travel
Wye Valley Walk, day 3: Symonds Yat to Ross-on Wye
I’m awake before 4:30 this morning, after a nightmare in which I’m on the run from armed police and have to hide in the branches of a tree. The meaning’s obscure, but the presence of trees is easy enough to explain. So far the Wye Valley Walk has spent most of its time surrounded by […]
Wye Valley Walk, day 2: Llandogo to Symonds Yat
This morning’s taxi back from Tintern to Cleddon has a punctured tyre, so Kate of Celtic Trails, luckily based in Tintern, is our chauffeur back up the frighteningly steep and narrow lane. As we pass through Llandogo we spot the two elderly backpackers we saw yesterday, the Couple from Chepstow. At Cleddon our old friend […]
Wye Valley Walk, day 1: Chepstow to Llandogo
It’s a gloomy Tuesday morning in September – leaves are already on the pavements – and four of us have gathered for the group photo in the Castle car park in Chepstow before making a start on the first half of the Wye Valley Walk. C and CE are veterans of our first walk from […]
Michael Faraday watches water fall
In 1819 a brilliant young chemist came to Wales on a walking tour. He had little money – his family was poor, and he was still technically an apprentice at the age of twenty-seven – so walking was more economical than coach or horseback. He was eager to see the country, but he had a […]
Cwm Cadlan
At the centre of Penderyn is the Lamb Inn, with its blue plaque commemorating ‘Lewsyn yr Heliwr’, one of the leaders of the 1831 Merthyr Rising. Almost opposite, there’s an ancient signpost labelled ‘Cwm Cadlan, Brecon County’. It points to a lane off to the east. After climbing gently for four or five miles across […]
Four quarters
If you move to live on the coast it doesn’t take long to discover that your world, enriched as it might be by the presence of the sea, has been reduced. You can no longer travel in all directions, but only, at most, in three. I learned this lesson late. I was brought up in […]
Erasmus Lewis: spad, spy, friend of Gulliver
This small corner of Carmarthenshire is new to me – the point where the Cothi flows into the Tywi, just west of Llanegwad. A track leaves the village, passes a cottage, Penygoilan, and a farm, Llwchgwyn, and then turns into a narrow lane that leads down to the banks of the Tywi and a large […]
Cwm Ysgiach
Yma ar y groesffordd yn y bryniau, ymddengys fod pob peth yn bosib. Gallwch chi gymryd unrhyw ffordd o’ch dewis: nôl i Bontlliw, ymlaen i Felindre, i’r gorllewin i Bontarddulais, dros y mynydd i Garnswllt yn Sir Gâr, neu lawr i Gwm Dulais a phentref bach Cwmcerdinen. Fy newis heddiw yw cerdded i Felindre: ddim […]
Yr hen lwybr i eglwys Llangelynnin
Roedd yr haul yn dechrau disgyn wrth imi gychwyn, ar ôl swper, o hen dafarn Y Groes. Cerddais ar hyd y lôn sy’n troelli ar draws gwastadeddau Dyffryn Conwy tuag at bentref Rowen. Cymylau sirws uchel yn unig yn yr awyr glas, a dim argoel o’r glaw trwm sy wedi britho mis Mai eleni. Tu […]
Rhossili sunset
Three of us set off on the south Gower road to watch the sun set in Rhossili. It’s been another day of unbroken sunshine in this strange dry, cold April. The gusty wind of the early morning has dropped to a faint north-westerly breeze. The sky’s still clear, but it’s slowly losing its light. We […]