Coed Clocaenog

The final bus blog for Sir Ddinbych, Enormous thanks to everyone involved, especially Fiona Dolben Evans.

Suddenly – hot rich silence. A thick fragrance of needles and moss and the merest kiss of breeze on wet skin. From here – the highest point in Coed Clocaenog – in the west of the county, the views across Dyffryn Clywd to where Bryniau Clwyd rise in the east like an extraordinary suite of skateboard ramps, are spectacular.

I am resting against the Pincyn Llys monument which was erected in 1830 not to brag about a battle, but to celebrate instead, the birth of a conifer forest. Those first trees were felled for trench and coal-mine props in the First World War, after which the forest was re-planted. Land-use change often causes heartache, and early conifer plantations – when land, homes and farms were requisitioned by the Forestry Commission – were no exception. Wetland and moors were lost.

Meanwhile, different habitats were created and one mammal to have benefitted from Coed Clocaenog has been the red squirrel. The reds moved in during the 1950s to feed on the sitka spruce seeds. A relict population remains, protected somewhat from grey squirrels (which carry pox the reds have no immunity to) by Coed Clocaenog’s altitude and remote location surrounded largely as it is, by farmland and moors. A recovering population of pine martens perhaps, which predate happily on ground-feeding greys but find the reds too nimble to catch, might prove helpful. Time will tell.  

You are unlikely to see any red squirrels on this walk. Despite the rich silence at the monument (and that you might possibly on your route via quiet lanes and Coed y Fron Wyllt have met no other humans at all) you are merely tickling the edge of a vast forest that extends much further west. The squirrels are secreted further in. But it is comforting to know they are not too far away.

To see the full route guide click here https://www.northeastwales.wales/cy/coed-clocaenog/

Pont Dyfrdwy, Cynwyd

The penultimate bus blog for Sir Ddinbych… To read the full blog, follow the link below

Swallowing sunlight like beer in a pint glass does but sounding like wine being poured from a bottle (and also a laundrette with all the machines running) there goes Afon Dyfrdwy, scudding under the bridge. The river is a muscular thing, bulging and flexing, forming diamonds on its surface that repeat the shape of the piers as it rushes through the arches.

From its source in Eryri, through Llyn Tegid, to its vast shifting saline north-coast estuary, Afon Dyfrdwy is a designated Special Area of Conservation and a regular companion in Sir Ddinbych. On this walk between Corwen and Cynwyd, it bubbles fast and clear over a stony bed. Boughs trail their twigs into it, like the fingers of a footballer slapping hands with fans as they circuit the pitch. Birdsong peals in the willow, ash and oak on the banks. 

A Natural Resources Wales conservation project (LIFEDeeRiver) is in the process of restoring the health of Afon Dyfrdwy. Measures include planting trees along the banks, re-seeding the river with endangered freshwater pearl mussels, and removing weirs to ease the passage of migratory fish like salmon, sewin, eels, grayling and three species of lamprey – sea, river and brook. Along this stretch between Corwen and Cynwyd, livestock fencing has been installed to reduce nutrients and sediments entering, contaminating and clouding the water.

(Click link below photo to read more.)

Pont Dyfrdwy

Llandegla’s Well

Still with Llandegla, this time as the sixth bus blog walk for Cyngor Sir Ddinbych – click on the link to see the full blog…

You cannot mistake the vibe. The gentle walk prepares you for it, meandering as it does along the banks of Afon Alyn and down sweetly curving lanes on which the only traffic is a quadbike bumping into a field (and an ambush of wrens). At the well is a sense of something quiet and ancient and sacred.

Sequestered by a thicket of thorn, this square of water snares the trees’ reflection. For centuries it has shone between these stones built carefully around a spring in an alder grove. Like the church in the village, the well is dedicated to St Tegla. Or Tecla or Thecla. According to the New World Encyclopaedia, Thecla was a follower of St Paul and is mentioned in one of the writings of the New Testament where it is claimed, her devotion was ‘rewarded by miraculous signs including several dramatic rescues from martyrdom by fire and wild beasts.’ Thecla was venerated widely in late antiquity and is recognized today by both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. So how did she end up in Cymru? Another theory (posited by Tristan Gray Hulse) is that this Tegla was a local saint about whom we now know nothing.

The Well of Saint Tegla

Thomas Pennant at Llandegla

(Second blog about Thomas Pennant for the ‘Curious Travellers’ team at University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies)

‘FROM Tommen y Rhodwydd I crossed the country for about two miles to the village of Llandegla, LLANDEGLA. noted for its vast fairs for black cattle. The church is dedicated to St. Tecla, virgin and martyr; who, after her conversion by St. Paul, suffered under Nero at Iconium.’ ‘Tours in Wales’ Thomas Pennant,1778

I would have loved to see Llandegla in Pennant’s day when no fewer than five drovers’ roads met in the village. The drovers rested here on their way to the London markets, having already walked cattle, sheep, pigs and geese from farms further north and west. The ‘vast fairs for black cattle’ Pennant refers to, took place at a market outside The Crown Hotel. The Crown is closed, but still stands on the A525, looking rather forlorn. It’s where I alight from my bus (the X51) which runs frequently between Wrecsam and Dinbych, but since mid-January 2024, no longer pulls right into the village.

Save for the postie doing his rounds, Llandegla is mousy quiet. It’s hard to imagine the smell of muck and sweat and straw and beer. Or conjure up the bleats and grunts, the conversation and shouts, as the animals were led to grazing. The sparks and ringing of iron at the forges in the three smithies where animals were shod and farm machinery crafted. One remains – in name only – except for horseshoes around the door. The drovers’ thirst was slaked in sixteen pubs. Imagine that! Now there are none.

To read the full article, click here https://curioustravellers.ac.uk/pennant-and-llandegla/

Eliseg’s Pillar (again!)

This time it’s the latest bus blog for Sir Ddinbych… see link below for full article.

Concenn itaque pronepos Eliseg edificauit hunc lapidem… – and so Concenn, Eliseg’s great=grandson built this stone…

Despite its illustrious Latin, Eliseg’s Pillar looks a little embarrassed nowadays, restrained as it is by iron palings on a Bronze-Age barrow which is itself surrounded by a fence in a sheep field. If you squint you can decipher Valle Crucis Abbey beyond the caravan site, but more prominent are the billboards advertising roast dinners at nearby Abbey Grange Hotel across the A542 on which traffic grinds constantly by.

The thirty-one lines of Latin inscriptions have eroded away. Luckily antiquaries like Edward Lhuyd copied the text in 1696, and travel writer Thomas Pennant wrote about it a century later. We know that Eliseg’s Pillar is the remains of what was once a much taller memorial stone that was erected by Cyngen (a local leader) in the ninth century to honour his great-grandfather Eliseg, who had beaten the Anglo-Saxons in a battle and expelled them from this part of Powys. Perhaps the inscriptions were meant as propaganda, to boost spirits, or to be read aloud at a place where leaders were appointed.

The poor old pillar has taken a beating. It was toppled, it is said, by Cromwell’s iconoclasts in the 1640s, who broke the cross off the top. Although the damaged pillar was re-erected (following Pennant’s visit) by an eighteenth-century landowner atop the Bronze-Age mound, there is no escaping the fact that it now looks more like a phallus.

The wintry walk here restores the monument’s dignity. From turbulent Afon Dyfrdwy, I climbed up and over Castell Dinas Brân (in an earlier structure of which, Eliseg probably lived), beneath Cregiau Eglwyseg – the crags which wrap the valley in a limestone embrace, and around Foel Fawr. Without summer tourists and foliage, stone is omnipresent in this landscape, with Eliseg’s Pillar at its heart.

Eliseg’s Pillar

Imagine! A Farm-Friendly Future

Farmers I love you. I love your dressers sagging with schoolbooks and toys. I love your dogs. Dwi’n caru eich iaith. I love the poets among you. I love the way your whoops and curses follow me over the hills like the gazes of the livestock you’re tending. I love your grit and hard graft. Your gruff gentleness. Your concern for curlews. How even when it seems like you’re not appreciated, you just keep going. Dal ati.

Environmentalists I love you. The passion and commitment with which you communicate the science. How you understand the chaos coming our way so you too, risk ridicule and hostility when all you’re trying to do is help us all avoid extremely dangerous climate breakdown. Progress is too slow, it seems like no-one understands. Yet you keep going.

I love you, wildlife specialists. Your positivity! How you understand the environmental crisis – yet take such delight in the flight of an owl, the glance of a pine marten, the wild beauty and grace of a single suffering species – that you somehow possess a magical ability to slough off the worry and keep going.

Parents! People! Everyone! I love that you care and are aware of these things even while ravaging the aisles for cheap food because you’re just trying to keep afloat and feed your families, I love you for this.

I have eco-friends who bought cars and whose homes filled with plastic when they had kids. I know farmers who buy supermarket shrink-wrapped imported meat and veg, and wildlife people who fly to Costa Rica for a biodiversity hit – as if those emissions don’t count. We’re all flawed, trying to cope with the failing systems we’ve somehow inherited. And when we don’t think people understand our struggles or the urgency of the situations we face, we start shouting.

To read the full article in Nation Cymru, click here https://nation.cymru/opinion/imagining-a-farm-friendly-future/#:~:text=Imagine%20a%20new%20version%2C%20a,t%20necessarily%20mean%20fewer%20farmers.

Nantglyn Yew

(The fourth in a series of bus blogs for Sir Ddinbych… for the full piece follow the link below the blog.)

Above my head, a flicker of wings between evergreen boughs that filter sunlight the way stained glass windows do. The whistle of a goldcrest and chatter of tits. I am two metres off the ground in the tree but the birds are still so far above me in the crown that to them I’m irrelevant.

With a girth more than seven metres and colossal bushy crown, the Nantglyn Yew is a giant, thriving in the grounds of the church of Sant Iago (St James) which it definitely dwarfs, but only possibly predates, however tempting it might be to presume so. The worship of sacred trees is older than Christianity, and it seems that the first churches may have been built on sites of earlier Pagan worship, but yews are difficult to date. Andrew Morton, in his excellent book ‘Trees of the Celtic Saints; The Ancient Yews of Wales’ explains that the heartwood rots away making carbon-testing and dendrochronology impossible, while typically chaotic growth makes even girth measurements problematic.

It is many years since the heartwood rotted out of this yew but at some point, slate steps and a lectern were skilfully fitted into the hollow, as legend would have it to allow Methodist leader John Wesley to preach from the tree in 1790. An agile person can haul themselves up ‘The Pulpit Yew’ by the handrail, into the tree’s very heart.

So here in the heart I sit. I hear the clatter of pigeons, inhale the evergreen scent. Touch the rosy smooth bark and the small broom-heads of bushy growth. Several mature stems burst straight from the bole – I count at least seven. They give me the impression of being in a forest. The spaces between them reveal views veiled by evergreen fronds; slabs of moss on the slate church roof, the adjourning hill field and its hedges. The ground where a mulch of needles gives to mossy grass, graves and violets. These verdant vignettes, the stream song and fragrance conspire to confuse me. How long have I sat in this church of birds? And that is when it hits me – the enormity of time. I have spared maybe an hour to this tree that has lived, sustained and shaded here for centuries.

The Nantglyn Yew

Letter from Corwen

Even passing the Texaco Garage a mile or two south you sense the town to come with its corrugated sheds and haulage yard is an outpost; romantically rain-dark and ruinous, save for Glyndŵr swinging his sword from his statue – feistily – lest we forget.

The A5 squeezes through so it’s from dusty bus windows, delayed between log lorries and sheep trailers that you see two men out there fixing traffic lights onto a flat-bed. And you think Corwen is caught in time and space somewhere between Glyndŵr, the drovers, and Ifor Wiliams (whose factories are all about). And maybe, even before getting chance to rub away at its dark patina you guess Corwen is a magic lantern of a town. What’s not to like? It howls of transit.

Read the full article here https://nation.cymru/feature/letter-from-corwen/

Penycloddiau

If you lie in a hollow you can avoid the wind’s shriek but there’s no escaping the sky. What bold blue cupola is this? I can’t shake the feeling I’m in a snow globe. Whatever weather cajoles, caresses or chases you here, Penycloddiau – which at 440m, soars above the vale yet is uncrowded by nearby peaks – boasts uninhibited views and a sky that dominates.

With a vantage point like this, little wonder that Bryniau Clwyd – the knobbly spine of hills running north to south down the east of Sir Ddinbych – was home in the Iron Age to four hill forts, plus Moel y Gaer in Bodfari and nearby Moel Hiraddug. You can visit them all in one hike but I’ve plumped for two; steam-pudding-shaped Moel Arthur and Penycloddiau, which at 18.9 hectares is one of the largest in Cymru.

From my snug hollow I am trying to imagine how it was in the Iron Age. To see the ramparts re-clad in timber, to repopulate the round houses whose footprints are just ghosts now, seen from the air in dry weather. To imagine the smell of animals, and smoke drifting through thatched roofs, the voices and clink of tools. Yes! I do hear voices. Four hikers from Staffordshire, who coax me out of the hollow to take their photo. “I don’t think they actually lived up here” says one, when I tell him what I’m up to. “It would have been a long way to go for firewood” says another.

The deforestation of these hills that began in the Bronze Age continued apace in the Iron Age, when the birch, oak, elm, lime, ash and alder woodland was cleared by these round-house dwellers in order to grow cereals and provide grazing. But live here they did. Dr Toby Driver (author of The Hill Forts of Iron Age Wales) tells me that “firewood may have been an issue but any rural community would have managed their woodland resources and coppiced what they needed for structural timber and firewood. And the valley isn’t far to go if you have oxen to pull up cartloads of wood.” Although it isn’t known, they may also have burned peat – peat bogs having supplanted the cleared woodland.

They must have loved the views. Today I see wind turbines off the North Cymru coast and Liverpool’s grey sprawl. Meanwhile the mountains of Eryri, roaring up in the west beyond a frosted Dyffryn Clwyd, would have been as mighty white then as now.  

This is the third blog for Sir Ddinbych Council about places to visit by a walk from a bus stop. To see the full route and bus details follow this link http://www.northeastwales.wales/penycloddiau/

Dychweliad Paul Hurst

PS The editor chose not to publish this photo – (He didn’t do it Dil, honest! Ha ha!)

Published in The Seasider, Aber Town, Chwefror 9fed 2024