The unexpected weather window at the beginning of September which saw blue skies, high temperatures, and excessive humidity at last persist for long enough to allow everyone locally to make some very late-season hay, now seems a long time ago.

With our hay safely stashed away, some going to a friend and a final swathe cut as green hay for my niece’s meadow creation project, we collapsed in a heap and were relieved that some time ago we’d booked a rare week away in Dinas Cross, Pembrokeshire.

I opted, unusually, to leave my camera behind and instead packed a range of good books. Therefore, any of the images that follow are thanks to Fiona and her phone. Once more we stayed at the wonderful Felin Hescwm and enjoyed many glorious local walks, and scenes along this spectacular stretch of coastline.

The converted granary beneath the beautiful hanging sign of “Felin Hescwm Refuge” was just that, and so named by our hosts Jo and John, as a nod to alpine refuges used by mountain walkers. Not indeed for distressed souls, as Jo and John told us many people passing on the quiet footpath assume!

It felt very much like a refuge for us from the world at large whilst we were there. The outstretched wings of the cormorant (bilidowcar, mulfran, or Morfran, just a few of the Welsh translation options – the latter a name (“sea crow”) with multiple references in early Welsh mythology.) mirrored the half dozen birds we saw just to the North of Aberbach (the little estuary mouth). Resting up on the knife edge of Carrig duon (Black rock). To the South lay the fabulous near-pyramid of Carreg Pen-las (Blue head stone). I knew that the area was rich in history, but courtesy of the writings of Natasha Ceridwen de Croustchoff, I’ve discovered much more about this local coast and landscape. It’s well worth checking out Natasha’s writings and photographs, here. All her pieces are fascinating and well-researched. Perhaps most intriguing for me as we sat and watched an empty feeder ship swing on its anchor chain at the mercy of the currents or tide (not wind) first North, then South for days on end on mirror-calm seas (surely an insight into current low levels of global trade) are Natasha’s pieces on the great storm, the Royal Charter Storm, of October 25th 1859. This single event caused many shipwrecks on the Welsh coast, and over 800 lives were lost.

A fully rigged American cargo ship was lost on the beach at Abermawr, and all on board perished. Those bodies which washed ashore are buried in the pretty churchyard at Granston, just above the village of Tregwynt. Shown below in a previous visit.

Further up the coast and very close to our peaceful refuge, the church at Cwm-yr-Eglwys was battered and its East door breached by the storm-blown high tide. Two walls collapsed onto the sheltering congregation during a service, and although everyone miraculously escaped, many coffins, including the recently deceased from the devastated graveyard, were washed out to sea. The church was later re-located on higher ground, as were many of the village houses, leaving the church’s two walls marking the site of the tragedy in which 3 other ships sheltering in the lee of Dinas Island had also been lost with no survivors as the winds swung to the North East at the height of the storm.

However, the biggest loss of life came from the sinking of The Royal Charter, an iron hull fast clipper with coal-driven engines, which plied the route between Liverpool and Australia. The ship had a full complement of passengers many of whom were miners returning with gold discovered in the Australian gold fields – a quantity estimated at tens of millions of pounds in current value. On its return trip, it chose to ride out the increasing storm winds by sheltering off the North coast of Anglesey, rather than continuing into the port of Liverpool. However the change in wind direction and a rise in strength to Gale Force 12, broke both the ship’s anchor chains, (in spite of the captain ordering the masts to be cut down to reduce wind resistance) and the ship was driven first onto a sandbank. Then as the tide rose, she shifted and was broken up on the rocky shore off Moelfre. 450 passengers and crew were lost with barely 40 survivors. One consequence of this worst storm and loss of life in Welsh coastal history was that Admiral Robert Fitzroy who had set up the first iteration of the Met Office in 1854, devised a system for plotting future storms, and sending out warnings to coastal stations by telegram. It’s the same Fitzroy who gets a daily mention in the current shipping forecasts for the UK after the shipping area “Finisterre” had its name changed in 2002 to “Fitzroy” to honour his contribution to safety at sea.

Finally, if you want a really scary but true story, read Natasha’s piece about the Small’s Rocks lighthouse, twenty miles off Marloes beach in Pembrokeshire, which at least in part inspired two recent feature films.

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Cormorant Refuge

Behind the bolted, red-gloss cartws doors
Secure, the hermits test their new-found shell.

Beside those unfamiliar book-lined walls,
Slate-tabled floors with pocket-filled perfection.

Beneath dramatic sun-flushed clouds,
Soon home-from-home with circling buzzard cries.

Between the blue black guarding rocks,
A secret cove, storm smoothed grey cheeks.

Beyond, calm waters stressed that dark-state line,
Where skies and oceans seam and meet.

Below Carningli’s lichened, chaos stones
Imagined histories stretched the mind.

Beware the clues – free-wheeling choughs
Wind blasted thorns, and Strumble’s roving light.

Before sun dives, is lost beneath the waves
Seek refuge, guardian Morfran’s gaze.

Be changed. And dream in fire-forged bed
Of wrecks, beached seals, dished ponies’ heads.

Then cast aside your hermit’s shell, return
Transformed. To mists. And rain. And ferns.

 

For Jo and John.

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One of the great things about opting to have holidays locally, apart from the probable eco- benefits, is that there’s little of the stress or time associated with getting there. However, any readers not in the UK may be interested to note that as of yesterday, the Welsh government has created another global first.

It’s become the first in the world to bring in a mandatory maximum 20 mph speed limit in “any residential area” across the whole of the country. This equates to a change from the 30 mph speed limits which were already commonplace in most towns and villages, with the occasional entirely sensible 20 mph limit outside schools and some hospitals. I suppose after all the restrictions the population were subjected to during the pandemic, with excellent compliance, it was seen as a straightforward, further modest clipping of the population’s wings. Even if the justifications are more than a little suspect.

In their recent flyer which we received to remind us of this change, the government made some interesting statements. Firstly, apparently, this policy was approved by “most people in Wales (63%)”. With this currently available link to the market research that produced this bold statistic, I discovered that this related to an online survey of just 1,000 Welsh residents. (Should you choose to read the way the research was conducted, as I did, you’ll see that an initial scoping survey showed only a minority expressing concerns about speed limits. So a second survey was conducted where appropriate statements were fed to the participants to respond to – to achieve the desired statistical responses). However, it’s still quite a bold assertion, given the tiny numerical size of the survey. Does this comply with the UK National Statistics Code of Practice, I wonder? Which states that:

“Compliance with the Code gives you confidence that published government statistics have public value, are high quality, and are produced by people and organisations that are trustworthy.”

But anyway, even more questionable since in another currently accessible online document, (Explanatory Memorandum to the Restricted Roads (20 mph Speed Limit) (Wales) Order 2022) it’s reported that:

“5.2 Formal Consultation:
A 12-week consultation ran from 9 July 2021 to 1 October 2021 on the proposed change in legislation. 6,018 online responses were received by the Welsh Government in the consultation period. 47% were in favour of reducing the speed limit and 53% were against.”

Well, we all know about how statistics can be manipulated don’t we, but for whoever compiled this information leaflet – what about advertising standards?

The other bold statement in the leaflet which struck me was that “Most journeys will be around one minute longer”.

Again the relevant section from the Welsh government’s explanatory memorandum evidently contradicts this clarity by stating that:

“However, when an indicative estimate of journey time disbenefits is included, the monetised costs outweigh the monetised benefits due to the cumulated effect of a slight lengthening of average journey times on account of lower driving speeds on effected parts of the road network. It should be highlighted that there is significant uncertainty surrounding the overall journey time impact (sic) and that, on a per trip basis, the impact is expected (sic) to be small (less than 1 minute per trip on average), with 95 percent of trips likely to be affected by less than 2 minutes.”

After the whole debacle of recent British political decision-making, a particular example being the disgraceful misreporting of Covid vaccine trial data (see this after the event analysis, which confirms my initial reading of the Pfizer and Moderna trials data, that risks of serious side effects were significantly higher in the vaccinated group than in the placebo groups and probably outweighed possible benefits, i.e. the prevention of serious disease from the actual virus, for many patient cohorts).

I don’t know why I was surprised by this very questionable selling of a new policy which many feel will impact the Welsh economy in a significant and negative way.

Out of interest, on our relatively benign, short journey to reach Dinas Cross, I thought I’d make a note of how many different 30 mph zones we actually travelled through – 14 in a journey of about 40 miles – which is fairly typical for travel in rural Wales. Since the speed reduction implies a 50% increase in journey times through any of these village zones, it’s not difficult to see the likely impacts that this will have. Way more than 1 or even 2 minutes, I’m afraid. As to the speculated safety benefits, I guess that will depend on how much focus one now has to direct to a car’s speedo, and not the road ahead.Thank goodness we don’t have to make a living by anything involving frequent travel in rural Wales but do spare a thought for any who do. I wonder how delivery drivers, for example, will change their driving behaviour between villages, to compensate for the time lost whilst driving in them. Beware the rural Welsh White Van, from now on.

But maybe I’m wrong? According to the Road Safety Wales website :

“It will soon feel natural to drive up to 20mph (sic) in residential areas.”

Really? On my bike, maybe – but perhaps that’s their eventual aim?

And I wonder whether future surveys will show a further collapse in international visitors to Wales over and above the dramatic collapse of about 33% between 2019 and 2022. 

One should note too that the same government is also planning to introduce a tourism tax for visitors to Wales stating that it could “make a real difference” by generating revenue. I haven’t bothered to check out their sums and analysis on this little gem, which can clearly be interpreted in several ways.

With a wonderful sense of irony, Fiona watched a catchup TV programme on Channel 4 online yesterday, and told me that for the first time in ages, an ad was run for “Visit Wales”. Well done guys or gals, (if I’m allowed to use such terms), or perhaps more likely some AI bot. Just as we’re lashed with 42 mm of rain in 24 hours, and storm-force winds, what a perfect time to promote the Welsh tourism industry, eh?

I suppose, though, that I should view all of this more sanguinely and selfishly, and reflect that the fabulous scenery will be even less crowded than it already is. Almost no one else was walking around Mynydd Carningli when we were there on a glorious early September day. The link gives some interesting insights into the possible human history of this fabulous site with amazing views over the coastline, and inland.

However, visitors to Wales be warned –  watch your speedo and stick to 20 mph, or risk fines from the inevitable rash of speed camera traps which will surely seek to monetise this change.

Interestingly, an online petition requesting the law’s repeal has already generated more than 5 times the previous record for any other Senedd e-petition. Quite an achievement in a very few days.

Just before the Royal Charter storm, between 1839 and 1843, another series of significant events occurred in West Wales, which left its mark on the national psyche. The Rebecca Riots were a running series of protests by mainly Welsh farming folk brought to their knees by a series of poor harvests following disastrous weather. Struggling with high taxes and the cost of living the final straw was the high charges being levied by the toll gates for anyone passing along rural roads and byways. The riots, which were focused on rural Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire saw tollgates being torn down at night by gangs of local residents wearing mainly women’s clothing and with blackened faces. Many of the trusts operating the toll gates were run by absentee English businessmen, which understandably added to the sense of resentment.

History never repeats itself, but sometimes it rhymes. Or so the saying goes.

I should finish this semi-rant with the comment that I do think such 20 mph speed limits are entirely reasonable in densely populated residential urban areas, near schools, or  hospitals. Indeed it’s impossible to drive much faster in many such places given the frequent speed humps, but the change does seem a real challenge for many living in very rural areas with multiple tiny villages. Maybe allowing residents to decide whether they would prefer a 20 mph limit through their own village might have been a saner route to take for such a policy, rather than automatically foisting the change onto about a third of the nation’s roughly 22,000 miles of roads.

Perhaps this song composed by English born, but Solva (Pembrokeshire) raised,  David Gray is appropriate at this point.

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In recent years I’ve supplied a few visitors with green hay from our upper meadow to kick-start their own meadow floral diversification projects. One doesn’t tend to get feedback from such efforts, but this year a contact from Richard Bramley at Farmyard Nurseries led to me supplying green hay to Andy for a new build house development where he wanted to create both a wildflower roadside verge, as well as some additional wildflower grassland at the periphery of the new garden. We met up and discussed plans and in due course provided a couple of bags of green hay to be scattered onto the prepared soil. This was “topsoil” imported by the builder after the construction work was completed, and Andy did a great job of levelling it and removing the worst stones before the green hay was taken, strewn, raked around a bit, and removed after about 10 days to be composted once most of the seeds had fallen out.

It’s been really exciting to see just how quickly different seeds have been germinating, and how the verge is comparing with his neighbour’s plot, where the soil has been managed more conventionally with a scattering of dry grass seed.

There’s already considerable diversity of leaf forms and a very good dense covering. I gave Andy a few of my plug plants of Devil’s-bit Scabious (DBS) and Greater Burnet (GB) as well, which he’s planted on the verge. We were both amazed to see that the first flowers appeared barely 2 months after sowing, and much to our surprise they were the attractive, annual hemi-parasite Eyebright, Euphrasia nemorosa.

Regular readers might know that I’ve grown a few meadow plants in the past by sowing seed into 2-litre pots, then pricking them out into 9cm pots for growing on, with some success, so before seeing the results of Andy’s verge, with its rapid germination of many different species, I’d already decided to have a more intensive session of meadow plant seed collection and sowing this autumn. Why bother?

By now I also knew that many of the plants in a traditional old hay meadow had medicinal properties, so it seemed worthwhile introducing these into the remaining meadows rather than the sheep only having access to them as hay or aftermath grazing. Look at just how many of the plants listed below have common, or scientific names, (officinalis) indicating a likely health benefit linked to their consumption, or other medicinal use.

When we decided to create a second flower-rich hay meadow in one of our flat wet valley bottom fields, we started it the same way as the top hay meadow by first hand picking seeds from our top field and scattering them as well as using bags of green hay.
Progress seemed much faster in this field, probably because of the greater quantities of seed or green hay which we were now able to use. But two issues still struck me. Firstly, some “special” plants, like DBS and GB seemed very slow to establish in numbers from seeds scattered this way. And secondly, we still had almost none of these plants growing in our other 4 fields which are rotationally grazed by our small flock of Tor Ddu sheep through much of the year.

A couple of years ago, we’d even begun to strew some green hay into our 4 remaining fields, as well as reducing the number of sheep slightly. This is a balancing act since grass growth can change dramatically from one year to another. But despite regular grazing, this year we’ve seen at least some signs of success in that both Eyebright and Yellow rattle were germinating, flowering and just about setting some seeds in these summer grazed fields. And we do have the nationally quite rare ivy-leaved bellflower, Hesperocodon hederaceus, synonym Wahlenbergia hederacea, growing exclusively in one of these fields.

The DBS plug plants I’d planted out in late spring this year established well, but I noticed how slugs love DBS – particularly at the first dicotyledon leaf stage. If you lose the first two seedling leaves of any dicotyledenous plant, before the first true leaves have emerged, then the plant’s probably going to die at this early stage. As well as slugs other things are partial to young seedlings, will take them out and drastically reduce survival rates. My seedling Daphne bholua which I mentioned earlier this year despite being a supposedly very toxic garden plant, have been ravaged by mice which chomped them all off to get at the pea-like endosperm. All but two sown in the ground have been trashed. Fortunately, the ones in root trainers could be moved up onto one of our IBC tanks, and, so far, out of harm’s way.

This year’s efforts with meadow plants also made me realise what a pain it is trying to make a hole in turf to plant out a 9cm square small plant. This led me to trialling root trainers once I’d found a British manufacturer of root trainers that were made of recycled plastic and sturdy enough for repeat use. The root systems develop very well, so the plants have a great start when planted out. But most importantly, these plug plants can be planted really quickly and easily using a digging bar or Pottipukti, rather than mucking about kneeling with a trowel or spade.

I used our own homemade compost for sowing last year, but this meant quite a bit of hand-weeding of unwanted plants, as the young plants grew away, so this autumn, I’ve made some tweaks.

Firstly, I’m using slightly smaller root trainers, which means less compost per plant, and 60 per tray rather than 45, with the same footprint. These are 13 cm deep, and have a volume of about 125 cc – way bigger than a typical “Jumbo” plug. I’ll use the larger ones (15 cm deep and 233 cc) for starting off vegetables and choicer garden plants like some of my Hydrangea seedlings.

Secondly, I’m using our own molehill soil, which we collect annually and store in big bags, sometimes with a layer of leaves at the base. So there’s no buying-in of material, and it’s also much more likely to contain local micro-organisms and local fungi than any bought-in compost, or indeed bought-in plug plants. It also retains water much better than most bought “green” composts. This is important since you’re not going to be able to get around and water your plug plants in a meadow location very easily. I read on one meadow plant plug-selling site that they recommended watering their plugs 4 x daily! Hardly practical for many projects. I hand-sieve the soil into the root-trainers.

The saved molehill soil is remarkably free of stones. The manually collected seed is sown fairly thinly onto the surface, but not individually since I was still unsure about the germination rates of the various species. And finally, the seed was covered with a very light sprinkling of our rotted-down log compost.

I’ve been amazed by how many species have germinated in less than 14 days, and also how relatively weed-free the molehill soil seems to be. Plus any “weeds” which do emerge will almost certainly be meadow plants anyway, so other than being competitors for special plants, not a huge issue. I’ll probably water them with some diluted worm juice from our wormeries next spring to give them a boost, which helped the last batch.

However, even in this relatively controlled environment with some limited judicious use of “organic” ferric phosphate slug pellets, there are still signs of how even numerous and tough, more common seedlings have been nibbled and taken out by small slugs.

Next year, once the plugs have rooted well enough to be pulled out – which will vary in time from one to another, (and again probably an advantage to be using the smaller root trainers, they’ll get planted out during any of our rare wet spells (?) into our 4 summer grazed fields. I’m sure this won’t be an annual task, certainly not on this scale, since there’s going to be a lot of effort getting so many plugs into the fields. Should any readers be interested in getting some plugs to try on their own site, I’d suggest you get in touch before mid-May next year. These are the species I’ve sown so far:

Pignut, Conopodium majus

Valerian, Valeriana officinalis

Yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor, with Common Bent, Agrostis capillaris

Eyebright, Euphrasia nemorosa, with Common Bent, Agrostis capillaris

Betony, Stachys officianalis

Cowslip, Primula veris

Angelica, Angelica sylvestris

Self-heal, Prunella vulgairs

Lesser Spearwort, Ranunculus flammula

Bird’s-foot Trefoil, Lotus corniculatus

Tormentil, Potentilla erecta

Meadow Cranesbill, Geranium pratensis

Greater Burnet, Sanguisorba officinalis

Melancholy Thistle, Cirsium heterophyllum

Fox and Cubs, Pilosella aurantiaca

Ribwort Plantain, Plantago lanceolata

Sorrel, Rumex acetosa

Knapweed, Centaurea nigra

Cat’s Ear, Hypochaeris radicata

Devil’s-bit Scabious early form blue, Succisa pratensis

Devil’s-bit Scabious late form blue, Succisa pratensis

Devil’s-bit Scabious late form pink, Succisa pratensis

Meadow buttercup, Ranunculus acris

Red Clover, Trifolium pratense

Of these, the ones highlighted in bold have already germinated this autumn at the time of writing.

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For a musical finale, I’m going to choose Bedřich Smetana’s Vltava from Má vlast, in the recording below by the Yale Symphony Orchestra. In early August we travelled down to St. David’s cathedral to hear this piece, along with 2 others, performed by another famous youth orchestra – The National Youth Orchestra of Wales, as part of the Fishguard Music Festival. In an earlier, and perhaps more inspired, global first for Wales, this was the very first such youth orchestra created anywhere in the world, established in 1945.

The piece, which is one of the 6 symphonic poems Smetana composed which were later grouped as Má vlast (My Fatherland), describes a journey down the famous national river, the Vltava (Moldau in English), starting from its two springs, the Studená and Teplá Vltava. The river flows on through woods and meadows, through landscapes where a farmer’s wedding is celebrated. It captures a dance of the mermaids in the moonshine. Castles, palaces and ruins loom overhead. The Vltava swirls into the St John’s Rapids; then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the city’s Vyšehrad fortress, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at its confluence with the river Elbe.

It was also a journey back in time for me, since “The Moldau” was a very firm favourite piece of classical music I recall from my teenage years. I can visualise picking out the black vinyl 33rpm from its white paper sleeve in the boxed set, putting it on the simple Garrard record player, lying back on the sitting room carpet and being enthralled. I had a vague recollection that the album collection was packaged as “Light Classical Music”, and was produced by Reader’s Digest. And thanks to the internet I found my memory of this was intact, and that the other few memorable pieces I recall – Borodin’s Polovstian Dances from Prince Igor, Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italienne, were indeed all there in the track listings. And I instantly recognised the boxed set’s cover image, with hints of a glamorous and romantic era.

More so than novels, which by this time I’d largely given up on, these favoured pieces (at a time when large record collections weren’t available for many, I guess), supplied me with cherished moments of relaxation and inspiration, in between a busy school and family-centric life, with almost no time allowed, or taken, for teenage socialising.

Music still has this role for me. Though perhaps books are once more featuring a little. If you don’t know the music, or even if you do, I hope this piece moves you too. It still brings the neck hairs up for me, with the progression to its majestic finale.

We dashed out of the cathedral, were first up the long flight of steps, and on to the parked car. A quick cup of flask coffee revived me for the nearly 2-hour journey home in the dark. With advancing years, will we do this again with the new Welsh slow-motion journeys? I’m not so sure. But I now have two very fond Moldau memories.

And will always remember a dear friend’s heartfelt moving comment to us just before we left for our break.

Value the good times.