Smitten by the beauty of Wales’ landscape, Julie Brominicks resolved to walk the boundaries of her adopted home, from its spectacular coastline to the ancient route through the rugged Welsh Marches
Cymru. Or Wales, in English. Its greenery, swift streams and rainy summits stole into my heart as a child. We went on caravan holidays to Cymru, like everyone else I knew from Shrewsbury, but Tywyn was just ‘the seaside’ till I heard local women there speaking Welsh. That ‘Wales’ was different sparked excitement that still makes me shiver. Cymru was where I yearned to be when living in England, the place I thought of when working overseas.
By 1998 I was living in Y Borth but teaching in Telford. It was the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) that brought me to the town of Machynlleth. CAT was a positive place, bursting with sustainability expertise. I worked in the book shop then left to travel, before returning as an education officer. My role took me into the wider community, inspiring me to learn Welsh and integrate better.
I loved teaching, but eventually it sapped me, so when the financial crisis prompted disruptive changes at CAT, my partner Rob and I went on leave. We were trekking in Portugal when the decisions to quit my job, become a writer and hike around Cymru arrived and settled one by one.
I walked out of my door and on to the Wales Coast Path in September 2012, and dispersed the walk over a year. I have always been a non-planning traveller – Ilike to be surprised. It makes me more receptive. When you’re vulnerable you’re humbler; when you’re hungry, simple food tastes amazing.
Shivering in Port Talbot Parkway while venomous lads discussed violence to women wasn’t a high point of the walk, but it was followed by so many offers of tea and accommodation, my lasting impression of that day is of human generosity. Epic landscape and reflection time further enriched my journey. It got me closer to Cymru – its history, peoples, biodiversity, language and land. Here are seven of my frontier highlights…
1. Morgannwg (Glamorgan) Heritage Coast
I naively assumed that the land between Caerdydd (Cardiff) and Abertawe (Swansea) would be densely populated but found instead an area as rural and remote as anywhere in the north-west. Cymru is geologically rich, but it is only on the Morgannwg coastline that you find exposures of Jurassic rock. The Liassic limestone cliffs are full of ammonites and the bones of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. The softer shale erodes more quickly than the harder limestone beds, leaving them unsupported – frequent rock-falls result in beaches scattered with fossils and a theatrical landscape, particularly in the stormy evening light and chiaroscuro of my first encounter.
2. The Church of Sant Padrig (St Patrick), Ynys Môn (Anglesey)
Sacred wells and chapels dot the Cymru coast. Many have 5th or 6th-century origins, apparently founded by early Christian missionaries who travelled between Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Cornwall and Cymru in wooden boats. There is something soulexpanding in the wild remote sites they chose, described as being ‘denau’ (thin) – referring to the alleged distance between heaven and Earth at these places. Legend claims this chapel was founded by Padrig, who was shipwrecked on Ynys Padrig. That the Moorish blue tiles and windows were added in a 19th-century renovation by Lord Stanley, after his conversion to Islam, appeals to my sense of inclusivity.
3. Bae Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen Bay)
Estuaries excite me – that saline and freshwater shift and flux, the sulphurous smells, the sound of popping mud and swish of high tide. They dominate Sir Caerfyrddin (Carmarthenshire), where three rivers, Afon Tywi, Afon Tâf and Afon Gwendraeth, meet in one bay. I have yet to see anything more beautiful than those shimmering sands, from Wharley Head above Llansteffan. Cymru is not the seafaring nation it once was. There are no longer Caerfyrddin-bound ships or Cydweli (Kidwelly) coal coasters, and fewer pilgrims cross the rivers en route to Tyddewi (St Davids). But dozens of cockle pickers still rake the sands by hand as they have done for centuries.
4. Yr Eifl, Pen Llŷn (Llŷn Peninsula)
The view from Yr Eifl made me shout “wow”, several times. Colours flashed across the land and sea, chased by the wind. Eryri (Snowdonia) mountains roared up ahead while Ynys Môn (Anglesey) was a green and gold altar cloth in the sea. Granite that had paved English cities was still being clawed from the slopes, Tre’r Ceiri (the remarkably well-preserved Iron Age hillfort pictured above) was perched above me just inland, and Nant Gwrtheyrn, the abandoned quarry-workers’ village turned Welsh language centre, lay on the coast down a vertiginous slope. But humanity seemed small and fleeting among all this grandeur.
5. Clawdd Offa (Offa’s Dyke)
The dyke stopped me in my tracks when I met it. I hadn’t realised how much of it was still a visible, tangible landmark. It is particularly dramatic on Llanfair Hill (pictured) where it forms a continuous ridge like the keel of an overturned boat. Starling clouds flash across it, rabbits burrow into its ditch. The dyke was built, probably during the 780s, to separate Offa’s Saxon kingdom of Mercia from the Celtic-language-speaking Britons who remained in the west. I find it ironic but ultimately satisfying that a patrolled, aggressively asserted border contributed to the concept of Cymru as a nation, and helped safeguard its culture and language.
6. Bae Penbryn (Penbryn Beach) and Cwm Lladron, Ceredigion
Although Cymru is one of the most deforested countries in Europe with achingly slow reforestation plans, Cwm Lladron hints at what was and what could be again. Atlantic west-coast oak woodlands once extended from Scotland to Portugal. Pockets of woodland remain in steep-sided valleys such as Cwm Lladron, through which Afon Hoffnant trickles. Glossy rain-irrigated ferns, moss and lichen-clad oak and hazel open on to a pristine beach. To step from between cool shady trees on to empty white sand feels like stepping into prehistory. There is something timeless about this integration of woodland and coast that hints at Cymru’s past – and potential future.
7. North coast
Heavy industry is no longer dominant in Cymru. While production and its related pollution has been exported, domestic land and water contamination from other sources, such as agriculture, continues apace. Nevertheless, I find lyrical beauty and hope in postindustrial zones. In the industrial age, Cymru’s north coast reeked with smog from lead smelters, coal mines and chemical works, and crops were destroyed by acid rain. Now goldfinch charms flit about the scrub, wooden boats rest in creeks that were once busy ports, and while the sea once teemed with masted ships, energy is now produced offshore by wind turbines.
Julie Brominicks is a landscape writer who lives in West Wales. Her first book The Edge of Cymru – A Journey Around Wales, is published by Seren Books this month; serenbooks.com.