Today saw me driving around a bit for various reasons. It has been a strange mix of sights and seasonal feelings. The sky was summery, the trees are starting to look autumnal as the beech trees start to turn golden and the temperature with wind chill was more like winter but seeing so many very young calves in green pastures it seemed more like spring.
As I stopped here and there to take photographs and soak in the views, I didn't realise until tonight, trying to choose which ones to use, that there would be a theme for today.
It started off with this one ...
taken from the back of the old church as I stood talking to a long distance walker, an Englishman who has lived in Wales for forty years and just loves trekking over the country, with its magnificent views, like this that looks out over deep, glacial valley.
I left the church and drove up onto the mountain and saw a different view of the same valley, but to my amazement and delight, the valley to the right was filled with colour ...
I've never seen anything like it (though it's not very clear here) the valley was filled with shimmering rainbow colours but not in the usual clearly defined arc of a rainbow. The image didn't last long but I felt it was something special to be where I was at the right time to witness this unique moment, but there again wherever we are whatever we witness, they are all unique moments because nature is constantly changing all the time.
Just notice the difference between the two skies in the photographs, just an hours difference and then a mere twenty minutes later having driven to another area, this ...
a field recently harvested for hay, now has cattle and sheep peacefully grazing the fresh growth of grass after just a few weeks of rain and warm sunshine. A lovely sight.
Not far, further along the road about half an hour later and another sight caught my eye.
At first glance, I thought they were a different breed of sheep in amongst the cows (not an unusual sight) until I got close to the fence and realised they were two white calves. The field had a dozen very young looking calves and I watched them exploring their lush green pasture in the inquisitive way that the young do. It was such a pleasure to see them.
In the distance I could see the white dots of sheep and somewhere below me I could hear a tractor ploughing a field down in the valley ( a rare sight on this mountain). I got to thinking about how all this landscape has changed over thousands of years but more especially over the last century. In all of the above photographs of the local area, it is hard to believe, were it not for the still visible scars as seen in the photo above, that this whole area was drastically darkened with the effects of industry. Coal mining, steel and iron works; quarrying for slate, lime and stone. But Nature is self healing and farming lends her a helping hand in this recovery of this once ravaged and drastically denuded land. Many of them worked in the mines when their fathers farms were not enough to support young sons. Some owned their own drift mines and so added to the scarring of the surface but now they have become the guardians of this reclaimed, re-greening pastoral landscape
I thought of the book written in 1939 by Richard Llewellyn, How Green was my Valley; and as I stood there looking at the still visible signs of slag heaps, and thought about the Wales I knew as a youth with it's dim. dingy, coal dark cloak, casting grim shadows over so much of it's once glorious, glacial landscape and just thought "How green my valley is now." The pleasure I get from living in this area is immense as I see it go through the rotation of the seasons year after year. There is always something new to catch the eye, moments to give pause for thought both in the sky above and the landscape below.
By pure coincidence and unplanned I ended the day with the dog by the miners memorial, but this time from a different vantage point and I saw him in a very different light ...
This rust red figure, "The Guardian" of the valleys, standing 20m tall on the old pit site.
I've often thought about what he would say if he could speak and possibly it might be ...
"How green my valleys are now."
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