Looks like the brighter, sunnier weather has jerked me into a positive mood!
Being able to get out and about – the ability as much as the doing – is a grand thing. Rosie & I have started to tidy the much-less-than-soggy-now back-garden. And we’ve had a couple of gentle strolls in the sun during the past couple of days.
We walked in the fir-forestry high(ish!) above the world-famous Hafod Estate on Friday. The views reminded me of my joyful wanderings back in the early 1950s when my Mom allowed the just-about-teenage me to wander for miles in then-safe Cardiganshire on my own.
It was near where we walked on Friday – near The Arch – that I became “inspired” to become a walker. A bloke was stepping it out along a public right of way in the Mynach valley. I can see him now, though over half-a-century has passed, in his dark beret, his brown leather jacket and his hefty walking-boots. He did not see me looking across at him from the rough tarmacced road, and I will never know who he was. But I thank him.
Today, we completed our total walking of The Ystwyth Trail along the solid tarmacced bit from Rhydyfelin to Llanfarian. Oh, how grateful we were when we saw how local people had looked after that stretch of the YstwythValley: daffodils have been planted among a small stand of broad-leaf trees, for instance, and there are benches along the way where folk can sit, admire the view and simply think their thoughts.
I am so glad that, to quote the Woody Guthrie song: “This land is my land”. Cymru am Byth!
