| “I Was a Worshipper of Mountains” |
Places |
| John Baptist Mulchair and Catherine Hutton , Dyfi Valley and the Road to Bwlch Y Groes , November 3, 2019 |
In Bala Coleridge outraged. George Borrow exulted in his travels in the valley of the Dyfi. An artist preceded them. John Baptist Mulchair from Oxford kept a journal of his journeys. On July 30th 1795 he wrote from a village he called Dinas Mouthwy:“Now the country becomes suddenly Welsh and we enter a region of Mountains, here English is an acquired language and much wors spoaken than French in England, by no means so common…The trees are small and twisting often More picturesque than luxuriant timber trees.” An artist brings an eye for detail. “Moss crumbled over with fragments of rock that continually role from the topp and are verry favourable to the painters touch as are also the summits on account of theire cragginess.” But the human world he saw was not that of Oxford. “The buildings are peculiar, Rude Rough and ragged” and of the inhabitants “the people are so too.” Malchair had company. The Reverend George Cooke was a Fellow of Oriel College with an interest in geology. The two men stayed for nine days and walked the country around Dinas Mawddwy extensively. Malchair sketched the huts and pigs as well as the mountains much in thrall to the new aesthetics of his time. “It is not difficult here to account for the Sublimity”, he wrote, “the objects are vast and very uncommon to Eyes that are only wont to contemplate the beauties of a rich farming country.” * * * * Catherine Hutton was a visitor from the Midlands who reported in a contrasting and lively voice. She was born 11th February 1756 and died 13th March 1846. Her father wrote that she was premature. “She came into the world before her time and was perhaps the smallest human being ever seen.” Her writings were gathered for publication in 1891 under the title “Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century”. Her enthusiasm leaps off the page. At the nearest coast she wrote “Barmouth restored me. I had sea air and sea bathing, society when I chose to have it, and retirement in my bedroom when I wished to be alone...I rode and walked on the beach, I was a worshipper of mountains.” Coming inland she rode double with a servant and attracted attention. “In Wales, where riding was a matter of course among women and riding double (as it was called) a frequent occurrence, we were highly respected, and the size and beauty of our horses excited great admiration.” Once settled in at Mallwyd she described the surroundings in a letter to her brother of July 27th 1796. “Here the common people speak no English. The dress of the women is entirely supplied by the sheep of the country, with the exception of two printed pocket handkerchiefs, one worn on the neck, the other on the head and brought to the throat, and tied behind.” But they are barefoot. “Shoes and stockings are a superfluity; they march along bare-legged and bare-footed with as little inconvenience as the sheep that formerly carried the burthen.” Hutton was a sharp observer of the local life. “The food of the common people consists of oat cake, bread made of rye and barley, butter and cheese, whey curds, and stirup which is boiled whey thickened with oatmeal. That of the farmers' servants is the same , with the addition of a small portion of bacon or salted meat on a Sunday. The universal beverage is buttermilk”. She was impresed by the results. “With this diet the men are tall and athletic, but thin; the women are rosy, healthy and handsome, and the children yet more so.” * * * * Outside the church of St Tydecho in Llanymawddwy, the sky looks promising. Dusk is three hours away and and the pass to Bwlch-y-Groes beckons. It is time to swap wheel for foot. I have been here before, but not in a satisfactory way. The road to Bala is narrow in ascent and precipitate in descent. The journey within a half ton of metal entails anxiety. The prospect of another vehicle from the opposite direction means a manoeuvre on a tight mountain lane. “What a valley!” I exclaimed.” wrote Borrow. “On passing through the opening I found myself in another, wilder and stranger, if possible. Full to the west was a long hill rising up like the roof of a barn, an enormous round hill on its north-east side, and on its south-east the tail of the range which I had long had on my left - there were trees and groves and running waters.” The eye is not best served by the view through the window of a vehicle. Human perception is made to work at its peak when moving through an environment at four miles an hour. The best of travel is always serendipitous and this wandering day, without plan or intent, is the day for Bwlch-y-Groes. The walk from valley floor to crest takes an hour and a half. In that time a couple of four-wheel drives go by. It was not always so. Human traffic has shifted now to the low route via Dolgellau but this was once the main thoroughfare. Today Llanymawddywy village may be a silent string of houses but in its past enough of humanity passed through to sustain eight pubs. As for the surroundings they are as Borrow told it. “The steep hill's side out of which the road or path had been cut, which was here and there overhung by crags of wondrous forms; on my left was a very deep glen, behind which was a black, precipitous, rocky wall, from a chasm near the top of which tumbled with a rushing sound a slender brook seemingly the commencement of a mountain stream which hurried far below towards the west.” The brook is constant. It is uncommon to be in a stillness that allows running water to be so audible. On a distant ridge a post is being worked on. On and off the thwack of mallet on post carries across the interval of two miles distance. The walker's senses become more highly tuned. The sky in this season is ever changeable. The upper tree line is soon passed and so too it are any places of refuge from rain. An ever watchful eye monitors the colour movement of clouds. Their speed of change is rapid. A few minutes can make the difference between oblique shards of sunlight to clouds of black-grey. But the wind at two thousand feet is just as brisk, sending the rain on to Cadair Idris. Just before the pass of Bwlch y Groes the road divides. The southern part drops sharply to Efyrnwy; the arm to the North rises on and over to Llanuwchllyn and Bala. A memorial cross has been placed here in memory that this most now lonely of roads was once the direct route of pilgrimage from the North to Saint David's. To reach the summit is good. The space is huge and the view stretches from Dyfi Valley to Cadair Idris to the Aran range with its distinctive covering of peat. Its two peaks, Aran Fawddwy and Aran Benllyn, are closely adjacent. My companion travellers from past time were also here. Borrow liked what he saw further below. “Grand and wild was the scenery. Noble green hills, the tops of which were beautifully gilded by the rays of the setting sun...The background to the north was a wall of rocks forming a semicircle, something like a bent bow with the head downward; behind this bow, just in the middle, rose the black loaf of Arran.” But he cared less for the summit itself. “The scene in my immediate neighbourhood was very desolate; moory hillocks were all about me of a wretched russet colour.” Another literary traveller of Wales was of the same mind. Thomas Pennant wrote that “the pass itself is a dreary, heathy flat...the descent on the other side...very tedious.” I may have only literary companions for human company but I am not alone. The bracken is filled with life and a red kite circles in the sky. Pennant and Borrow, Mulchair and Hutton are pilgrims from the past. But there is also a companion-in-writing of the present day who has walked this area more than any other and drunk with regularly at the Llew Coch. Jim Perrin says of landscape that it “gives you something to question, pictures to create in your mind, purposes to unravel, the jigsaw of history to piece together from the disparate elements of fact, feature, literature, place, imagination and mood.” The day has been a modest journey in mileage. It has taken in company and solitude, observed politics and civic activism, matched lazy activity at a car wheel with the pull on muscles of thigh and calf. With the slowing of the rush of impressions, the world feels clearer, more in focus, the being-within-it more keenly lived. Journeying, when it works, is dialogue; present and past, intensity in the self with being outside the self. And another presence hovers. Llanuwchllyn was home to an eminent son. O M Edwards knew the Bro Aran intimately from childhood. From that experience he did not share the perspectives of Borrow and Pennant. Aligning himself more with the pilgrims who for centuries had passed this place he wrote: “Mangre dawel fynyddig ydyw, lle ardderchog i enaid ddal cymundeb a Ddiw”. “This is a silent, mountainous retreat, an excellent place for communion with God.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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