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We'll keep a welcome in the hillsides, we'll keep a welcome in the dales...
Country Traveller
By Andy Bottom
Andy travels around Britain every year. This year it is Wales. He has an old two wheel 'Bluebird' caravan, an old Rover that tows it, and his companions are his two dogs.
Either Wales is becoming a much more popular tourist attraction than it ever was, or there are just not enough roads to hold the enormous amount of traffic that has been generated over the past ten years. I was last through this part of Wales about ten years ago, and I never saw such volumes of traffic as I’ve seen this summer. And it’s not all tourists. A good half of the traffic is commercial, with more goods being moved by road than ever before. Even with the cost of petrol and diesel among the worlds top prices (95p a litre locally!) it is not slowing the traffic down.
I spent a few weeks in Builth Wells, a nice town where the tourist traffic coming up from the ‘Brecon Beacons’ and the ‘Black Mountains’ meets with the traffic coming up from South Wales and the west of England. I was still on the Wye, and although the fishing was excellent I found the caravan parks too crowded, so I headed northwest, following the Wye through the often bare and high-sided valley; some mountains going to well over 2,000 feet, and came to a pleasant town named Rhayader. That’s a Welsh name, although one would be forgiven if you thought it was Arabic, and you expected to see oil wells, specially after leaving a town named Builth Wells! Rhayader is, however, where the A44 brings in the traffic from the midlands, and the traffic coming out of central and north Wales. Again, too much traffic, on roads not built for such volumes, and as I am supposed to be on a quiet tour of a tranquil and sanguine countryside, full of peaceful beauty, I decided to hole up in a caravan park and rethink my tourist plans.
Rhayader, sounding like a desert town somewhere in Arabia, turned out to be the perfect place to spend a few weeks. I made a good friend of the single lady running the caravan park, who, with 147 lots, all full, was run off her feet. Also, my planned trip was to follow the Wye to its source, which is now less than a few hours drive (on a good traffic flow day!) up in the Plynlimon area of the Cambrian Mountains. And quite by chance the River Severn has its source in the same area, not more than a mile from the Wye’s source. So, I decided to see out the latter part of July and the first half of August based here in Rhayader. When I’m ready to finish my tour of Wales, by heading into its northern climes and visiting Mount Snowdon, I would hope I was not worn out to a frazzle, by volumes of traffic, but had taken a well deserved rest. I think this tourist thing, pulling a caravan, can lose its charm rapidly!
To say Wales has a charm all its own, is cliché, but I will say it is absolutely different in every aspect to Ireland, which I toured last summer, and different in many ways to Scotland, which I toured the year before. The first thing about Wales that gets ones attention is its hilly and mountainous setting. But even then, you can believe you’re in a country of small, peaceful villages, that only seem sheltered by the terrain. There is a stillness here. A quiet that has a comforting charm as evening falls. The hills and the villages give the feel of peace and harmony. There are no red and orange sunsets, only the evening shadows, falling across small villages. Wales has a ‘Brigadoon’ feel about it. No pipes, or kilts, just a choir singing, ‘We’ll keep a welcome in the hillsides........
JULY ESSAY
The Wye runs softly and quietly on its unhurried way once you leave the confines of Hereford and head up-river. You are now drawn into its reclusive beauty as it topples gently by the small villages that border its winding path to Hereford. I decide to follow the Wye on its south side. On the north side is a busy road that links Hereford to Hay-On-Wye, a road not only used by commerce but also by the growing number of tourists. Most just want to gaze out of their car windows as they hurry along from town to town, seemingly more intent on where the next big themepark is, and where the next McDonald’s is.
We are close to an area of outstanding beauty called ‘The Golden Valley’ where ‘The Black Mountains’ form a dark, but gentle backdrop, and remind us that we are now entering the mountainous regions of South Wales. This is now predominantly the land of the Welsh, where habits are different, and the people are a race unto themselves. Before I ever went to Wales I had viewed the Welsh as small, gritty people of good character, who like to sing in choirs and play rugby! I’m not far wrong. They’re much less loud than your average Englishman, and don’t have those broad gestures of ‘know it all’ that we English seem to portray. The Welsh will listen. They will weigh up their answers. And they’ll give you an honest one. In general, that is! One ‘Taffy’ I knew when I worked in London was the biggest rogue I’d met since I lived in Ireland.
My journey through the Wye-side villages of Preston, Monnington and Clifford, to name a few of real interest, brings me into the small town of Hay-On-Wye, where hikers were on-foot making their way through town along the famous Offa’s Dyke Pathway. This long walk through the valleys and vales of England and Wales takes the fit and fully prepared walker from where the Wye reaches the sea near Chepstow, to the lower slopes of The Snowdonia National Park in North Wales. And on the bright, sunny, saturday I pulled into Hay there were scores of them afoot.
My interest in this part of my tour is in the small village of Clyro. An unusual name, sounding more like a new type of game one plays with a spinning top, than the village where the Reverend Francis Kilvert lived, and wrote his now famous diary. I only discovered this mans works a few years ago, and I am still in that first flush of fascination one has when you discover the works of some great writer. I was like that many years ago when I discovered Thomas Hardy, having devoured all his books, visited the length and breadth of ‘Wessex’, and now like to call my self an expert. My stay in Clyro, I hope, will do the same for me.
A good book about Kilvert is handy to have, rather than his diaries. The book I have is, ‘After Kilvert’, by A.L. Le Quesne, a teacher who once emigrated to Australia, wondered what the heck he was doing downunder, and came back to England to write this very informative account of the life and times of Rev: Kilvert. He, Le Quesne, actually moved into Kilverts old Clyro house, ‘Ashbrook’, in 1969, it being a broody, square, uninteresting place, that had no ‘magic’ corners like the places where Hardy, Wordsworth, and Robert Burns once lived.
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