We love our land
Dec
By Robin Horsfall
Paid â chadw baw ar eich drws eich hun!
For more than fifty years, Wales has been my adventure playground and garden. Summer or winter, I loved climbing to the top of a ridgeline. Fifty years ago, only weird people with beards and ropes, or soldiers practising for war, willingly confronted the challenges of the Welsh mountains. Sunshine was only an occasional visitor to an otherwise cloudy, windy, and wet world of waterfalls, caves, and mud.
The lack of visitors allowed the flora and fauna a unique opportunity to develop, especially in the cracks and crevasses created by the never-ending flow of fresh water. There were no car parks, few road signs, and even fewer roadside cafes. All bars and shops were closed on Sundays. A lost soul with a broken-down car had only one refuge, the red telephone boxes clearly marked on ordinance survey maps with a capital T.
When walking and camping, I often found blueberries growing wild on the slopes and raspberries in the valleys. To a hungry walker, the taste of these tiny gifts of nature were filled with a flavour never experienced from market produce. The streams were filled with small wild Brown Trout rarely big enough to eat but fun to catch and return. I could spend days camping and never see a soul but when someone did appear there was a joy in the meeting, a shared mug of tea, and a moment discussing a route, a climb and of course, the weather.
It was and still is my garden, the only difference being now I stay on footpaths close to the roads and walk a few miles on the lower levels. This is however, no longer my empty space or my garden of solitude. There are too many people climbing the best-known routes, visitors from all over the nation visit the foothills on a weekend. Good for them! The Brecon Beacons National Park is for all to enjoy. I can always go a little farther off road to places they don’t know about or choose a wet, weekday morning to take my exercise.
I did exactly that today. Not too wet, only a few showers were expected. I parked the car and set off wearing waterproof trousers and a jacket, along a quiet side road adjacent to a reservoir that was built in the 19th century to supply Cardiff with clean water.
After a few steps, I stopped and looked out across the water. The black surface covered the remains of an old village. When the waters dropped in summer, the village ‘gossip bridge’ would still show above the waterline, reminding everyone that the lake was artificial. I stood for a moment enjoying the view and wandered down to the water’s edge, only to be greeted by the remains of someone’s picnic. There on the bank was an empty, blue Pringles carton, a glass, spice jar, and various small plastic bags suitable for salt or drugs. Off to one side, there was a cold pile of charred wood where a small fire had gasped its last breath. The burned wood would be absorbed by nature, but the small bags were a perfect size to choke birds and fish or simply pollute the water supply. They could be carried downstream by a flood to eventually decorate the trees on the banks of the Cynon river below Aberdare, joining the other decorative coloured plastics spilled into the water by the local community.
I took some pictures and returned to the road to be greeted by an assortment of aluminium beer cans, vape packets, and takeaway food bags. I took some solace from the fact McDonalds now used biodegradable paper to pollute the roadside rather than plastic.
As I moved away from the road and into the woods, the litter diminished indicating most of it was discarded from cars. It was common practice for young adults in small cars to travel into the National Park in the evening for entertainment and then leave their rubbish by the side of the road. It was sad to discover that once pristine garden was now a rubbish dump for people who would despoil the place, they called home while remaining proud of the flag they flew and the country they cheered for in a sports stadium. This was their garden too, right on their doorstep.
For sure it wasn’t the majority of visitors who were to blame but it was enough to make the place ugly.
What to do?
Continue to complain and become another bitter and grumpy old man. Ignore it and hope eventually nature would cover up the evidence as she did on the sides of the Head of the Valleys dual-carriageway. When the grass was cut up there, it always exposed an endless stream of plastic and paper that had been hitherto hidden beneath. All readily distributed from passing lorries and cars.
On the three rivers that spring from the mountains and travel south, that same refuse can be seen hanging from branches and clinging to every projection into the water. There are fish but nowhere near as many as there could or should be. Green algae coats the gravel riverbed fed by untreated sewerage. No self-respecting insect would breed there to provide food for animals further up the food chain. No fish, no Kingfishers. The only chain was one of abuse.
There is an old Welsh maxim warning about such behaviour, ‘Paid â chadw baw ar eich drws eich hun’ or ‘Don’t leave dirt on your own doorstep!’
We can’t do much about those who commit these crimes. For them it is too late. Every nation and every population holds an irreverent and uncaring group who would rather break than build. It isn’t unique here in Wales; it just happens to be where I live.
What we could do is educate the next generation, so in ten years’ time they will value their countryside in the same way they love their football team and national flag.
Every time I go out, I pick up two pieces of rubbish and deposit them in a bin or take them home. I could easily fill a bin bag if I could carry it. My two pieces are a small gesture of resistance.
We should love and care for our land, its waters, and our clean air.
It’s where all life springs from.
Robin Horsfall is an author, speaker, and former member of the SAS. Read more from Robin here.
