Category: travel
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Ar y Ffordd Ddu
Nôl yn Nolgellau am ddeuddydd o gerdded ar Gader Idris. Ond mae ’na broblem. Er bod diwedd mis Mai, ar gyfartaledd, yn un o’r cyfnodau sychaf yn y flwyddyn, dyw hi ddim yn dilyn na fydd hi’n bwrw glaw o gwbl. Ac eleni, wrth gwrs, yw Blwyddyn y Glaw, a dyma ni yn nesáu at…
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St Illtud’s Walk: day 6: Y Creunant to Resolfen
We’ve now erased the dark memory of Day 5, back in November, and today the daylight hours are reassuringly long. So C and I feel up to tackling another inter-valley stage of the Walk, from Y Creunant to Resolfen. We should have done this as the coda to the last stage, but exhaustion and fading…
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Six Ways
When I was a small boy there were certain places outside Hoylandswaine, the village where we lived, that I always thought of as my own, special spaces. They were nowhere in particular – a corner where two roads met, or a pondside, or a patch in the woodland that spread from the bottom of our…
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St Illtud’s Walk, day 5: Pontardawe to Creunant
Forestry isn’t my favourite walking environment, and today has done nothing to shift that prejudice. It all began so well. Well, fairly well. Today C. and I start out by bus. But since our last encounter with St Illtud, First Cymru has done its best to destroy our local bus timetable. It now takes nearly…
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How to destroy a bus service
Cars and other private vehicles worsen global heating, endanger our bodies and health, poison our air and wreck our neighbourhoods. Yet, instead of trying to encourage us to make less use of them, governments in the UK are busy doing the very opposite. The UK government, cynically and absurdly, even declares that it’s fighting a…
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The 20mph revolt
I usually float through the sewage and green algae of political debate in the UK buoyed up by a comforting belief: that here in Wales people are in some way insulated from the worst of the reactionary and cruel madness that now passes for politics in Westminster. Comforting, but, I fear, quite wrong. The extreme…
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St Illtud’s Walk, day 4: Penlle’r Castell to Pontardawe
No buses go anywhere near Penlle’r Castell, so C and I are lucky this morning to catch a lift by car. It’s a bright autumn day, with good visibility and little threat of rain. We’re back on the high moor in the middle of windmill land, and the path takes us through another turbine colony,…
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Wandering in Meirionnydd
In 1939, just before the outbreak of war, a woman called Hope Hewett published a book about her journeys alone on foot around Merioneth. She has a genial and charming authorial voice, recounting her travels in the company of Jack, her faithful terrier, as they criss-cross their way across the county. Today Hope and her…
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St Illtud’s Walk, day 3: Pontarddulais to Penlle’r Castell
The excellent X13 bus runs all the way from Swansea to Llandeilo, but today C. and I take it just as far as Pontarddulais. We aim to climb Graig Fawr and explore the hills beyond, as far as Penlle’r Castell, and maybe beyond. The Met Office promises a cloudy but rainless day; it’s warm enough,…
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A black hole in green transport?
An anecdote is a dangerous base for an argument, I know, but today that’s not going to stop me from a grouse about public transport. Yesterday I needed to get from Mumbles to Cardiff Bay. These days I try to keep the car in the drive, unless there’s no reasonable alternative, and I didn’t think…