Welsh Landscape

Welsh Landscape

To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
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.


R S Thomas


There is more; Thomas continues with harsh criticisms about the inward-looking nature of the Welsh, their inability to let go of the past, but for now, I’d rather look compassionately at a land soaked in history.


This is Cwm Eigiau, reputed to be one of Snowdonia’s wildest and least visited cwms. Here, even the names of the mountains seem to have stepped out of a fantasy. There’s Pen Llithrig y Wrach - the Slippery Hill of the Witch. Then there’s Bwlch Trimarchog - the Pass of the Three Horsemen, and Pen yr Helgidu - the Hill of the Black Hunting Dog. 

This is where we intended to come last week, taking instead a road just slightly earlier than we should - and of course we ended up at the amazing Iron Age fort of Pen y Gaer. 

Today at Cwm Eigiau all is peaceful and stunningly beautiful. But it holds dark secrets, and as we walk towards the now diminished lake, we pass the jagged breach in the dam that once held back a much bigger stretch of water (in extras).

In November 1925, after 26 inches of rain fell in just five days, the Eigiau dam failed. The water flowed down to Coedty Reservoir, which rapidly caused its earth bank dam to burst as well and release billions of gallons of water which flowed down into the village of  Dolgarrog, creating massive damage and leading to the loss of 16 lives. The death toll could have been worse, but it was fortunate that the breach occurred on the night when the local community hall, on slightly raised ground,  was used as a cinema. More on this in the link below.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/dolgarrog-dam-flood-disaster

Like rural idylls everywhere, here is also a landscape of abandonment. Piles of stones stand where there were once sheep pens or dwellings; remote farm houses stand abandoned - but links to the past are not yet completely severed. As we arrive at the diminutive car park, we talk to an elderly lady who is with her son. He has brought her to look out over the landscape that was once her home. One of four daughters, she grew up in this beautiful wilderness, her father farming sheep on the Carneddau. But the girls either had no interest in taking on the Bodnant tenancy, or were discounted, and the farm was eventually abandoned. 

Sorry that it’s an even later Blip today - and many thanks for your kind thoughts about my sleeplessness. Poor nights are more or less the norm for me, but Friday night was particularly bad. Last night, I’m pleased to say was very much better, so I’m less tired today.