, competing unsuccessfully with the peacocks. I listened to the rain pattering down on my tent and lulling me to sleep. I love sleeping outdoors and hearing all the different sounds, registering all the changing moods of the weather. I was very happy.

Pilgrimages

There is an island there is no going

to but in a small boat the way

the saints went, travelling the gallery

of the frightened faces of

the long-drowned, munching the gravel

of its beaches. So I have gone

up the salt lane to the building

with the stone altar and the candles

gone out, and kneeled and lifted

my eyes to the furious gargoyle

of the owl that is like a god

gone small and resentful. There

is no body in the stained window

of the sky now. Am I too late?

Were they too late also, those

first pilgrims? He is such a fast

God, always before us and

leaving as we arrive.

There are those here

not given to prayer, whose office

is the blank sea that they say daily.

What they listen to is not

hymns but the slow chemistry of the soil

that turns saints' bones to dust,

dust to an irritant of the nostril.

There is no time on this island.

The swinging pendulum of the tide

has no clock: the events

are dateless. These people are not

late or soon: they are just

here with only the one question

to ask, which life answers

by being in them. It is I

who ask. Was the pilgrimage

I made to come to my own

self, to learn that in times

like these and for one like me

God will never be plain and

out there, but dark rather and

inexplicable, as though he were in here?

R. S. THOMAS (1913-2000)

R. S. Thomas was a Welsh priest-poet, in my opinion one of the finest poets of the 20th century writing in English. His early poems dealt with the bleak existence of Welsh hill farmers. His later more metaphysical work explored questions of God, belief and the nature of human existence. Thomas was a passionate Welsh republican who spoke out on political issues such as holiday homes, the Welsh language and nuclear disarmament.

The island location of this poem Pilgrimages is Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli) which is one and a half miles long, less than half a mile wide and lies off the tip of the Lleyn peninsula in North Wales. I have been there in the "small boat" Thomas mentions and seen the "stone altar" he describes. It is hauntingly beautiful. It has been a place of pilgrimage since Christianity's early days.

The Wild Places

Talking of all things wild and wonderful, I'm eagerly anticipating what will be the publishing event of the year - the new book by Robert Macfarlane: The Wild Places: A Wonder-Voyage, due out in September from Granta. (His first book, the uncategorizable and quite brilliant Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination was published to great acclaim in 2003 and won the Guardian First Book Award.) In this, his second book, Macfarlane seeks out the last remaining wilderness places of the British Isles, including the Lleyn Peninsula, the Isle of Skye, Connemara, Rannoch Moor, the Cumbrian fells, and, surprisingly, even the Essex salt marshes and the ancient hollow ways of Dorset. He wanted to see with new eyes his local landscapes or, as he puts it, the undiscovered country of the nearby, and found that Britain was an archipelago in its own right. His prose, as always, will be poetic, lyrical, exquisite, dense and rich. The type of book is a hybrid one - a blend of history, natural history, topography, biography, autobiography; the personal, the literary, the factual, the mythological: a genre-busting mix of experience and imagination. I expect it will annoy all hardcore mountain men and serious power-trekkers. I just can't wait to read it.