It is 10 years since the first Mid Wales Midwinter post and I’m back spending a few days before Christmas with my old friend Tony Cross. The rural landscapes of rolling mountains, small green fields, steep bracken-clad valleys and cliff-lined coastline are as beautiful as ever. Of course, the day we take the mountain road…
Tag: Merlin
Ffridd
The unenclosed hill slopes or ffridd are a mosaic of bracken, scrub, heather, grass and wet flushes that lie between the pasture fields and the mountain plateaus. Around the Elenydd mountains in mid-Wales, ffridd is rich with small birds including redstarts, yellowhammers, tree pipits, whinchats and stonechats. Redpolls, siskins and mistle thrushes are common in…
Cwm Doethie’s Merlins
Right at the heart of the Cambrian Mountains in mid-Wales, the Doethie valley runs north off the Pysgotwr which in turn runs down into the Tywi by the Dinas nature reserve; it is a rare valley in that there is no road or driveable track just a path used by walkers and mountain bikers between…
Llyn Brenig and Llyn Bugeilyn
7th and 8th July 2018 On the way to the Elenydd mountains to check a merlin’s nest on the edge of a forest of Sitka spruce that has sadly failed, we stop at a small village hall to try to catch breeding swifts. There are perhaps 10-15 pairs and they come and go flying in…
Elenydd
21st – 23rd April The Elenydd mountains are an empty landscape of soft grassland plateaus cut by deep, bracken-clad valleys; the myriad small streams feed the Cothi, Elan, Teifi, Tywi and Ystwyth rivers. The highest plateaus are capped with blanket bog and mires full of sedge, cotton grass and Sphagnum fill the shallow depressions. These uplands are…
Hinterland
The weather is uniform grey again in West Wales and the coast desolate and uninviting. This stretch of coast south of Aberystwyth was where the sad-eyed detective from the television series ‘Hinterland’ had his isolated mobile home. Beneath the long grass slope, the lively, lime green shoe-box looks out of place in front of the…