The environment of Machynlleth, Powys, Mid Wales - some landscape notes.

(text and pictures © Roger Whitfield - tel 01654 703864)
Machynlleth lies in the valley of the River Dyfi (Afon Dyfi, in Welsh), between where that river rises under the stern slopes of Aran Fawddwy (905m.) and where it slows in tidal loops towards the sea in Cardigan Bay.
 
Here is Mid-Wales, a place of pastoral farming, hillside oakwoods and planted conifer forest, where red kites, recently almost extinct in Britain, can be often seen in dangling flight above the fields. (At Ynys Hir, on the Dyfi, is an extensive RSPB reserve.)

Native oaks, conifer afforestation and sheep-grazed hills, in Dyfi Forest.

South across the heights of Mid Wales, clouds sieve sunlight into slanting beams.

The management of the countryside is always subject to dynamic tensions between various interests, which for those with land are often economic, and for others may be about conservation or amenity. An overview might suggest the motto, "health in variety". Although it may seem that there is little wilderness in these crowded islands, in fact it is everywhere, including ourselves - interleaved, ubiquitous. The countryside is a palimpsest, where any given area will be a shifting blend of natural and human history.
The domed, green hills of central Wales form a dissected plateau, made of sedimentary rocks.
 
Beyond Machynlleth into North Wales, though, the country soon becomes more rugged and various, for here rising strata of older volcanic rocks are exposed. These strata were once buckled in a great arch, the Harlech dome - now weathered back to reveal yet older Cambrian grits once buried at its core - much of this area is embraced by one of Britain's National Parks, Snowdonia (Eryri), which includes the grand architecture of Wales's highest mountain, Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa - 1085m.)

The springing of the Harlech dome, northwards across the Talyllyn valley.

Submarine pillow lava now exposed at 850m. above sea level on Cadair Idris.

 It may affect notions of place and permanence to reflect that nearly all these rocks were laid down, layer upon layer, some as sediment and some as lava under the waters of ancient seas, and that over the intervening hundreds of millions of years they have sailed the globe to be crumpled skywards, whilst aeons of weather abrade them once again into the sea. The very continents we inhabit are even now still in motion, just as their rockiest eminences are being dissolved.