On the Edge of the Precipice

Posted on February 10, 2015 by johnshortlandwriter

Snowdonia, the third of Britain’s national parks to be designated (and the first in Wales) is a popular holiday destination despite it being the wettest place in the UK. Mt. Snowdon, Wales’ highest peak after which the park is named, is challenging to climb although thousands ascend by the easy route – using the narrow guage railway.

Far to the south and away from the crowds the scenery is still dramatic giving great opportunities for hill walking. It is possible to walk all day with only ravens, buzzards and red kites for company.

The Precipice Path near the small town of Dolgellau is a relatively short and easy circular walk that offers spectacular views in all directions. It is a good introduction to walking in the hills for it is well signposted and, more often than not, there are other walkers nearby. If, like me, you prefer to walk in splendid isolation then that is still possible by starting early or late in the day and avoiding weekends.

The path leading up to the precipice winds its way gently alongside woodland before climbing more steeply for a few hundred yards. It is rocky and uneven and, as with any hill walking, strong shoes or boots should always be worn. During the winter, this part of the path is often icy.

As the path turns towards the west spectacular views of the river, the Afon Mawddach appear, set in a deep glacial valley that leads out to sea. The path now narrows and with a sharp drop to one side – although it is quite safe small children need to be supervised and those that suffer from a fear of heights will find this stretch challenging.

For those not worried by height the bird’s eye view of Dol-y-clochydd is fascinating especially if you are lucky enough to see the sheep being herded by the farmer and his dogs.

At the halfway point, a bench marks the end of the precipice and from here there are vews of the village of Llanelltyd and of the river flowing into the sea.

The path now turns back on itself in a wide arc before descending to the edge of Llyn Cynwch, a small reservoir with views of the mountains and crystal clear water giving superb reflections. The path follows the edge of the lake until it returns to the starting point of the walk. Novice walkers should allow at least two hours for completion.

The Precipice Path lies within the nine hundred year old Nannau Estate and, although not a public right of way, the estate has opened it to the public since 1890. It is a working estate and there may be sheep or other livestock roaming freely so it is necessary to keep dogs strictly under control.

A Year In Review: 2012 The First Six Months

Posted on December 20, 2012 by johnshortlandwriter

One of the signs of getting older is that the days, weeks, months and years go by ever faster – this seems rather unfair as you are likely to have relatively few ahead of you. Not that I plan to leave this world just yet (well, not if I can help it), it is just that 2012 was the anniversary not just of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee but also of mine which has focussed the mind, rather.

As the time has sped by so fast I thought I would review the year, if only to remind myself what I’ve been doing the past twelve months.

January: To London for the New Year. Whenever we visit ‘The Smoke’ (I wonder if anyone still calls it that now that the days of dense smog have long gone) it always ends up rather ‘foody’. That trip was no exception; we ate our way up the Kings Road, ate our way around Sloane Square and finally ate our way to Fortnum & Mason arriving in time for afternoon tea. Fortnum’s is the most wonderful grocery store on the planet – whereas, most people, especially those from overseas, visit Harrods, Fortnum’s is the one place you really shouldn’t miss. Everything about it is delightful and its afternoon teas are legendry. We did squeeze in a visit to the National Portrait Gallery but why show you images of great works of art when you can see photos of Fortnum’s? Add it to your list of ‘places I must visit before I die’.

February: A visit to Snowdonia staying at a friend’s isolated chapel house on the side of the mountains. The weather was quite kind to us considering the time of year so we were able to do a lot of walking. To our dismay, our favourite spot that we had christened ‘The Enchanted Forest’ because of its lichen encrusted trees and great mossy hummocks had been clear felled and all signs of it destroyed. This may sound like wanton vandalism but the trees had been planted for timber production regardless of the impact they had on the scenery. Now years later, there is a move to restore the mountains back to their original state which is, I’m sure, admirable and an ecologically sound thing to do. The trouble is that we loved this silent, brooding woodland that no-one, it seemed, apart from us ever visited and now it is gone. And with it has gone our desire to return but, who knows, perhaps we shall one day.

March: Recording the life of a hedgerow seemed like agood idea at the time. It was supposed to have become a month by month photographic notebook of the changes that took place during the year but sadly March turned out to be the first and only entry. As April arrived I took more photographs but when it came to blogging them they had disappeared (reappearing months later – one of the mysteries of computer technology). Then came the rain – and it has rained ever since – and the project was abandoned, apart from a vain attempt in May. The hedge, which is in the little lane that leads from our cottage up the hill out of the secret valley, is an ancient relic from the time of the Wychwood Forest, cleared in the very earliest days of British history. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book, that great list of the plunder of William the Conqueror, written in 1086. Although the forest has retreated by many miles there are still some fine trees standing and wild flowers that would normally be found in woodland still grow on its grassy banks. I shall make a resolution to resurrect the project in 2013.

April: Part of my everyday job as a practical gardener is pruning, a subject which is a mystery to many people and often fills them with terror at the very thought of wielding secateurs to a treasured shrub. Mahonia is one of those useful winter flowering plants that so often look dreadful as they become ever more gaunt and ungainly. This was the case with one in a client’s garden so it seemed a good idea to photograph the process of restoration and blog about it. That post has rapidly become my most read and I am glad to be able to report that the plant is thriving. Now covered in new flower buds and almost ready to open, it will welcome the New Year with the scent of lily-of-the-valley. If you have one in your garden, cut a few flowers for a shallow vase to fragrance the house.

May: Despite the rain that seems to have fallen incessantly since April, we had a fine, dry day for the most important day in my social calendar of 2012 which was also an important one for the Queen too. The Pageant of the Horse was held in the grounds of Windsor Castle and celebrated the Queen’s sixty year reign through her association with and love of horses. Horses, riders and other performers representing every country from around the world that the Queen has visited gave us a show that both we and she will never forget. It was a quite remarkable and memorable experience; apart from the showmanship and being so close to the Queen and Prince Philip, we had a private ‘Haka’ from the Cook Islanders when they noticed us still seated after the bulk of other visitors had left. Very exciting!

June: The Jubilee celebrations continued withthe River Pageant held in London on the Thames in pouring rain, this time. A much smaller river, the Coln, featured in a post ‘The Most Beautiful English Village’ about the exquisite Cotswold village of Bibury. With its clear, trout-filled waters fast running past ancient stone cottages, it is hardly surprising that it is protected by the National Trust and much visited by sightseers. It is said that visitors often don’t realise that it is not a living museum and sometimes walk into people’s private gardens or houses to be surprised to find the owners eating their lunch or watching television.

To read any of the posts mentioned above, just click on the links in green. July to December will appear soon.

The Constant Drip

Posted on March 26, 2012 by johnshortlandwriter

When I was a small child I was traumatised by the sound of water, even a dripping tap would trigger nightmares of drowning. This was not because my life had ever been at risk, although it could be argued that my afterlife was: it was down to baptism by total immersion. My soul might have been saved by water but it was years before water became something that I would delight in, rather a problem for a lad that was brought up on the banks of the Thames, that great English river that flows sluggishly from its source to London and the North Sea beyond, a distance of 215 miles.

The River Thames at Marlow

It was not until, as a young teenager visiting the West Country, I came across clear, rocky bottomed streams that were so unlike the silty bottomed, muddy waters of the Thames and the smaller brooks back home. At first the sight and the sound of their fast flow rather unnerved me but there was a swift and dramatic change once I discovered the joys of splashing about, ‘tickling’ for trout and generally getting soaked. Not only could I not get enough of them, I ended up living beside one here in the secret valley. Our river, to be truthful, is a compromise: it likes to believe it is of world class comparable with the Amazon or the Zambezi as it winds through the landscape in great (or in reality, miniature) curves and sweeps. Sometimes it is slow moving half hidden by lush foliage that spills over its banks but in other places it is as fast running and noisy as a Devon stream as it gurgle and clinks its way over rock and pebble.

Our little river in the secret valley

In winter, our river doesn’t look quite so inviting!

Recently I was staying high in the mountains of Snowdonia. The house that we were in had to its right, a larger river crashing noisily downwards and, to its left, a much smaller gully with an equally fast flow. ‘Our’ house, which inreality belongs to a friend, is not exactly standing on an island; more it is the solid filling of a watery sandwich. The main river, the term is used loosely for it is even more jumpable over than the one back in the secret valley, tumbles down the mountainside in a series of rocky chasms interspersed with quieter small pools.

One of the nicest aspects of returning to a place time after time is that certain things become so familiar, whether it is buildings or the wider scenery does not matter. This is good for once you stop looking at the overall picture, the detail becomes more noticeable and things that would be overlooked if you only ever visited once begin to stand out. Here there is little in the way of buildings, apart from the numerous ruins that stand as ghosts to a time when the hills were more densely populated with miners and farm workers. On my morning walk and musing on how terrified I had once been by the sound of water, I began to notice the change in pitch and volume which alters constantly as you pass by. Where the water falls several feet, not surprisingly the noise is at its greatest but, even there, it can be a deep sound or a lighter one, depending on the rate of flow and whether it lands on rock, water or pebble.

Then there are the waterslides: these can be steep or barely inclined, narrow or wide, fast or slow flowing. Whichever they are, for me they are the most visually exciting of all with their water moving effortlessly, literally sliding along the surface and their ‘shushing’ sound building up to a more dramatic crescendo as the rock bed alters in character once more.

A massive waterslide on Exmoor …..

….. and a smaller one in Snowdonia

And then, of course, there is the sound that once traumatised me but that I now find the most fascinating of all, perhaps because they entice you to explore: they draw you further into their world, often a secret one. The sound of dripping. Sometimes it is obvious where it is coming from and where it is landing but often it is a sound that demands you to seek it out and then, not infrequently, only one half of the equation can be solved, if you can find the source you cannot find the landing place or vice versa.

Higher up the mountain is an old disused slate mine, long abandoned and with its shaft open for all to explore. Little natural light enters the low tunnel entrance and unable to see far inside there is only the sound of water seeping through the roof landing in the shallow water that collects in the passage below. Here the sounds are as varied as those of a xylophone, the music made being both enchanting and unnerving; it is both welcoming and threatening at the same time.

Not a place for the faint-hearted!

I may have got over my old phobia of scary water sounds but, I have to admit there is still one place that makes me shudder. Just up the track beyond the mine there is a patch of grass and moss that has to be crossed and here, if you pause, you can hear the sound of fast moving water and the crash of a waterfall but there are none in sight. The sound comes from below ground under your feet – childhood anxieties rise if I loiter here and as I continue my walk I notice, with wry amusement, that it is at an increased pace.

Snowdonia: The Enchanted Forest – Death & Destruction

Posted on February 24, 2012 by johnshortlandwriter

On our third day in Snowdonia we awoke again to brilliant sunshine. Despite the hard frost that had turned every surface a sparkling white it did not seem especially cold for there was no wind. A walk to the ‘enchanted’ forest beckoned, a great favourite of ours for it is a magical place with its mossy hummocks, hidden waterfalls and lichen encrusted conifers. It is a place of total silence apart from the sound of water and ravens croaking overhead.

There is an old track that leads to the forest made by the miners that quarried for slate a long, long time ago before the trees were grown, for this is naturally a barren landscape of rock and bog and heather and bilberry. The trees were planted – non-native conifers – in rows so that the forests appear from a distance as odd shaped rectangles stuck onto a landscape, rarely looking part of the natural scheme of things. They support little in the way of wildlife either, perhaps a little shelter for some passing deer but nothing in the way of food apart for the flocks of crossbills that occasionally winter here feeding on the cones. Yet, despite all these negatives, the enchanted forest is well, enchanting.

Not anymore. We reached the forest gate but, apart from a few trees clustering around the entrance as if trying to escape into the more open spaces beyond, there were just a few damaged and sad looking individuals, all their companions having been clear felled. It was a shocking sight, looking as if a tornado had ripped through them, leaving just rows of broken stumps and, occasionally, an upturned root ball. Sadder still, the tussocks and moss covered mounds that created the ‘Brothers Grimm’ feel had all been destroyed with them. Instead of walking through a cool tunnel of overhanging branches we ventured along a broken landscape; there was not one section recognisable or familiar.

Now it is quite possible that the original landscape will be restored as part of the overall long term plan, for Snowdonia is a National Park. Or, perhaps, the forest will be replanted or allowed to regenerate from self-sown seedlings. Having got over the initial shock of seeing the landscape looking at its worse, I hope it will be the former. The trees really are out of place here and, for the first time (if you can see beyond the devastation) there are wide, uninterrupted views of bleak, harsh mountainside – Snowdonia as it should be.

Whatever the outcome, it will be interesting to watch how nature repairs itself. One thing is quite certain: the landscape will never look the same in my lifetime. Perhaps it may look better?

To see more of the enchanted forest in all its former glory, click on the link here.
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Where’s The Snow in Snowdonia? (Only in it’s name)

Posted on February 13, 2012 by johnshortlandwriter

We have been back to Wales for a week’s holiday staying in a remote converted chapel belonging to a friend. It is good to be back for the isolation is complete – no cars, no houses, no roads, no broadband and no television. Well, there is television but being rather impatient with non-living things (and also quite a number of people that just might fall into that category) I cannot be bothered to work out just which of the several remote controls switch it on. But best of all – and rather surprisingly considering all the dire warnings we have been given by the weathermen – no snow.

Last winter when we were here, a blizzard struck the day we arrived. Gradually, as the supply of logs and oil for heating dwindled and the water supply froze resulting in our collecting it from the stream outside, our resolve and sense of fun also started to diminish. Put it down to advancing years: in my twenties or thirties I would have considered it to be ‘quite a laugh’. Not so these days – I could cope with the water and lack of central heating but I am not so good when the wood burner isn’t blazing away. However, we saw Snowdonia last year as few visitors do; a snow covered landscape with more falling so thickly that it was difficult to see, when out walking, where either my partner – or more importantly She-dog – was even though they were just yards ahead of me.

This year it was different, we left home with the (as it turned out, innacurate) knowledge that we were driving into blizzards and we hoped that we would reach our destination before being marooned, despite having to travel over two high passes and up a track steep enough to make a mountain goat think twice before tackling it. This time we came prepared with a vast amount of food and with three times the amount of warm clothing that any two people could wear over an entire winter. As we reached the town of Shrewsbury the forecast rain began to fall; it would only be a matter of time as we entered Wales and gradually climbed in height that it would change to snow. The rain grew steadily heavier and the road ever steeper until we reached the first summit and, surprise, there was not a hint of whiteness anywhere. The second pass, higher still, was similar although the surrounding peaks did have a dusting of snow. We reached our destination with the rain still falling and the temperature ever rising – it was now fifteen degrees warmer than when we had left home in the Cotswolds, further south and many hundreds of feet lower.

The next morning we woke to sunshine, having no guilt about not getting out of bed in darkness at some ridiculously early hour as every other day of our lives. Looking out of the bedroom window, the surrounding mountains still wore their apology of snow – it was a scene from the end of March or even April. The calls from concerned Cotswold friends telephoning (we still have one piece of technology that works here) to confirm our safe arrival quickly turned to irritation when they discovered we were fine and they were blanketed in five inches of overnight snowfall. It was hardly our fault that they had to work twice as hard at looking after our chickens and horses in our absence and, it seems, my suggestion that carrying buckets of unfrozen drinking water out into the fields was a good daily exercise did not help.

Last year She-dog had a thoroughly enjoyable holiday here as well. Like most dogs, she revels in human company and snow and her days were spent in a mix of snowy walks and long uninterrupted periods of sleep in front of the fire. This time we are here on our own. It has been commented on that She-dog has not featured much in recent posts – all that is about to change for she has gone away on an adventure of her own: if all goes well, in about ten weeks time she will be having puppies once again and, this time, we might just keep one for ourselves.

Snowdonia: Through The Enchanted Forest

Posted on December 5, 2010 by johnshortlandwriter

The tiny road that passes the converted chapel that we have been staying in once again for a late holiday continues to climb further into the mountains. The grassy areas, cropped short by sheep, give way to bracken, heather and stunted gorse, also shortened by the harsh climate. And an hours walk along this road – now little more than a stone track – brings you to the Enchanted Forest. At first, it is barely noticed: a tongue of dark green that appears to be sliding down the mountain as if desperate to reach the richer soil of the valley below.
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But suddenly, as you walk round a bend in the path, there it is in front of you. The trees look inviting; beckoning you to shelter from the cold north-easterly wind that cuts through to your bones. Yet, as you approach, the gate barring your way makes you hesitate, for the first

view into the depths of the forest is a menacing combination of dark and light. All those childhood images from the Brothers Grimm come to mind for there are the conflicting emotions: is this a sinister or a kind place to be and where will the path lead?

Walking further into the forest, it proves to be a fascinating place, with sight after sight more enchanting than the previous one. The damp mists and rain have turned the ground into a mossy wonderland with great mounds of it creating a weird, almost surrealistic, landscape. Surely, Goblins or Hobbitts live here? They do, for every so often the moss builds up to make a hooded entrance and some even have – if you look carefully enough (like in the photo below) – a wrinkly face staring out at you.
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It is just not the light and the shadows that play tricks with you, for nothing is quite as you expect it to be. Some of the conifers branches grow upright instead of horizontally so that their silvery underside is facing you, disorienting your vision.

Even the toadstools are rarely toadstool shaped – here these look like pieces of discarded orange peel rotting in the leaf litter.

It is not especially surprising that ice forms on the puddles at this altitude and time of year but even this is different. They have the appearance of stained glass windows, but strangely drained of all their colour…..

And just as suddenly as you entered it, the forest gives way again to mountain. But what a mountain! It is as if it has been dropped from a great height and smashed to millions of pieces, some just lying around and others piled up one on top of the other, regardless of size or shape. And why, several hundred years ago, did they build the dry stone walls that travel up and over them for mile after mile?
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The sun had been shining brightly when we had stepped into the trees. Now, in an instant, the weather has turned and we are being threatened by snow flurries. She-dog, our lurcher, who recognises these problems better than we do, had been wandering on far ahead. Now, knowing that danger could be approaching, she hurtles down the track back towards us, agitated, beckoning us to return home.
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How glad we were we heeded She-dog’s warning! By the time we were within sight of home the landscape was changing to white. And the snow continued to fall for days…..

Where’s the Snow in Snowdonia?

Posted on November 28, 2009 by johnshortlandwriter

The converted chapel in Snowdonia sits isolated high up in the mountains of North Wales. It is where I have been staying for the past few weeks with no access to the internet (hence no recent posts) and free from every day concerns. Dolgellau, where the nearest shops are, is a twenty minute drive down steep, winding and narrow lanes – there is no incentive to drive there when you can be out walking or sitting snug by the wood burner.

The weather started out unseasonably mild with beautiful blue skies from dawn to dusk giving clear views of the tops of the mountains. Of course, compared to the mountain ranges of the world, the mountains of Snowdonia are not high, Mt. Snowden being the highest at 3560ft. The photo below shows the Cadair Idris range at 2831ft, one of the most popular areas for hill walking. Often mistaken for an extinct volcano because of its crater like top, it was actually formed by glaciation during the last Ice Age.

The Pecipice Walk is less well known and being close to ‘our’ house is a favourite walk. The path clings to the side of the mountain with a sharp drop to the valley and river below. Further along the path the view opens out to give wonderful views to the sea in the far distance.

The return route, on the other side of the mountain, gives the totally unexpected view of this small lake. The water is quite clear and tranquil and with its reflections of forest and sky, a pleasant place to rest and ponder.