Deep in Carmarthenshire

If you’re in love with green – I mean chlorophyll-saturated green, the lightest and deepest greens that nature can offer – there are fewer better places to find it than north-west Carmarthenshire.  To wander through the fields and woods on the hills either side of the Tywi valley and its tributaries is to soak your senses in an endless pool of greenery.  (It’s interesting that while the English language can only manage one word for green, unless you count late imports like ‘verdant’, Welsh has two, ‘glas’ and ‘gwyrdd’, both used of green in nature.)

This week I’ve been back on the Heart of Wales Line Trail, the most original of the long walks of Wales.  To find routes I’ve not done before, I need to go further up the line, and this time I get off the train at Cynghordy with the idea of walking, over two days, to Llangadog and rejoining the train there.

A few other people leave the train at Cynghordy, but by the time I’ve organised and sunscreened myself they’ve dispersed, and I walk alone down the straight tree-lined avenue from the lonely station.  At its end a quiet lane turns right, tunnels back under the railway line, and then climbs steadily.  The Trail guidebook promises wildflower displays on either side, but the verges have been stripped by the authorities.  Strangely, flowers in general are hard to spot on this journey, with some exceptions, like rose-bay willow herb.  It’s almost as if the heatwave that’s just ended has bleached all colours but green from the land.

A path branches off and I rest in the shade of trees for elevenses, watched by sheep.  We munch in sync.  Their close-cropped field slopes down towards a wood of mature trees.  This is a pattern that will repeat itself many times, in a landscape of hills, large fields and rougher pasture, clumps of woodland, and rows of great oaks and beeches lining field boundaries.  Next, across more fields, over a stream and south to a metalled road, with distinctively shaped hills on each side.  The sky to the west is darkening, and, as I reach Cefnllan farm, a violent shock of rain, driven by a sudden wind, sweeps over.  I shelter behind a hedge until the worst is over, but the route ahead takes me across a large field, now full of tall, soaking wet grass.  My boots are soon damp inside (they won’t dry out for days).

Just before Pantglas I pass an abandoned farmhouse.  The track to it is a mausoleum of ancient farm vehicles and cars, left in a close-packed line, like some burned-out military column.  It’s an effort to push past them and the tree branches that have fallen across the way.  This isn’t the last of these melancholy sights: some farms here are neatly kept, but others look like archaeological sites, their pasts exposed to view.

Past Penglas the lane climbs steadily, on the high ground between the Tywi and the Brân.  At a T-junction I stop for lunch, take off my socks, and hang them on the bars of a farm gate, in a vain hope that the breeze will dry them.  Off to the south I can make out the dark silhouette of Bannau Sir Gâr.

The Trail abandons the direct lane into Llandovery.  Along a grassy track with views left to the Brân and then a woodland walk, it drops to the Tywi at Dolauhirion.  Here is Pont Dolauhirion, the masterpiece of Wales’s greatest bridge builder, William Edwards.  He designed it in 1773, many years after his heroic struggles, eventually successful, to build a successful bridge at Pontypridd.  It features his trademark ‘portholes’ or cylindrical holes in the spandrels, intended to relieve pressure on the arch.  It’s a powerful construction, towering over the river and rocks below, but it’s also elegant, thanks to the contrasting curves of the arch and the carriageway wall.

From here, it’s a leisurely stroll beside the Tywi into Llandovery, with big fields on the river plain to the left containing isolated massive oak trees, past the remains of Tonn, the home of the Rees family, remembered in the town for their great contributions to publishing and printing in Wales (‘The Old Printing Office’ sign is still prominent in Broad Street). 

O.M. Edwards, when he visited Llandovery in 1893, was depressed by its idleness and lack of life:

I found myself in the town’s main street.  Wandering through it, I thought Llandovery a place that was rapidly falling into ruin.  I didn’t see any work being done anywhere, and no one in sight was busy.  From the errand boy to the doctor everyone was strolling at leisure, as if the only aim in life was spending the day waiting for the night, and spending the night waiting for the day.  I saw no customer in any of the shops; every shop seemed to be asleep, with the apprentices behind the counter waiting for fair day.

[Cartrefi Cymru, 1896, my translation]

Today Edwards would be pleased by how handsome and well-kept the town is, though I dare say he’d be shocked by how the Welsh language has declined there (I heard none spoken while I was there).

Like him, I wander the streets and visit Llandovery’s two churches, Llanfair-ar-y-bryn, where William Williams Pantycelyn is buried, and Llandingat, and admire the facades of the chapels clustered in Queen Street.  Edwards complained that the chapel of the Wesleyans (‘who was more active?’) was shut; he’d be sad that many more chapels are closed today.

The Met Office’s forecast for the next day couldn’t be much worse: heavy rain all day from nine o’clock.  The streets are already wet and dark clouds scud overhead on a fresh wind.  So I buy some provisions and make an early start, around eight o’clock.  Today’s trip is longer, at around twelve miles, but there’s less road-walking.  I haven’t walked far – across the Waterloo Bridge over Afon Brân where it meets Llandovery’s third river, Afon Gwydderig, past Bronallt and up into the woods of Allt Dingat – before the rain begins.  With a few short breaks it continues all day.

Emerging from the wood, the path enters a lovely valley with trees, a stream and a hillside field full of fine grasses that lend it a curious mauve tinge.  Then I’m into a second, longer wood, on Allt Llwynywermod, looked after by Natural Resources Wales.  It’s quiet here.  Few birds sing.  Short yellow flowers, bird’s foot trefoils, line the grassy strip in the middle of the track.  At length the level, straight track and the wood end, and there are more climbs through fields to Myrtle Hill.  From here a winding lane leads down to the village of Myddfai. 

The first building is Bethania, a disused, crumbling chapel with a peeling grey-green façade, but then St Michael’s Church comes into view – a relief, because it’s open and I can shelter from the rain.  It’s a big church – the parish is large, and used to house many more people than it does today – with an aisled nave and chancel, and it has a lot to interest the visitor: a handsome arcade dividing the two parts of the nave; barrel roofs punctuated by black timber ribs; in the porch, a medieval stone stoup  and a memorial to David Jones and his son, descendants of the famous Meddygon Myddfai (‘Physicians of Myddfai’); and wall paintings, one of them found behind a stone monument.  The church is surrounded by a near-circular churchyard, and the churchyard is enfolded in turn by a homely terrace of houses.

I eat my snack in the church porch opposite the ancient stoup, and then make a move, past the community centre, where a yoga group is in session – and where I gave a talk to the Physicians of Myddfai Society over a decade ago – and follow one of the lanes out of the village, past the old vicarage.  The Trail leaves the road at Llwynmeredydd, a handsome farmhouse, and climbs through fields, with wide views over the Bannau, before descending past Goleugoed.  ‘Bright wood’ or ‘Light trees’ is a poetic name for a farm.  And the landscape here does seem dreamlike, disconnected from the world.  Cloud-like hills rise from the valley, clusters of trees seem to ‘walk’ on their trunks, the few white farms and other scattered houses are lost in a sea of green.

Next there’s a bit of road walking before the route passes through tall iron gates – they prove difficult to open – into the estate of Llety Ifan Ddu, a gentry house built by Lewis Lewis in the 1830s (who Ifan Ddu was history doesn’t say, though he sounds a bit of a rogue).  At the end of a long semicircular drive you’re ushered off the estate and back on to higher ground.  The path crosses a series of wet fields, then drops to the main road.  After that I follow a quiet lane that climbs back up, and finally descends steeply to Llangadog.

Because of the rain I’ve not lingered on the way, so I’ve arrived at Llangadog early, two hours before the next train.  That gives me a chance to poke around the village.  Really, it’s more like a miniature town – the Carmarthenshire Pevsner calls it ‘a substantial urban village’ – with a surprising number of handsome buildings from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  St Cadog’s Church has an uplifting stone relief of Edward Pryse Lloyd and his wife, Florentia Hughes, being helped to heaven by a cherub.  Next door is Tŷ’r Eglwys, a three-storey house with an Ionic porch.  Further along Church Road, Great House has an inscription to say that it was built in 1766 by William Powell of Glanaraeth – four years before he was brutally and sensationally murdered.  There are two Capel Seions, both Baptist: the old one in Dyrfal Road, plain with a yellow façade, is now a community centre, and the ‘new’ one, in Heol Gwallter, is ‘sub-classical’ or ‘proto-modernist’.

Finally it’s time to walk back over Pont Brân to the station.  The aged DMU arrives on time and rattles its way down to Llandeilo, Ammanford and beyond.  Tree branches catch noisily at the open windows, scattering leaves into the carriage.  I can take my ease in comfort, except for the two waterlogged feet. Two days of moving slowly and quietly through a wet, green land have come to an end.