The mountain sheep are sweeter

Another beautiful day of sunshine if not complete clarity. There was a little haze but no wind, perfect for a hill walk. I hadn't intended to climb right to the top of Carningli but after a substantial piece of Victoria sponge with my coffee in Newport I headed up and having got so far continued on to the summit.
The sun being in the south this north flank was partly in shade but as we reached the ridge the blaze of light was blinding.

Here, looking up, you can see the contoured ridges around the ancient volcano and the scree-tumbled remnants of the crater, partly fortified by prehistoric dwellers. As you follow the main trackway into the central area you pass through portals of piled rocks and scattered boulders. It is impossible to tell what has been created by elemental forces and what by human hands. The place has an aura that seems connected to both.

I have recently been reading a short monograph called The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd, a Scottish writer who loved and lived for mountains - the Cairngorms in her case, beside which Carningli is a mere pimple ( 347m/1138 feet). A great walker, she set down her thoughts and meditations in such lucid, concentrated prose that to read it is like taking a sip of tingling cold water from a mountain spring. She speaks of our human engagement with the scenery:
Perhaps the eye imposes its own rhythm on what is only a confusion: one has to look creatively to see this mass of rock as more than jag and pinnacle - as beauty.... A certain kind of consciousness interacts with the mountain forms to create this sense of beauty. Yet the forms must be there for the eye to see.
I find her intense responses to the natural world very resonant and I would highly recommend the book to anyone with similar interests.

My title come from a poem by Thomas Love Peacock, The War Song of Dinas Vawr about the power struggles of the ancient Welsh princes - a typical example of Victorian appropriation of Celtic history and culture. It starts:

The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deem'd it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;
We met an host and quell'd it;
We forced a strong position
And kill'd the men who held it

It's just the sort of thing that would have been going on at this strong position a few thousand years ago.

Here you can see the view from the top that I blipped over a year ago on a much colder day.