Around the Edge of
Wales (3) ….Prestatyn to Llanbedr Dyffryn Clwyd
The Clwydian Range on a wet foggy day is not a good place to
be. The heather-topped hills had been transformed into a watery, unwelcoming
landscape and I was glad to return to the valley bottom after a while to follow
some of the tiny lanes that snake along the bottom of the slopes.
The road
verges are impossibly green at the moment, full of spring-soup leaves and
beautiful patches of stitchwort and bluebells. I've never noticed quite so much
garlic mustard in the hedgerows, and I was glad of the peppery leaves yesterday to add
a bit of taste to my sodden sandwiches.
But overall, the wildlife was disappointing, I didn't see a single field that promised a show of wild flowers later on in summer and the slopes and summits of the hills were deathly quiet, save for a cuckoo calling twice, briefly, on the slopes of Penycloddiau and a two second dart of a stoat slipping between gorse bushes. I wondered if there were any skylarks left on the Clwydian range? If there are, they were keeping a low profile yesterday, even before the rain swept in.
Got lassooed by my dog's lead around teatime, as she tried to
escape the glare of an elderly guard dog, and smashed my knees on the road as I
tumbled - but at least managed to save the camera. I stopped to let the
stinging and bleeding subside, and found myself musing on the concept of
'Natural beauty'. This area, despite being farmed quite intensively, is an Area
of Outstanding Natural Beauty - but what makes this landscape, more than other
Welsh rural landscapes, outstanding in terms of its 'natural beauty'? Is there
something deep in our culture and psyche perhaps that makes us place greater
importance and value on the picturesque and dramatic? And is there a some kind
of formula buried within our consciousness that guides our decisions about the
natural beauty of landscapes, as it does our views on human beauty - the
proportion of slopes perhaps, or range of textures and colours, complexity of
field patterns or proportion of woodland to open spaces.
The train of thought faded as the cold seeped through my
coat. The dog looked miserable. Time to move on
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