A pilgirmage to six decades ago

The first time I visited Cymru I must have been about nine years old, on a walking holiday in Llangollen. I can date it roughly because my father had acquired one of those new-fangled cassette-tape recorders by the time of our second trip a year later. The make was Elizabethan. No half-timbered vintage box but a plastic reporters' case slung over the shoulder to use it reporter-style, with a separate mic connected via a flat 'DIN cable' (an eventually standard connector originating in the 1960s). I still have the recordings he made of that second holiday: thankfully digitised by my brother. A tour of Abaty Glyn y Groes (Valle Crucis Abbey) given by a local guide with his distinctive accent; happening upon a grouse shoot (with running commentary); a second lunchtime visit to the Conquering Hero pub in Rhewl during which the landlord remembered us from the previous year. You could take your own sandwiches in those days, together with the walking group's obligatory songbooks! No longer a pub, today it's a community centre. Perhaps the singing by the happy wanderers scared the customers away.

Listening to the recording of that grouse shoot again from across the years, I hear the sound of the beaters and then the gunshots. Cymru as playground of The Entitled, even then. But now I also hear the firing ranges of Mynydd Epynt 100 miles to the south, 30,000 acres (47 sq miles; 121 sq km) appropriated by the military in 1940. The 400 ejected people expected to return home after the war. But 78 years later it is still the Sennybridge Training Area. The former Drovers' Arms high up on Epynt is now an empty shell, 'Ministry of Defence' emblazoned on the inn sign.

I was enchanted by the sounds of Cymraeg, but even then disenchanted by the way some disrespectfully mangled the language. The walk leader, also on the tape, proudly announced that we would have tea at what sounded like "ticken oll" [like chicken roll] instead of Tŷ-Canol ["tee CANNol"]. That just sounded wrong to my ears somehow, even then. I now know the old farmhouse as a Grade II Listed Building in Llantysilio near the evocatively named Pen Draw'r Byd (World's End) at the top of Eglwyseg valley. Although very young, it somehow didn't take me long to work out why signs everywhere led to Llwybr Cyhoeddus (public footpath). Sadly for the rich heritage of the language, signs for Cyfleusterau Cyhoeddus are a rarity these days. In English too, conveniences (cyfleusterau) have been lost in many ways that are also now so inconvenient to the ageing process.

We were there during an Eisteddfod Rhwngwladol (the international one), so it must have been in a July. In those days I knew nothing of the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol: the national one which plays such a key role in celebrating and promoting language, nationhood and identity today. But Cymreictod (the sense of "Welshness") was also celebrated around the streets of Llangollen for international audiences and visitors, and undoubtedly had a lasting personal impact.

By the time of the second trip, the Rhiwabon (Ruabon) to Llangollen steam railway had closed, and that leg of the long journey from Portsmouth was taken by a small Foden mini-bus, laden with our luggage. Blue in colour, I can still remember the notice on its dashboard: "To stop bus, pull string".
The holiday group was accomodated in a creaky old mansion, Eirianfa ("bright/beautiful place"), above the rapids of Afon Dyfrdwy (River Dee, the border of the ancient Kingdom of Gwynedd). Latterly it was known as the Whitewaters Hotel, and is now boarded up and, maybe fittingly, consigned to history. Other childhood holidays were also spent in similar creaky old mansions that accomodated creaky old hillwalkers and their families.

Today, walking up a steep leafy lane above Eirianfa for the first time in six decades brings back these early memories. Panoramic views across the valley to Castell Dinas Bran, Valle Crucis Abbey and the crags of Trefor and Eglwyseg are followed by the descent to Berwyn, where five bridges intersect; carrying Telford's A5, another road, the railway and canal. On the return to town along the canal, I can still hear the regular plod of the weary horse towing a trip boat all those years ago.

 

LINKS

Mynydd Epynt - Wikipedia