In Snowdonia

Not all kites are red.....

In Song at the Year's Turning (1955) R. S. Thomas published his poem, A Welshman to Any Tourist.

We've nothing vast to offer you, no deserts

Except the waste of thought

Forming from mind erosion;

I would like to think he was exercising wry wit, though the priest poet was rarely funny.... What was he thinking when he wrote?

No canyons where the pterodactyl's wing

Casts a cold shadow.

Had he never walked in the foothills of Cadair Idris, where Buzzards flap their pterodactyl ancestry in your hair?  He did at least allow that:

The hills are fine, of course,

Bearded with water to suggest age

And pocked with caverns, 

One being Arthur's dormitory;

He and his knights are the bright ore

That seams our history,

But shame has kept them late in bed.

I don't know for sure that it is shame that keeps people abed here, or the weather, which can be watery, to say the least.  Even the slate roofs seem to flow downhill...

But Dolgellau has its strengths.  In the Parliament House we drink home made soup, served from the ironmongery counter, and next door demonstrates that fashion is always in in this part of the world, or at least it was in 1854.....  Perhaps King Arthur may have siopped here....?  He is rumoured to have passed this way.

In one of the pubs a cider drinker tells me that he can't read, which is why they took his sniper's licence away.....  But I lose at pool notwithstanding, and cannot get the wifi to work.

So I take to the hills, where R S Thomas did know what he was talking about.....

In Poetry for Supper (1958), he wrote, in The View from the Window, 

Like a painting it is set before one,

But less brittle, ageless; these colours

Are renewed daily with variations

Of light and distance that no painter

Achieves or suggests.  Then there is movement,

Change, as slowly the cloud bruises

Are healed by sunlight, or snow caps

A black mood; but gold at evening

To cheer the heart.

This view, above, is what you see from our friend's house, White Horses (Rhuddalt) at Bontddu, which, sadly, is currently up for sale.  It's a view that R S Thomas would have waxed cynical about, or which his namesake Dylan would have found almost equal to his boathouse.....

To draw back a little, and to climb the hill between Taicynhaeaf and Llanelltyd, along the New Precipice Walk, you get a view of the whole Afon Mawddach (River Mou thk), with Cadair Idris to the south and Barmouth Bay to the West (ish).

Of course, despite our best optimism, the sun does not shine all the time.  But this scenery is breathtaking even when the sun goes in....

Walking here is breathtaking - in more than one way.  I do not have the lights for heights, and I puff as soon as the incline is more than a thick pile carpet, so reaching three hundred metres above the fairly obvious sea level below me in little more than a mile is, well, breathtaking!  Have another look at this view. 

Worth it?  I think so.....

And then in detail, the scenery is full of variety, from fern-bedecked deciduous trees....

To mirror lakes, perhaps residual from the mining industry, perhaps natural....

Mist swirled rocks, perched like lizards above frightful steeps.....

Vertiginous pine woods.....

Down to reed beds on the tidal salt marshes.....

And back to the shifting sands of the estuary, with a glimpse of Rhuddalt, where ship-building was once a major industry.....

I have respect for R S Thomas.  His words ring true, if uncomfortable. Sometimes, for me, his preacherly tone is too much thought for the day, but his understanding of the Welsh world, and his voice, are for me grand drops in the rainstorm of literature.  At a conference in Cambridge, in 1986, he appeared having just driven across from his Welsh home, in his seventies; he stood tall and austere -  a rugged statue amongst the reedy literati.  

As a poet, at his best, he had the ear, and the authority, of Yeats, though no one can approach the latter's scope.  Thomas spoke with a ringing English, less plummy than Dylan, more tuneful than W B, but with the gest of a master....

As I ramble in these wild hills, stumbling across mole hills, tripping on rabbits, I rehearse snatches of Thomas's words: I hear the names of those who might have dwelt in what are now holiday homes - Dai Puw (He was no good); Job Davies (eighty-five winters old, and still alive/After the slow poison/And treachery of the seasons); Walter Llywarch (Born in Wales of approved parents,/Well goitred, round in the bum);  Evans (Yes, many a time/I came down his bare flight/Of stairs into the gaunt kitchen/With its wood fire); and Iago Prytherch (his name, though, be it allowed,/Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,/Who pens a few sheep in a gap in the clouds.)

Somehow I hear a voice amongst these hills. Somehow I feel a tremor.  It's not the fleeting hawks, the birds of prey that streak past or stoop so fast - the kites, sparrowhawks, buzzards and peregrines (could that have been a goshawk?).  It's not the looping winds that chill the sandwich in your hand, or cool the tea before the steam has had a chance to rise.  It's a heart beating in the air; a spirit that yet thrives.....

I am a man;

I never wanted the drab role

Life assigned me, an actor playing

To the past's audience upon a stage

Of earth and stone; the absurd label

Of birth, of race hanging askew

About my shoulders.  I was in prison

Until you came; your voice was a key

Turning in the enormous lock

Of hopelessness.  Did the door open

To let me out or yourselves in?

R S Thomas

A Welsh Testament

Clogau - All that glisters.....

The golden hills of Wales!

Afon Cym-Llechen, near Llechfraith, Gwynedd

When I think of Wales, although this may be reprehensibly prejudiced, I tend to think of wild hills, rocky seashores, rain, and sheep. Gold does not spring to mind.  I would think of coal, if I thought of mining; I would not automatically think of gold.

Most usually the light is silver, white or grey - it is not gold, although on bright summer moments, there may be a yellowing, a rolling palette of warmer colours.

On the left of the pictures above is the lengthy ridge of Cadair Idris, which reaches 893 metres above sea level, near Dolgellau, in the Southern part of the Snowdonia National Park.

On the north and west of Cadair Idris the river Mawddach flows to the Irish sea, winding its way through salt marshes and mud flats, 

slipping under the long low railway bridge before it spreads out into Barmouth Bay.

At Penmaenpool, just by the George III Hotel,

a toll bridge crosses the river, which connects the Mawddach Trail to Barmouth, via Bontddu along the A496.

The estuary is rich in wildlife as well as cattle and sheep.  At Rhuddallt the gardens of the White Horses Retreat slip down to the water's edge.

And at low tide the peace of a walk along the sand bar is almost overwhelming.

But just a half mile from here is the village of Bontddu, where the river Cwm Llechen tumbles down to the estuary from the slopes of 750 metre high Diffwys.  There was a serious ship-building industry here in the seventeenth century, using oak from the forests, but these hills were also a rich source of minerals, and copper and lead were mined here by the Romans (and there is also evidence of mining activity as far back as the Bronze Age - which would not have been an Age at all if it weren't for mining!) 

Above Bontddu

But then, in 1854, the owner of one of the copper mines, a Mr Goodman, "accidentally" discovered gold. This precipitated a Gold Rush, and the officially recorded output from the six lodes under Clogau between 1862 and 1911 was 165,031 tons of gold ore, from which 78,507 ounces (approximately two and a quarter tons!) of gold was extracted.

The gold extracted here is of rare quality, having a rose blush due to impurities. The slightly dodgy photo above is a snap from the British Airways in-flight brochure taken recently on my iPhone on the way back from Italy. 

There is still gold here, but the rush was over in 1911, and for 75 years production was intermittent. Then in 1989 William Roberts, founder of "Clogau Gold of Wales Ltd." recommenced extraction (famously this is where Princess Diana's wedding ring came from, following the tradition of the Queen Mother's ring in 1923, the current Queen's in 1947, Princess Anne's in 1973, and since Charles and Diana - and Charles and Camilla - Kate Middleton wore Clogau Gold in 2011). However with the price of production reaching £1,000 an ounce (health and safety costs!) the Clogau St David's mine closed in 1998.

The site of the mines around Hafod-uchaf

There are numerous signs of mining in these hills, and Ben Roberts, son of the founder of the company, wishes to reopen the mine.  According to a 2012 geological survey of the area, there could still be as much as £125 million worth of gold in these lodes, though Ben's ambition is to have enough to fuel his jewellery business, and perhaps attract tourists to the area.

One of many disused mine entrances

When Clogau Gold started trading, the value of gold was about $300 an ounce.  It rose to $1600 an ounce, but this was still an uneconomical price to extract it at the end of the twentieth century.  The peak in recent years was in about 2011 when it reached $1800; currently it is about $1320, but the hope is that with advanced technology it will not be as expensive to produce as it was.

 

Anyway, the Crown Estates, a company with a portfolio worth about £6 billion, has the exclusive right to license gold mining in the United Kingdom, and despite pressure from foreign investors it is probable that Ben Roberts and Clogau Gold may once again disturb the earth beneath the hills around Bontddu.

For me the better gold is the colour of the gorse and the vetches above the ground.  It may be misty, and the clouds may roll in with cold winds, but it is great walking country.  Handy dry stone walls provide shelter for a snack and a cup of tea, 

Though at times visibility is disappointing,

It will clear from time to time,

And the landscape reveals its glories, and its history.

Then the day draws to a close; quiet descends on Afon Mawddach,

And the golden lights of the George III sparkle us home across the river.

It's interesting to think of gold rushes in the British Isles (there was one in Scotland too) but, as the Pardoner taught me, "Radix malorum est cupiditas," and I cannot unscramble the images of the young men dying in the woods in Pasolini's film (of 'The Canterbury Tales') from association with Enron, Freddie Mac, Lehman, Waste Management, Parmalat, and so on.  The unseemly, futile, greedy scrambles for wealth have done little to enhance our world.

Better a golden sunset than a ring of fire.

There's gold in them hills!

http://www.eryri-npa.gov.uk/visiting/walking/Easy-Leisure-Walks/Mawddach-Trail

http://www.eryri-npa.gov.uk/visiting/walking/Hard-Leisure-Walks/clogau,-bont-ddu

http://www.whitehorsesretreat.co.uk/index.html

http://www.clogau.co.uk/

Where sheep may safely graze....

Stalking Virg Clenthills Blues

 

HOE DOWN in Snowdonia

 

 

In a marquee in Snowdonia, Richard Gibbs catches up with country music “legend” Virgil Clenthills III, alter ego of Gareth Owen, poet, novelist and former presenter of BBC Radio 4’s “Poetry Please”…..

 

The sun is sinking, like a plum in an oil slick.  Canvas flaps, earth and crushed grass churn underfoot.  Hilary greets us as we slip into the warmth of her marquee, steel pegs and raw sisal upholding the peace.  Outside the sun goes on sinking, while the river shivers on into the sea, past darkening trees and strands of salt marsh.  Inside we are cheered with fizzy wine and propelled into a barn dance.

 

It’s a well drilled melee: the caller expertly corralling the herd: Penny swings with actor John; Lucia does the doz-e-doh with a slender man in a black Stetson – could it be Virgil Clenthills III?  The sheep-shorn beard, the crushed lilac top, the yellowing cowboy boots – this had to be the country legend, the one, the only, the man of whom it was once said, “‘If you've ever woken up with a broken heart in one hand and an empty bourbon bottle in the other - Virg is singing just for you.”  My wife pretends to swoon; I pretend to catch her.  The author of “A Song for Hank Williams,” is just a step away.

Virgil Clenthills swears he was born in August 1939 in Intercourse, Missouri, son of an illegal English immigrant and half Shoshone Virginia Mae Pluckett who then orphaned him at the age of five with a Packard. But really Virg was created by Gareth Owen at 70, in Ludlow.

As Virg recalls, he launched his “World Tour of Ludlow, Presteigne, Ross and B’ham,” in 2010 to avoid the limelight, and tonight we find him in Bontddu, in the Snowdonia National Park, on The Dolgellau to Barmouth Mawddach Trail.  Now, as the sheep draw near, bleating like Tennessee crickets, Virg sets up his keyboard and exposes his country veins, lurching into “Stone Drunk Again” with barely a glance at the words.

Then, as the Welsh Whisky flows, we join in the chorus of “Happy with That,” a classic tale of degeneracy and domestic discord on a run-down Kentucky homestead.

Later, we cross the creaking bridge back to the George III Hotel at Penmaenpool, the moon above like a pearl set on black satin, singing:

“Yes I once met a man

Who talked with a man

    Who saw Jesse James riding by….”

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfNqVuIGNPk

 

Richard Gibbs

October 14^th 2012

 

Entered for the Guardian Travel Writing Competition, 2012, An Encounter category - not even a runner up.....  Probably classed as more hip-replacement than hip!