New Year Walk

For New Year’s Day we walked past the wolf in Coed y Bleiddiau, in obvious need of a winter brush up. This year’s rainfall has produced vigorous growth; sometime last April the warden asked if I could carry forty buckets of water from the stream and empty them over the roots. Like the effect of a hose pipe ban there has been no fear of the roots drying out since then. We’ll be tending to the wolf sometime this month, weaving in the new growth, so that it looks more wolf like and less of a hedgehog.

From Llyn Mair we walked down from the mill pond admiring the hydro electric works in progress. Strange to see the pipes running overground but I’m sure they’ll be out of sight soon; some sections already had a hessian looking material draped over them. The turbine is due to be installed any day soon and Plas Tan y Bwlch will be glowing green by Easter as it once did long ago from 1905 to 1928.

Sadly the Grapes in Maentwrog was closed so, refreshments forsaken, we cut across the fields along the flood embankment next to the Afon Dwyryd. What a bonus, a blob of space jelly with what looked like caviar or slime mould embedded. Anyone got any ideas what this might be? I took a photo of something similar last year which the Discovery Channel has bought the rights to use in a programme they are making on the subject. 

Beside the junction of a stream flowing into the river was the newly cut stump of a trunk that was 90% hollow. I saw the canoe like trunk being driven away safely strapped on the back of a trailer. Must have been on its way to a special place, maybe the workyard of a well-known sculptor in Blaenau Ffestiniog? After all this was the point at which David Nash’s oak boulder entered the Dwyryd. 

From the valley floor a diagonal walk up through the woods to the waterfall and home. Along the way our local heft of goats: a seasoned billy, a decrepit female and two other possibly pregnant females. Hopefully they will produce kids this year.