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Here, Mid Wales segues into North Wales across the Talyllyn fault.
(text and pictures © Roger Whitfield - tel 01654 703864) |
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The River Dyfi (Afon Dyfi, in Welsh), assumes identity under the stern slopes of Aran Fawddwy (905m), gathering weight until it slows in wide, tidal loops to meet the sea in Cardigan Bay. Here are the northern reaches of Mid-Wales, a place of pastoral farming interleaved with 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, down 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 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. |
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The domed, green hills of Mid Wales lie in a dissected
plateau of sedimentary rocks. Beyond the Talyllyn fault, North Wales begins - the country becomes more rugged and various, for here a tilt of older volcanic rocks emerges. 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.), and its companions. |
The springing of the
Harlech dome, northwards across the Talyllyn valley. |
Pillow lava, formed under water, 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. |