Fan Hir

We travel along
Narrow lanes crowded with hedgerows bursting into life
Sculptural cow parsley stands to attention as
The car clatters across a cattle grid
Rattle and lo! We enter another world
Of mountains and moorland
Hardy Welsh ponies graze away from the road
Shaggy coats of cream and gold
At home in the wildness
No longer needed in the pits
They reclaim their life in the desolate uplands.
Solitary sheep dot the landscape,
Some scramble onto mossy hummocks
As the car comes into view
A lamb panics and runs to its mother
Who turns to shelter her young
In this bowl of hills, the
Valley carved out by glaciers,
Your eye takes in the
Craggy peaks and steep slopes
Tumbling with scattered rocks
We are in the land of Fan Hir and Cefn Cul
Prehistoric and timeless
But then there is sudden movement
A clumsy column of sheep in their woolly coats,
Running with their lambs, inelegant, anxious, keeping them close
Clocking the car
They are making for
higher ground
What has broken the peace?
A collie glides into view
Alert and focussed
Streamlined with shaggy black and white coat
Head level with tail, body crouching and stalking
Taut with readiness
Colour in the bleached green, white, grey landscape
Keenly herding the sheep,
You sigh your relief they’re not in danger
Then in profile you see a farmer
Standing high on his quadbike
The shepherd
Watching his flock
Scanning the horizon, trusting his dog
Working as a team
Wish I had my phone ready
To take a picture
A snapshot in time
Shadows cross the mountain, scree tumbled in huddles
Trees in the valleys, deep rifts of water surging hidden among ferns and rocks
Bog grasses and sheep,
A cloud passes over, now half the mountain is in shadow
Black and menacing
Sunlight turns the other half of the mountain to green velvet
As I watch the farmer on his quadbike, now with his back to me
I am looking through his eyes
I see sheep running,
the dog herding,
obedient and honed to the task
The outstanding beauty of the landscape feels like the end of the world
Biblical in spite of the quadbike
The mountain is without compare
In its raw and blunt beauty set against the soft blue sky
Shadows
Play across its face
Then it is gone
The car rounds the corner
And the shepherd is out of sight
All over in a second
We drive on.

Words by Rosie Blagburn