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.
