CAMBRIAN MOUNTAINS
Join us on a journey of discovery to a secret sanctuary in CENTRAL WALES, and walk through a landscape that can make your heart soar and sink in equal measure.
There is a mountain range, lodged in the heart of Wales, that’s broad and sprawling and little trampled by thrill-seeking hillwalkers. Its name, Pumlumon, roughly translates as ‘Five Beacons’, with there being, more or less, five tops to the massif. Legend has it that the mountain is really a sleeping giant. Unfortunately for us, there is a giant awakening, just not quite what folklore had in mind.
Some say Pumlumon is the highest mountain in mid Wales. Others say that it’s the tallest in the Cambrian mountains, but that relies on a narrow definition of the range. However high it is, Pumlumon and its surrounding peaks offer an expansive stretch of upland, which seems to bloom into this part of Wales like wine spilt on a carpet.
Wine’s not been flowing though, it’s another type of life blood that Pumlumon gives rise to. The sort that we hear about in the news on a seemingly weekly basis. Pumlumon gives rise to water – not one but three rivers (the Severn, Wye and Rheidol) have their origins in the soft folds of this sleeping giant.
Before you can think about the importance of a river and the purity of its water, it’s best to get to the source of the issue. I like walking on Pumlumon. I’ve been five or six times over a quarter of a century. I’ve got to know a secret spot, a place where all is right with the world, or at least that’s how it seems whenever I go there. I guarded the identity of that place jealously for many years, travelling back there in my mind when I couldn’t physically go, particularly when I’ve needed some healing.
A road winds on for longer than you’d expect, before you get to the parking at the end of it. This is an area of so much water; reservoirs fill valley bottoms with an industrial coolness that encourages little love as you pass them by. At the road’s end and the walk’s beginning a broad track contours off to the north-east, taking a wide arc of the main peaks. The best walks are always about the way in – the set-up. The track – rough, rutted and puddled – passes isolated ruins, until an hour or so’s wandering brings you to the north-western end of the tranquil Cwm Gwerin. Here, the still partially intact walls of a house invite all sorts of musings as you pass by, with obscure iron objects doing little to dampen the imagination’s whirling cogs. Romantic as it is, it’s not this place that I love, it’s just a little bit further up the hillside, on the way to Craig yr Eglwys.
A protrusion of rock, split almost as if by Thor’s hammer itself, focus
