Category: Journeys

25th May 2010

Scenic countryside with lush green fields, grazing cows, and rolling hills in the background.

So it’s sixteen years since Andrew and I reached the highest point on the Aubrac Hills in Southern France. We’d – well I’d – failed to realize during the planning, that following a river can be a bit of a nightmare because every tributary makes its own valley and the line on a map becomes a relentless combination of long downhill valley-sides and punishing climbs to the crest of the next. We’d also failed to realize that the Camino has been monetized like everything else and was crowded with trippers who filled the cafes restaurants and refuges while we were carrying our rucksacks and all our possessions and often struggled to find somewhere to sleep, We did a lot of trespassing!

A winding dirt path through green vegetation, leading to a panoramic view of rolling hills and valleys under a clear blue sky.

But the hard work was redeemed by the wonderful scenery, the wildflowers (spring comes late in these high places) and a chance encounter with the transhumance – the seasonal festival that accompanies the movement of the cattle from their winter quarters in the valleys to the high pastures. If you look closely at the photograph you’ll see the cattle and their horns decorated with flags. We heard the clanging of bells and the sounds of celebration from miles away. Festivals in France have deep, deep roots and with many of the local villages quite isolated, the chance of a gigantic piss-up feels like all their market days in one. We watched from a distance and camped outside the towns where the riotous fun seemed to go on all night. The maximum height of the Aubracs in the Massif Central is around 3000 feet but I think we must have climbed it half a dozen times before we finally dropped down to Cahors. Somewhere up there I overheard a conversation between a couple of immaculately turned-out women from Nice when they spoke in tones of horror about a couple of elderly farmers we’d seen . “La France profonde!” one of them said.

As it happens I like La France profonde for exactly the same reason I love Wales. The culture is often a bit obscure to outsiders but its very isolation has protected it from withering away, and even ceaseless promotion by the tourist boards can’t seem to erode the central power with which it feeds a deep connection with the past, present and even the future. It ain’t cute, that’s for sure, but it’s the cultural matrix that frames life in a harsh place.

25th May 2026 – the same canicule, but a couple of decades later

Here in Bath we grow some, at least, of our own food in the centre of a Roman city which feels – today in the unseasonable heat- increasingly like Avignon. We shall call it Sulis en Provence and – like them – lay down our tools some time in July and spend the next six weeks in idling, chasing bulls down the streets trying to catch them by the tail, wearing white T shirts stained with red dye as a form of simulated bravery and getting very drunk whilst eyeing up the adoring girls and presumably boys as well. We should join the festivities and play football with the plentiful melons by the light of thousands of fireflies and breathe in the wine infused night air as if we might live forever whilst the gammon faced elders scream abuse into the internet because they couldn’t find anywhere to park their Range Rovers on the pavement. Ladies and gentlemen – at the risk of being thrown into prison by Sir Keir and the Brigade of Goons I’ll quote Eldridge Cleaver – “If you’re not part of the solution you must be part of the problem”. Interestingly when I verified that quotation on Google Gemini I got a little homily on the middle ground . Sadly the middle ground is on fire. The time for discussion, committees and forward planning seems to have passed us by.

In any case, we’re keeping a Provenĉal timetable here at the Potwell Inn. Rising at five followed by two or three hours on the allotment – mostly watering at the moment – and then breakfast followed by cooking, preserving and bottling as required and then writing; after which it’s eating and telly, avoiding the poisonous news and early to bed. Nil Carborundum is our motto. I’m celebrating my inner peasant.

Finally some photos of various places in France including a small chapel just beyond Le Puy en Velay, A park in Uzes near the Roman aqueduct to Nîmes, The Musketeers outside the cathedral in Albi and below that, the fortified Cathedral. Then there’s a scorpion that came to play, the bridge at Cahors, a street corner in Nîmes – that’s from memory; the beach at Collure, and a couple more from Uzès.

It’s said that figs prefer stony ground and produce more fruit when you prune their roots. Maybe that’s it. The aqueduct that crosses the Pont du Gard and goes through Uzès and on to Nîmes was sealed with the juice of figs. Maybe if I think of myself as a kind of fig, that story makes me feel better because some good comes out of the pain and – as Jung said – we’re most creative where we’re scarred. Perhaps spiritual energy really does flow like water in a thirsty place. I had my roots pruned on 20th June 2016. My European passport has since expired and I didn’t bother to renew it. I was rendered a stranger in a place I once felt at home and it was my own folk that did it.

At last – a Cuckoo

A hand holding two small salamanders near a pond, surrounded by greenery.
Probably young Palmate Newts – a cryptic diary entry

I know that the last time I heard a Cuckoo was Monday May 6th 2019, and that’s because it was the same day we photographed these two young (probably Palmate) newts in the pond at Kate and Nick’s smallholding in the Bannau Brycheiniog. We were up there on the hill yesterday for a few hours, and although it was my dearest wish to hear the cuckoos call again it didn’t happen until this morning – back at the campsite – when a single cuckoo called just three times and then fell silent in the woods below the high ridge that overhangs us. I’d thought I might get quite tearful when it happened, but in fact my predominant feeling was a kind of resignation that to spot any threatened species nowadays could be the last time ever. It was more of a ghostly reminder than the vibrant song of a returning pirate, fluting their two note song in anticipation of plundering more nests and displacing more nestlings.

When we got back to the campsite yesterday the air was thick with smoke from the many barbeques making their burnt offerings to a warm and sunny evening. I’ve gone off the whole idea of barbecues in recent years; they seem to celebrate the same kind of disappearing culture as the Cuckoos. But to balance the picture another lovely sound on the campsite was the thumping of footballs and the chatter and laughter of the children as they played while their parents and grandparents, uncles, aunties and cousins – South Wales has a big family culture – sat in their folding chairs as if they were the cast for a Martin Parr photo-shoot. We’ll miss his kindly eye.

There’s always something botanical to celebrate up here; often it’s not even rare but just happens to catch your eye. This little plant was concerning Kate because it’s swamping the grass above their cottage. It’s Doves-foot Cranesbill. Geranium molle, which has found its way on to a sunny spot at the top of a high wall supporting the bank outside . It’s the perfect spot for a sun-loving plant but in the thin soil it was much smaller than its family might be in deeper richer soil alongside a hedge. In a close-up photograph it displayed its full glory. I’m not a trainspotter and for me ubiquity and weediness would never dim my affection for them. The wall was also home for a multitude of Spleenworts, Foxglove, Mullein, and a Wren which seemed unconcerned as it shot out of a small gap in the wall and past me.

Just up the track our friends have bought a field which was absolutely overgrown with brambles, bracken and shrubs. It would have been useless for any kind of grazing and so they’ve cleared it during the winter leaving a huge pile of brash in the middle. It was very dry yesterday although the stream that feeds it was still flowing fitfully. Not quite a mire but certainly not a conventional meadow, it’s an interesting place with the potential for recovering many species of plant which – like the Dove’s-foot Cranesbill – have their strong preferences. Meanwhile I was fascinated to see what had appeared already from the seedbank. The were bluebells, of course; daisies, dandelions, Mouse-ear and barren strawberries all of which must have been waiting in the soil for their moment. The bracken was just at its crozier stage so it will need dealing with- Nick says that the best way of getting rid of it is to bruise the stems with a kind of roller which disrupts the flow of sap feeding the rhizomes.

I’ve been reading a new book by David Elias called “Shaping the wild”. It’s an account of his long association with a hill-farm and its occupants near Bala lake over a period during which the farmers struggled to comply with the contradictory demands of various government subsidy demands. It describes how entrenched the battle is between conservation and environmentalists as opposed to those dedicated to so-called improvement. If, when the results of the May elections are counted, the previous incumbents are kicked out they’ll have no-one to blame except themselves.

As I write this, a flock of house sparrows is working the hedges in front of the campervan. That’s what I mean when I write about the ordinary. As Joni Mitchell’s song says – we don’t know what we’ve got ’till it’s gone!

Winter’s last gasp – hopefully

A panoramic view of snow-capped mountains in the distance, surrounded by rolling green hills and a sparse forest of trees. The sky is partly cloudy.
Pen y Fan dusted with snow, seen across the Usk valley from above Talgarth

A couple of days ago a minor skirmish broke out on social media regarding the change of name from Brecon Beacons to Bannau Brycheiniog – in the wake of the announcement by the National Park Authority that it’s rapidly going broke. Coincidentally I was continuing to read Jan Morris’ excellent book “The Matter of Wales” which exposes the part played in the suppression of the Welsh language by the English educator Matthew Arnold. This latest outbreak of social media bile and stupidity was led by a mob of English speakers, one of whom bravely named the mountain at the top of this piece “Penny Fan”. The troubles of the National Park and – for all I know – the entire nation could, according to the wisdom of the internet, be laid at the door of the Welsh Language. All those expensive road signs. They’d be stuffing themselves with silver spoons and turtle soup if they’d given up Welsh and spoken the same as what we do and joined our brilliantly successful politics and neoliberal economic witchcraft. Ah well! Whatever that means the answer is probably Port Talbot.

Anyway, back home from our little adventure in the hills above Talgarth we discovered that the builders had not finished dealing with our black mould and can’t come back to complete until the Easter holidays are over, so we spent a couple of days cleaning up the cement dust and turned to the allotment which is the only bit of our lives in which we have complete agency. Wales is a beautiful and paradoxical country and I often wonder why I feel such a strong affinity – except today I was reading about the 1930’s and I suddenly remembered my dad’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the miners strikes, the railway strikes and the suffering of the people in the valley towns. I was raised on tales of riots, police brutality and solidarity. My dad and my grandfather were ardent socialists and I suppose I absorbed their principles from my earliest childhood. As I grew up and saw how people actually behave I was, and I remain, shocked.

But I want to celebrate for a moment one of the great things about The Bannau Brycheiniog and you may be surprised to learn that I’m talking about the ironmonger’s shops. They’ve all but disappeared in much of the UK but Webbs in Crickhowell and Jones in Hay on Wye are survivors in the glum world of out-of-town superstores. We used to have several of them in Bath – one of them, clinging to a famous name in the area – called Avery and Bowlers – has just closed down. Bowlers fixtures and fittings can still be seen in the Museum of Work here in Bath and there’s a gas engine there that I helped photograph in 1971 when their factory was abandoned. The other I remember was a firm called Hine and Collinson on the London road whose employees, in their brown warehouse coats, could find almost anything you could name on one or another of its five floors. I once bought a new double duplex glass chimney for my granny’s paraffin lamp which I inherited by default because no-one else wanted it.

Webbs in Crickhowell is such a great experience it should be on the tourist map. We never go in there without coming out with a new teapot or a curious kind of egg cup. Anything from a bottle opener to a chair can be found there. Jones Home Hardware in Hay on Wye performs a similar service to its customers, scattered across the neighbouring countryside, who might be in search of a crowbar, a chainsaw or a broomhandle. It carries a similarly eclectic stock of very useful things across several shop fronts and a broad public alleyway horizontally arranged on Castle Street.

Exterior view of Jones Home Hardware shop, featuring a traditional facade, advertising for Honda lawn and garden equipment, and various gardening tools displayed outside.

Of course the butchers and bakers who are usually mentioned in connection with high streets are also important; but there’s nothing quite like an ironmonger’s shop to exemplify the way people live around here. Hay on Wye is mainly known for tourism and as a centre for second hand books and can often feel like a gated community of retired art teachers, but the thursday market is still a lively affair with more (and much more attractive) bakers selling every kind of sourdough bread, kimchi and mead – and where the trinkets are decidedly upmarket. The ironmongers aren’t after the tourist pound – they still serve the rural hinterland; the bit we enjoy for free – and hints at another deeper Wales just under the surface. As for bookshops, Richard Booth’s bookshop is still the first and the one I probably enjoy the best. On Thursday I came out with about the tenth rewrite of a wartime book then called “Plants poisonous to livestock” which Madame gave me as a gift in the 1970s; brown; thin; foxed and printed on cheapest paper. My new version is bigger and better in every way and it also gives plentiful tips for disposing of humans you’ve fallen out with.

Meanwhile, as I always feared, the newly published flora of Brecknockshire (that’s Breconshire in old money) arrived too late to take with us to Talgarth and as soon as I took off the wrapper it fell open on the page describing Herb Paris. I know and I’ve seen the plant in Velvet Bottom, on the Mendips but that was in the days before I knew anything about proper recording and I didn’t take a photo I could refer back to for verification. In spite of a number of return visits to the spot I’ve never been able to record it. So yesterday I discovered that it’s found in the same nature reserve in Talgarth – Pwll y wrach – that we visited. I excuse my failure to see it because it’s the wrong month for flowering, and the lower paths, closest to the water, were closed due to the danger of falling ash trees. No such excuse for another long-sought plant; Spring Sandwort which grows on the hills just above where we were staying. We’ll just have to go back and take the new flora with us. The book took almost 60 years of intense research to write, and sadly the author, Mike Porter, died a year before it was published.

The weather, during our visit, was pretty wintry and we had rain, sleet and even snow during our four days. Thinking back over our sighting of the old Central Wales Hospital, the discreetly renamed asylum, I woke up this morning after a sleep troubled by dreams with a phrase from a Robert Burns poem turning slowly in my mind:

Man's inhumanity to man 
Makes countless thousands mourn!

Why do I love Wales so much? There’s a sentence in the Jan Morris book that comes close to expressing it. I often used the contrast between the favela and the steppes when I was in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It seemed to express the polarities of mood that I live with. Jan Morris, in trying to express the Welsh personality draws on another source from the Welsh language. The Welsh, she says, hover between hiraeth and hwyl – between the sad longing for a lost home, and the exhilaration of a full sail at sea. Either way round, it sounds a lot more creative than a diagnosis for some kind of disorder of the mind!

Learning by immersion

A panoramic view of a tranquil lake surrounded by rolling green hills and scattered trees under a blue sky with fluffy clouds.

Madame and I were sitting in bed today, reading peacefully – she on her tablet and I was immersed in a book by Jan Morris called “The Matter of Wales” the title being a playful use of language in order to indicate the substance, the deep matter of the country. The book was mentioned in Carwyn Graves book “Tir” which I’ve now finished and recommend without reservation as a gentle pushback against some of the more extreme (destructive) advocates of rewilding. For Carwyn Graves the Welsh landscape embodies the history of Wales for better and for worse. History is written in the soil, the rocks and fields; the livestock, the farmers and their lives but especially in their stories and poetry. It’s a beautiful book, and completely by accident I met one of his interviewees in the pub in Bwlch but we only talked about our experiences as writers for the then local Bristol newspapers. As soon as I saw his name in the book I recognised my lost opportunity to talk to an award winning maker of perry – pear cider.

The two books – Graves and Morris take interestingly different approaches to their subject. The landscape for Carwyn Graves is perfused with recollections of the old ways; a form of living history and its lessons for us in the present day. For Jan Morris the landscape is a living being; writhing, roiling, joyful and melancholy by turns. The history here is inscribed in lives lived in the landscape. She’s a magnificent writer on Wales.

So there we were (I mean Madame and me!) in bed reading and we have rules. Silences are only broken by mutual consent – “can I just play this ?….. ” Today she played an old recording of Pentangle – the brilliant Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Danny Thompson and Jacqui McShee with others – and in something of a Damascus moment I realized I’d left out music, and in what Flann O’Brien would have called a “Keats and Chapman” moment (without the terrible pun at the end); the whole landscape opened in front of me as if I were stood on a mountain top seeing the plains below receding in aerial perspective until the faint blue landscape reached the sea. Of course, you idiot! I thought -it’s language, history, literature, poetry, art, religion, drama and music. It’s the art of the kitchen table and the blackened pot suspended by its crân dân (fire crane) over a crackling fire, the blacksmith, the spinner and weaver, the shepherd, the singer and the traditional doctor, the understanding of plants, the wood carver and the brewer. One of the most inspiring paragraphs in Carwyn James ‘ book is his explanation of the way that in Welsh the word for culture isn’t the cocked finger, class ridden culture from across the Severn – but it also embodies all of the undertakings of ordinary people to advance the experience of being human. So emboldened by this thought I made some coffee, went into my room and guided by some odd instinct searched out a small book about Welsh folk medicine. I’ve known about the Physicians of Myddfai for many years in a more or less superficial way but I had no idea where Myddfai actually is. I had a strong idea of what I was intending to write but (as ever) no idea of how it would shape up so (also) as ever I hunted for a suitable photograph and came up with one I took of one of the three reservoirs which accompany the A470 across the Bannau Brycheiniog passing Pen y Fan. We stopped in a layby there for a brew-up and were joined by a couple of bikers from Merthyr Tydfil on their way to a campsite near Brecon. It seemed to me at the time that this was a near perfect view, but as I looked for the village of Myddfai on the OS map today, thinking to include the physicians who came from that area, I realised that the village was no more than a couple of valleys to the west of where I took the photo, and furthermore the foundational story/myth of these physicians involved a meeting between a farmer and a beautiful water goddess near a lake just like the one in the photograph.

My question would be – is it even possible to understand a landscape or a word in isolation from its whole culture. Many years ago we travelled by ferry and bus down to a small hamlet in southern Ireland for a holiday with friends. One of the friends owned a holiday cottage down there and knew some of the local people. One night we were introduced to two brothers who lived alone in a fairly squalid cottage just up the lane. The two brothers shared a bottle of Guinness with us and clearly thought we were pretty wealthy on account of one of us wearing a new pair of Docs. I had taken a small tape recorder with me and they told stories and sang songs to us provided we returned the offer with songs of our own. Our companions suffered a sudden attack of elective mutism and I sang a supporters song from Bristol Rovers which seemed to please them no end. Just to give a flavour of their lives, they told us that they had advertised in the Cork Examiner for a wife that they would share between them. The ad also generously noted that a pre-existing child would not be an obstacle! Anyway, it became very clear that their stories and songs of the Famine, and of the IRA battles of the past – not to mention a disastrous storm from some time in the distant past – all existed in their minds as if in the present. They sang and spoke of them as if they were still actually happening. It was a powerful example of what I’ve been thinking about in relation to Wales.

The photograph at the top was taken the day after my retirement ten years ago. I remember the journey because our youngest phoned just after the photo was taken with some kind of crisis and we had to abandon our plans and drive back to Bristol where we were still living. The photo and the memory belong together and can’t be separated.

So here I am ten years on, firmly resolved finally to speak and read Welsh. But the conglomeration of these thoughts has led me to the inevitable conclusion that this project goes much further than learning a bit of grammar and some words. The project is a kind of total immersion into the language; the broad culture, history and all the rest, in order that – finally again – I can see the Welsh plants in their broadest meanings, and I can see Welsh food and poetry, history and song as the Hegarty brothers saw their corner of southern Ireland – as essential to their humanity – daft and cruel as that might have seemed at the time. This is what I mean by using the phrase “learning by immersion” because it’s the absolute prerequisite for deep connection with any place in the world.

I’ve done a bit with the words already and I’m pleased to be able to write and say “good morning dragon” in Welsh, although I doubt if there will be any opportunities to use it, and so I’ve switched over to a different but well-connected course which is filling me equally with terror and hope. I can already say most of “I would like to learn to speak Welsh” without having to take a lie down in the middle. Madame has banned me from doing any practice in her presence. Oh and I’ve bought some – well quite a lot of – books. Learning by immersion, you see.

An open grassy field with a row of trees, possibly apple trees, under a cloudy sky, surrounded by rolling hills in the background.
One of the Marcher Network orchards near Cwmdu

Lost and alone in old town Malaga, and a horse ate my phone

Anxiety can be an awful burden, but when Madame suggested that we might clear off to old town Malaga for three weeks next February I saw the beauty of the idea at once. Our February break in Cornwall this year was completely overshadowed by rain and storms and although we summoned up the good old blitz spirit like proper Brits; even we were unconvinced by our stoicism. So yes – we both thought – renew the passports (we haven’t been to Europe in a decade since a 2000 mile adventure – crossing the Pyrenees in our tiny car three times). Never mind the health insurance says Madame; we’ll get an apartment with a kitchen in the centre of old Town then we won’t have to take a car, and (all in one breath) we can shop at the market, cook our own food and catch trains and buses and ……

Well yes, we’ve been there a few times and it’s lovely and also T shirt warm in February half-term week and we can eat lots of tapas. Last time we went, we read a glowing review for a tiny tapas bar and went to take a look during the day. As it happened, the owner was just sweeping outside and Madame accosted him and asked (rather firmly) if a space could be found for us that night. The owner caved in without a fight, and that evening we passed a long and hostile queue and settled down for some of the best tapas we’d ever eaten. I got talking to one of the locals and he said “he only let you in because you’re English!”

We found an equally good restaurant in Old Town who were offering a taster menu of local delicacies – about ten courses. I should have known better than to order two of them, but I’m a sucker. I was only thrown by the ninth course which appeared to be a pair of gigantic bull’s testicles but which were actually stuffed squid. Anyway sadly – if you’re off in that direction any time soon. (there’s a photo of the place at the top here) – a quick internet search suggests that it’s probably under new management twelve years on, so you’d need to make sure it’s still offering the amazing and totally retro service. But thanks, Hugh Whatley for a brilliant memory.

We happened to be in Malaga on Valentine’s Day that time and we treated ourselves to a meal in the rooftop restaurant at the AC Hotel where the waiter took a shine to us and insisted on treating us to two disabling large brandies on the house. That same week, we were in our room when we heard a strange noise and we raced down to the waterfront where watched and listened to a large marching band processing in a very slow march, while rehearsing for the Ash Wednesday parade. It was almost overwhelmingly emotional even to a case-hardened old pro like me to be in the midst of a performance of such ancient Christian street theatre.

Anyway, all that plus roasted almonds in the street and the quite wonderful Alcazaba Islamic palace and fortress, made Madame’s suggestion a definite yes. Except, that is, until I had the dream last night when my enthusiasm shriveled and puckered like a birthday balloon and I woke as a definite maybe.

We were there together in a market and then suddenly we weren’t together any more. Madame had disappeared on one of her customary missions without mentioning where she was going. I’m very used to it but in an English supermarket she’s easier to find. In the dream it wasn’t easy at all, and as I penetrated further and further into the market it seemed the the stalls were less and less crowded and I could see more of the building, even in the increasing darkness. It closely resembled an Escher painting but although I had my phone in my hand, for some unaccountable reason I decided not to photograph the complex of interwoven brick arches. Before long it was black and I was becoming increasingly anxious without Madame and frankly lost. Then I spotted a crack of light and a door and I left the mysterious market and entered another village market complete with flower stalls. Desperate to contact Madame I grabbed my phone just as I met a rather nice horse. I stroked his nose and without hesitation the horse swallowed my phone. I was aghast; lost in an unknown village without a phone or any clue as to how to get back to where we started. I recall waiting and mercifully the horse vomited up my phone, or rather only half of it, which was the point at which I woke up. For reasons I can’t be bothered to explain I need to take one of my several medications at 4.00am. I’ve got used to it but it does mess up some good dreams.

In my eyes that was the kind of premonitory dream I might have shared with my therapist Robin back in the day, but I knew him well enough to know he’d only throw it back at me and say “What do you think it means?” Well I think it means that we’re just like everyone else. Life is ephemeral and vulnerable and can’t be saved for later like a pension scheme; and what better way of rounding off our lives together than having fun doing what we love while we can still do it.

Today we passed a photo booth where you can get passport photos for a fiver and we both paused but said nothing. I think we’ll be back – however it was a black horse. I hope it got indigestion!

Captured by the spirit of a place

These lead mining rakes could go back to Roman times

Yesterday we drove back from Cornwall. It’s just over 200 miles to the most southerly point of the UK and with the help of a great deal of EU money it’s either a motorway or improved dual carriageway almost all the way down to Penzance. Even with the B road connections at both ends of the journey we can still do the trip – which used to be something of an adventure – in not much over four hours. I’m not a great fan of long journeys on motorways. They seem to lack any sense of where you actually are and for all their rapidity you can still sit in a traffic jam for half an hour while a couple of blokes dig out a flooded drain, negating any time saving. Anyway what’s so important about speed? To me, the feeling of boarding a plane in cold and rain and leaving three hours later it in fierce sunshine and blistering heat is a bit deranged. I once helped an old friend to move some beehives on to the heather on Exmoor and as we drove back we got stuck behind a tractor. “Oh good” he said, “I love it when we have to slow down”.

Anyway, as we came into Somerset yesterday the satnav chuntered away about delays on the M5 (there are always delays on the M5) and suggested an alternative route. I’ve never done it before but yesterday I thought – let’s give it a go and see what happens. So we followed the instructions and minutes later we entered the real world after three hours of tooth grinding boredom. The new route took us across the top of the Somerset levels by Brent Knoll which I’d never seen so close before, and onwards, passing a view of Cheddar Gorge which showed it off to perfection and then to the north of Blackdown passing Rickford Rising where the rain that falls on Blackdown emerges after travelling through the limestone rocks. Past the bottom of Burrington Combe, and into the villages of Blagdon, Compton Martin and West Harptree before crossing the reservoir and into Bishop Sutton. If we had any sadness at leaving Cornwall, this was a serendipitous reminder that many of our happiest memories are vested in the Mendip Hills.

I fell in love with the Mendips when I was seventeen and was introduced to caving by being taken down Swildon’s Hole. It was an awesome experience and emerging cold and wet after hours of scrambling through the cave the first breaths of Mendip air were always sweet. Madame never took to it and so my underground adventures were curtailed, but before we got together I would go up to Blackdown with my closest friend Eddie and explore the easy caves with – occasionally – reckless abandon. Our biggest problem was getting someone with an interest in getting cold wet and muddy who also had a car and was prepared to take us. It was rather like the inevitable compromises that aspiring bands have to make in seeking a half-decent bass player. Luckily, Madame liked walking up there and once we’d got an old Morris 1000 pickup she grew to enjoy hunting for plants and fungi; so we’ve thrived on Mendip air for many years.

I love Mendip, I love Cornwall, in fact I love almost anywhere with a complicated and even ancient industrial history that’s been overgrown by time. Although there’s almost no trace of it now, I was born on the edge of the Bristol coalfield. There was an elderly retired miner just up the street and I can remember passing the open cast mine at Harry Stoke when it was still open. Eddie and I used to play around the capped pithead of Parkfield colliery near Pucklechurch and the local hospital was named after Handel Cossham an unusually kindly mine owner, lay preacher and benefactor so, I suppose that laid the foundation for my inner landscape. My interest in plants that can survive in post industrial landscapes was born, like the passion for the old dramways (notice the soft mutation you linguists!) – in childhood. The moment I find one of these places I feel at home – whether here in Bath, or on Mendip or in Cornwall – I know where I am. Perhaps that’s why I love South Wales and its people.

I don’t know if all this explains how the Mendip Hills captured me, but the fascination wasn’t something I picked up late in life; it was there from the earliest days and I only had to stumble into it, almost by accident, to find myself there; to feel integrated (if that makes any sense at all). So here are some photos of the Mendips, of Velvet Bottom (who could resist that name?), Longwood valley, Black rock quarry, of high Mendip and Priddy above Swildon’s Hole across to Blackdown and Crook’s Peak which you’ll recognise as you blast down the M5 south of Bristol. Trust me – the walk up there beats arriving anywhere ten minutes quicker.

Rain and high winds make a perfect walk to Kynance Cove

We both love this place – any time outside the holidays, when it gets impossibly crowded. After the weather we’ve been having there wasn’t much chance of seeing anyone beyond a few walkers but for once, apart from one brief heavy shower the sun even came out, the café was open and everyone was very happy. There were no more than a dozen or so cars in the car park, and it was blowing a hoolie as we set out, knowing that once we dropped into the valley we’d be a bit sheltered.

As we were packing the rucksack I thought I’d give myself a rest from plant hunting. Neither of us had slept well, in my case because I’d had an unexpected phone call from a very old friend with whom I thought I’d lost touch and heard some unexpected news about three others who’d died recently. I didn’t sleep beyond 3.00am as thoughts of mortality circled around my mind. So we travelled light even though I knew that the likelihood was that we’d find some rare plants, because the Lizard is an absolute hotspot, and true to form we found some lovely plants including two national rarities and two more flowering exceptionally early. Here are the rare ones – I won’t say exactly where they are growing because they could so easily disappear from too much contact with boots. I don’t know if there’s any research on these particular plants, but certainly orchids plus many other species, growing wild, absolutely depend on mycorrhizal relationships with fungi and if they’re dug up by hunters they’ll just die without the extensive fungal network that keeps them alive. That’s quite apart from a potential fine of up to £20,000 pounds because this is a site of national importance. The Lizard is an enormous lump of serpentine rock, which is rich in magnesium and poor in calcium. The soil lacks nitrogen and is very thin in places so without help from the fungi, the plants would starve to death. Anyway here are the rare two – there are others but they haven’t flowered yet so left to right – Cornish Heath and Land Quillwort which is tiny and I’ve been looking for it down here for maybe 4 years!

The best way of finding these plants as always, is to join a natural history society and get someone to show you. The Quillwort is almost identical to several other common plants that also grow in the area and as a relative beginner I’ve spent many hours trying to learn about them. Anyway, it was almost just as much fun to spot a couple of relatively common plants – Three-cornered Garlic and Kidney Vetch in flower rather early. It’s always difficult to blame global heating, but even after the wet winter we’ve suffered, there are a few more early risers each year

There were Dandelions, Daisies, Gorse and Hairy bittercress also in flower. All the other locals are there in leaf, and we spotted Sea Beet, Buck’s-horn Plantain, Sea Plantain, Thrift and Wild Madder amid the heather and plentiful blackthorn. Here are some of them:

So yes it was a lovely walk, and we sat on a bench outside the cafe where, nearly 60 years ago we’d emptied our pockets to see if we had enough money for a shared cucumber sandwich. We spent the first night of our first ever camping trip together that year with our tent pitched up on the headland. It’s a very special place which – just look at the photos – has remained pretty much unspoiled – helped by the long walk from the car park and the steep footpath you have to take.

But as well as the sunshine, the massive waves crashing on the rocks and rebounding with a wild roar; as well as the fine mist of sea spray that fell on us like a veil from the wavetops and rocks; as well as the glimpses of deep green water through the curling white horses; we heard first and then watched two Choughs playing in the wind above the steep sided valley. That and the hot chocolate so sweet it almost burnt our throats helped down with a toasted tea bun. It’s the very essence of being in nature

Kynance Cove – never disappoints.

The advantage of going on an organised field trip is that you can see all sorts of plants and have them identified by an expert. The downside is that the finds are identified by an expert and so you miss the best bit, which is to answer the question what’s this plant that I’ve never seen before called by going through the books and if it’s at all rare, eliminating every other possibility.

There’s an exceptionally rare plant that only grows on the Lizard in Cornwall called Land Quillwort- Isoetes histrix and we’ve been hunting for it for several years because it’s very tiny and hard to spot (about the size of a 5p piece), and it grows in winter and dies back in February – which isn’t a time that we usually come down here because there’s so much more going on in March and April. Booking a cottage in mid-winter in the hope of finding a single specimen is way beyond our pain threshold usually but the way half term worked out this year meant that the rentals go up from ridiculous to astronomic the moment the schools break up; so here we are battling the storms and driving rain refinding what seems to be the best candidate up on the clifftop. It’s a fussy little plant that prefers thin soils on the serpentine rock and positively thrives on being inundated with water for at least part of the year while laughing at droughts during its summer rest. So for whatever reason we’ve always rejected it in the past. It could have been a Spring Squill but that’s got big bulbs, or thrift but that only looks the same very early in the season and doesn’t have bulbs but tangled roots and you can often see the dried flower heads from last season. There’s such a short window of opportunity. But the date is bang on, the situation and environment are right and the location within the 10K map square came from the big database.

So today the ducks lined up, it stopped raining and the sun shone so we returned to the same spot; I had a better idea of what I was looking for and my confidence grew from 30% to 90% – which is as far as it ever gets! We’d found and photographed a Land Quillwort and – as always happens – once you’ve seen one you can find all the others. We also photographed Cornish Heath – another rare one which we’ve never recorded before although we’ve seen it and guessed it probably was. So two rarities on record – that’s a pretty good start to the year, and we sealed the day with a celebratory bacon baguette and mug of tea down at the beach cafe while we watched the enormous swell crashing against the cliffs. Life doesn’t get much better than this.

Back in the books, though, it was distressing to read in the biography of Linnaeus and Buffon that I mentioned yesterday, how Linnaeus’ followers followed his lead in locking women out of education and dividing the human race into separate species, then sorting them in order of their supposed intelligence, thereby building a spurious theoretical framework to support slavery, racial hatred and the diminishing of women. We are so easily bamboozled when religion and science get merged into a mule species that can go nowhere and cause nothing but suffering.

Back in Cornwall

If you look carefully above the familiar Beech hangar known as the Nearly Home Trees, or more properly Cookworthy Knapp you’ll see the glimmer of a wind turbine propeller blade just peeping above the trees. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to allow it to be built there but it does little to enhance a view that always lifts our spirits when we return to Cornwall. In fact it’s not actually in Cornwall at all but still in Devon – providing a useful, if overworked, scapegoat to blame for the indignity. I feel slightly guilty about calling them “Nearly Home” because we don’t live here, but we’ve both loved coming down here for over fifty years since we lived in Falmouth for a year and fell in love with the place.

Since the first time we discovered the Lizard it’s been our go-to destination. We’ve camped here, stayed in cottages when funds permitted and brought the campervan down on many occasions. Writing and drawing have always been a part of the agenda, but photographing and recording some of the amazing plants have been added to the list so we bring a faintly ridiculous amount of kit here, up to and including the portable WiFi gear that weighs far less than the portable Remington typewriter I insisted on stuffing into my rucksack on our first visit. A second and equally eccentric corner of the bag was filled by an Italian aluminium coffee percolator. The last time we stacked our kit up in the hall our neighbour asked us if we were moving out.

Storm Chandra – the latest of three named storms has changed our idea of what’s possible while we’re here. In fact I don’t remember us having a “storm season” at all until quite recently but now it’s a thing, like the monsoon season and the hurricane season. No doubt Keir Starmer will be bending every sinew to discuss the climate crisis with the Chinese government; just after he’s signed off on buying a few more nuclear power stations and secured some juicy weapons contracts. How blessed we are to have such Nelsons at the head of the ship of state, (Sorry; that sentence was auto-corrected from ” such Nellies at the head of the shit of state”).

Anyway, our journey down was largely unaffected by the storm apart from fierce rain as we drove through Devon and a 30 minute delay on the A30 when traffic was funnelled into a single lane so that four blokes could dig out a blocked drain. We were so glad of the new windscreen wiper blades! There were flooded fields to the left and right of us almost all the way, but we managed to load the car in a dry spell and once we got beyond Helston it cleared up beautifully. Chatting to a lost delivery driver this morning he told me that the side roads hereabouts are still blocked by floodwater and fallen trees, and on the television news we learned that the Environment Agency hadn’t even begun to assemble their array of mighty pumps on the Somerset Levels until storm Chandra had made landfall. There was a worrying moment as we drove through Redruth, when we heard an awful noise and smelt something like burning rubber which thankfully turned out to be outside the car and leaking in. It looks and feels like a town where whole industries go to die. They voted against the EU down here but the new A30 improvements are a stark reminder of what a few billion pounds worth of help from the neighbours can do. So now there’s fantastic roads infrastructure for the bailiffs to haul the machinery and the jobs out of the county.

Anyway we’re here and in, and after the usual hour of curses and hand-to-hand combat with the mobile router we even have the internet. It didn’t take long to Google up what’s on locally and we’ve already signed up for a talk at the village hall on Monday about the Lizard Flora. There are two rare plants that we’ve been seeking for years – one of them – Spring Sandwort – also occurs on the Mendips and although we know roughly where they ought to be we’ve never found them. But they also occur down here on the Lizard and the reason is that it’s a plant that’s tolerant of the post-industrial mine waste that occurs from lead mining on Mendip and Serpentine on the Lizard which has large surface areas of the mineral. The other plant we’d love to find is Land Quillwort which, being not much larger than a 1p coin and also not producing flowers but spores is loosely associated with ferns and is one of the plants we have in danger of becoming extinct. The Lizard is the only place it grows. So – as my Mum would have said Hope springs eternal in the hearts of the faithful (actually Alexander Pope said that first but I prefer my Mum’s identical version.

Spring Squill (I think!)

One of the problems of identifying the Quillwort is that it bears a strong resemblance to the emerging leaves of the Spring Squill which also grows here – it’s just much smaller. We were wandering on the clifftop some years ago before we got quite so interested in plants and we met a woman who was scanning the grass as only botanists do. “What are you looking for?” I asked. You probably need to know that this was before I discovered how deaf I’d become. I was sure she’d replied “squirrels” and so not wishing to display my ignorance I asked “what sort? grey or red?” – “Spring”- she answered” and then the penny dropped. I hope you’ll also be pleased to know that just before we came away I got my third set of NHS hearing aids which are absolute game changers. Apart from being able to hold a lucid conversation with Madame (my mishearings were becoming hilarious), I can now receive phone calls, listen to music and even connect them to the satnav. Madame finds this bit troubling because now I shout at thin air and have conversations with people who aren’t there.

While I was waiting to intercept the lost delivery driver at the top of the lane I chatted to a ninety year old local man who was born here and still lives in his grandfather’s house. He looked as fit as a flea, and told me how he still gets pleasure from pushing open the door knowing that his grandfather’s hand had touched the same ironwork. The air must be pretty good around here.

First trip of the year – moderately chaotic preparations.

The old Serpentine works at Poltesco.

The problem when the Potwell Inn goes on tour is that our plans for a break out invariably involve quite a few bits of kit. So a week before we set out, and perfused with optimism, we attempt to stow as many things as we could possibly need into our little (and rather old) car. The car itself needs plenty of TLC, and the campervan cost us more to run this year than an upmarket old people’s home. So this trip is by car – which entailed getting the brakes serviced and the windscreen wipers replaced in honour of the exceptionally gloomy weather predictions. The forecasts also make most of our longed for plans unattainable so we’ve also packed (just in case) for reading, drawing, mothing, botanizing and watching a load of films on DVD that we seem to remember we enjoyed at the time.

The packing has involved four quite different scenarios. The first is to spend the time walking hand in hand through dappled sunshine; finding and recording rare plants by the dozen. The second is to work our way through our collection of DVD’s and the third is to read a load of pretty impenetrable books. Options two and three may also include lively moments of conflict due to the cramped environment. Alongside all this intellectual stimulation there is the hope that the nights will be mild and windless enough to make a list of moths attracted to the new moth trap. A quick bit of research suggests that with nothing more than a gentle zephyr from a warm quarter and either a bucket of home made sugaring solution or a prolific ivy bush in flower outside the door we may even find a few volunteers for ID including some migrants without appropriate mothy passports. Madame has also packed a large quantity of paper and drawing equipment.

This one’s a 200 mile drive to the Lizard in the extreme South West of Cornwall; proper – next stop America territory. So cameras, head torch, GPS unit and hand lenses are all charged up, the boots are oiled and waterproofed and the laundry revived after the unexpected flood caused by a broken washing machine – is there a theme here? The quills were sharpened; the oak-gall ink and hand-made nettle paper were prepared (maybe I told a tiny lie there). The heat dryer passed silently, surrounded by its favourite washing at the end of December and rather like the two elderly ladies in Laurie Lee’s “Cider with Rosie” the washing machine went into terminal decline when the dryer died. So it was an interesting week.

Madame made pasties on Wednesday last to get our palates tuned for the reckless beauty of Cornish haute cuisine. Stargazy Pie and White Pudding come to mind. We’re working our way through an endless series of named storms and it seems perfectly possible that we’ll have gone through the alphabet by the end of February, so It’s a long way to drive to have your dreams dashed by Storm Zelah. On the other hand when you’re young and madly in love everything is lovely. Sadly we’ve moved on from that bit – well, at least the young bit. Wish us luck!