Gwaith 6: Visiting The Fairy Glen (7 Oct 2016)

Helo Pawb

When I was last visiting Britain, I sent Jo a postcard of  the Fairy Glen in Betws-y-Coed. She loved the card so much I promised her I would go there when I could and take some photos for her.

So, after I left Dinas Emrys, I followed the directions, parked, paid the small fee for one car and one visitor, and walked to the gorge in clear sunshine, with robin song as an accompaniment.

Robin in a hedge on the way to the Fairy Glen

The path running alongside the gorge

The Fairy Glen (known in Welsh as Ffos Ddofn, 'deep ditch') is as magical as the original postcard suggested. Canopy of berry-ladened rowans, autumning ash, oak and beech, even a single pine tree on an outcrop. Rocks worn through, over, around, streaked with fault lines. A stillness inside the echoing, tumbling, slapping, sluicing water, with its tracery lines of bubbles heading downstream.

Looking upstream to the cascading waters

Looking downstream at the rapids

Behind these weathered, lichened, mossed rocks is the path down into the ravine

View of some of the luxuriant vegetation in the gorge

The one pine tree in the ravine

Unlike my time at Dinas Emrys in the morning, there were no chainsaws and shouting men disturbing the peace. I did have one fellow visitor, who hobbled down the awkward path, a long while after I had taken photos, sat quietly listening to the water spilling over rocks, and watched sunlight speckle moss, oak leaves and rowan berries. He picked my accent (unlike some others over the last few weeks who thought I was a Kiwi) and talked about the time he visited Australia on his way to a walking tour of New Zealand. After taking some photos, he left me to my contemplation of wind, water, sun and rock and made his slow way back to the car park.

The canopy above the gorge

Cliff face on the other side of the ravine, with lichen, ferns, trees

The gorge worked its magic on me in another way, As often happens when you least expect it, something my visitor said prompted a few lines, so before I left I worked on a poem and in the evening completed it.

Down to the Fairy Glen

Betws-Y-Coed, Wales, Oct 2016

Back, hips and knees all gone, yet still he walking-stick’s

His old hill-walking body to the bottom, first time ever,

Shuffles across moss-drenched rocks, two cameras

For the curling, scurrying stream silver-gleaming the gorge.

A closeup of the cascade

Departing view of the Fairy Glen as I climbed back up the path

As always, any comments are appreciated.

Cofion Cynnes

Earl