112. 01.05.2012 Road to nowhere
Taken from Llantysilio Mountain looking eastwards across the
Clywdian range to the escarpments above the Dee valley.
The Clwydian range is the first
buffer of mountains you cross when coming into North Wales and is an area of
designated area of outstanding natural beauty with miles of unspoiled rolling heather clad hills and
peaks. They run, if that is the thing that mountains do, from the coast in the North near Prestatyn
down to Llandegla. The highest one is Moel Famau, the one with the TV transmitter that you can
see from the A55 - and also our bedroom window on a good night is Moel y parc.
I can also see them from Manchester on a good day, calling to me to come
home, but Manchester being Manchester
that’s only once or twice a year and then only ‘weather permitting’ Perhaps
best really as my hiraeth for home is unbearable at the best of times.
As it was historically, and still is come to think of it, the first
buffer of mountains over the border, it is rich in the remains of defensive Iron
Age hillforts, castles, tumuli and cairns although nothing on the scale of a
Cadw run castle or fort (with gift shop). By the way, don’t ask me what a
tumuli is, I can just see them marked on the map.
As can be expected, and this being Wales, there are legends associating
these hills with King Arthur as well as being the setting for some of the tales
from the Mabinogi and numerous spiritual and ghost scattered yarns. Given the
fact that the majority of tourists flock to Snowdonia or Rhyl sun centre, it’s
easy to climb up high and immerse and experience the loneliness and the spirt of
centuries past and understand why
there are legends of these hils.
So, here is it. A road cut out of
the heather. A road from nowhere, a road to nowhere.
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