AUTUMN VISIT TO N.W.WALES

Autumn visit: NW Wales

Oct 16^th

Drove up from Cornwall on a quiet autumnal day with heavy mist as we skirted N. Dartmoor and then a pall of low cloud hung over us all the way up to Bristol before it lifted and  we could see shadows on the road. Most of the leaves haven’t yet coloured up, though the ash trees are going that clear yellow-green before they fall. As we drove through the hills in Central Wales the frequent roadside Rowans were still laden with a heavy crop of berries, not yet stripped by either local birds nor an influx of winter thrushes though they had dropped their leaves.

Lleyn Peninsula, N.W.Wales.

 

Upon arrival at Ty'n Gamdda  (Kim's home) and that first cup of tea and quick report on the drive up, our pre-dusk walk was to go and inspect the strange fungus Kim had uncovered a few days ago while clearing an overgrown flower bed in the garden.

 See where Kim's home (1) is on map before Oct 18th.

 

 

 

Devil's Fingers or Clathrus archeri, with five fat and writhing pink sections, a foul-smelling relative of the Stinkhorn.

This is an uncommon Australian native and it is a mystery how it has appeared twice now on Kim’s premises.

 

 

 

 

We then looked at Kim's yesterday evening’s moth catch saved from the clump of Ivy flowering down the track.

 

 

 

Among a sprinkling of moths feeding on the blossom was this handsome Red Swordgrass moth.

Status in Wales and nationally: Local, and immigrant at times.There are very few records of it on the Lleyn Peninsula.

 

Oct 17^th

Rain set in during the night; 5 mm and drizzle off and on all day with a mild breeze and heavy mist.

We girded up in waterproofs after lunch and inspected the new pond first.

 

Stone re-enforcing wall built outside the lower end and cobbles gradually being added round the margins with a few new plants being slowly introduced.

Kim's sheep, knee-deep in foggage, grazing in the field next to the new pond, keeping an eye on us. Most of the view was obliterated by mist.

Cosmos , a late-flowering clump attracted hoverflies when the sun shone. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Crab apples; being raided by a big flock of Jackdaws so we are picking them for jelly before they are really ripe. The flock has already raided the Borlotti beans.

 

 

 

Monday 18^th October

Wet and windy morning but it eased after lunch and we went up onto Bychestyn. Low cloud but a couple of choughs looped and swooped along the cliff, calling with clear, joyous calls  "Cheuff, Cheeuff" and a Kestrel hung motionless despite the keen wind, gazing down onto the vegetation below. Several Gannets flew low over the water, close in, looking bright white against the grey turbulent sea.It would have been a dirty crossing to the island today.(see where Bychestyn (2) is on map before note for Oct 19th. )

 We crawled under the fence and ventured across the wind-cropped turf to look down to the bouldery beach under the steep  cliff of the Parwyd . Kim had seen seal pups in there a while before. One was at the tide-line, dead, being pecked by gulls, and another, still in it’s white baby fur, hauled right up at the base of the cliff. It can’t have been more than a couple of weeks old.

As we walked along the lower cliff path  the cloud came down to the sea, blotting everything out and Bardsey was no more.

Large Parasol Mushrooms were conspicuous all along the cliff, standing up above the windswept gorse and grasses.

 

Tony has picked and feasted on them in the past but  this time he left them in favour of the small more delicate field mushrooms we’d be able to pick in the Cae Crin meadows further along.(see where Cae Crin (3) is on map before note for Oct.19th)

 

 

 

 

 

 Cae Crin . I have always fancied living here, looking out across the Sound to Bardsey. But as a gardener I might have regretted it. Cae Crin means land with poor thin soil which dries out quickly, leaving the plants frizzled.

 

 

 

 

 The overwintering bunch of cattle watched us pass They are very docile Stabilizers, a breed we’d never heard of. They are a cross between Red Angus, Hereford, Simmental and Gelbvieh (a Bavarian breed) and were bred to give good mothers, quiet temperament, fast maturers and good beef conformation. They come in various colours.

They have churned the cliff-side wet flushes into a quagmire of black slush, unfortunately wrecking the wet-loving plant assemblage there. Maybe it will recover when the cattle are taken off in the spring.

 

 

Key to map:

1. Ty'n Gamdda (Kim's property)

2.Bywchestyn (note for 18th)

3.Cae Crin (same note.)

4. Holy Well Ffynnon Saint near Aberdaron (note for Oct.19th)

5.Holy Well Ffynnon Aelrhiw near Llanengan (same note.)

6. Where we looked over Hell's Mouth (Porth Neigwl) (same note.)

7. Where we looked over coast at Aberdaron (same note.)

8.St. Mary's Well (Ffynnon Mair.) (note for Oct.20th)

9. Traeth Penllech (note for Oct 21st)

10.Pared Llech Ymenyn (see note for Oct 22nd)

11. Hen Borth  (same note)

12. Porthor or Whistling Sand. (see note for Oct.22nd)

Tuesday 19^th October

As I lay in bed this morning I could hear the wind on the roof, and more rain is sweeping in. A domestic morning I think.

This afternoon we girded up and defied the weather, first visiting Ffynnon Saint, just a mile down the road. Having been looking at a few of the Holy wells in East Cornwall over the last few weeks, I was interested to see a few round Kim’s.(see where Ffynnon Saint (4) is on map above.)

  Ffynnon Saint or the Saints’ Well is near the end of the Dark Ages and Medieval Pilgrim's Way leading to Bardsey. It’s situated in a small wet willow  wood with a low stone surround and nowadays is covered by an iron lid.

We drove on a mile or two in mist and driving rain and walked through a couple of small fields to Ffynnon Aelrhiw. This is a more elaborate affair (See where this well is (5) on map above.

 

  This well is fenced and cared for  and was claimed to cure certain skin disorders. The surrounding stone enclosure with a seat ledge on three sides was constructed in the 16 hundreds.

By this time, thoroughly wet, we decided to go a bit further to look across the fields at Llanengan, behind Hell’s Mouth. The meadows usually have flood pools lying on the grass in winter and following heavy rain, and can attract waders and other water birds. This time it still wasn't flooded but shining whiter than the grazing sheep were six Whooper Swans in the distance.

Starlings facing into the bad weather.

 

 

 

 

 

We drove back behind the long beach of Hell’s Mouth and walked across to the crumbling cliff edge which is subject to dramatic slumps and slippages of the thick ice-age clay deposits at the head of the beach.(site 6 on map above.)

Porth Neigwl or Hell’s Mouth is a notorious lee-shore and has been the scene of many shipwrecks in the days of small coasting craft. The sea was pounding in and the visibility was poor, with a mix of drizzle, mist and salt spray. Kim spotted a bunch of about a dozen Common Gulls, standing among the boulders on the beach below.

On summer visits we have run the moth trap on the cliff here.

 

 Looking east at Aberdaron and the beach.(site 7 on map above.)

At present it’s too wet, windy, foggy to go and look at the ivy flower at the bottom of the track, But it’s almost full moon and tonight there was a strong ring round the moon and it glimmered in the misty gap that opened momentarily between the shredded clouds.

 

Wednesday 19^th October

Rain and fog kept us in  apart from a quick scamper up to the north coast to watch a few gannets flying past. Then in the afternoon when we drove up to Mynedd Mawr, parked partway up and then walked over the close-bitten turf toward the coast. We headed towards the wide valley which runs down to a steep rocky cleft in which the famous pilgrims’ well of St Mary is in a small rock basin in the splash-zone level above high tide.(site 8 on map above.)

 

The Well of St Mary is in the gully below this grassy area. Bardsey is across the water.
 

The medieval ridge and furrow marks of old cultivation still show.

There were all sorts of fungi growing in the short turf.

 

 

 

 

 

In the bowl of sheltered grassland above the coast are the rectangular and lumpy remains, now completely obscured, of the chapel of St Mary, with several rectangular fields showing old ridge and furrow marks quite clearly.

 

 

 

 St Mary's Well is partway down the cliff on the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The well is in the little horizontal slot in the middle of the picture. It is a tricky climb down to it, and it's sanctity is partly derived from the difficult access and because, even though it's in the splash zone, the water is always sweet and fresh.

 

 

 

Thursday 20^th October

Up to a dry day with broken cloud, sunshine and a frisky north wind. We hastened out before the weather changed its mind, and headed out to the north coast, to Penllech, a wide bay reached from a deserted car park and followed a stream through a couple of meadows. (site 9 on map above.)

The stream running down to Traeth Penllech.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It cuts its way through a gully and then  down a considerable waterfall as it plunges down though the glacial head to a fairly wide and long sandy beach. This is backed by a low cliff with rocky outcrops and small headlands of what is described as Gwna Melange, a Pre-Cambrian mix of igneous, heavily metamorphosed rocks in what was an ancient subduction zone where the crust is sinking below the earth’s mantle.

The sea was pounding in with a series of white-capped breakers crashing onto the sand where a large flock of mixed gulls alternately rose up in a white cloud and then settled on the sand.

Traeth Penllech looking east. A lot of seaweed has been washed up and partly buried under the sand.  A big flock of mixed gull species and Oystercatchers were feeding on the maggots in the rotting weed and now and then rising up in a white cloud.
 

 Egg cases of Bull Huss (Greater Spotted Dogfish) washed up on the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon we made a quick visit to the pool at Pwll Cyw to get a few roots of greater Water Plantain and Bog Bean which we potted up and plunged into the new pond. Tony walked home along the coast to look for seals and porpoises. We've been seeing porpoises this trip from along here.

 

Female Grey Seal hauled out at Pared Llech Ymenyn.
 (site 10 on map above.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Female and very young seal pup, still in its white coat. Hen Borth.

 (site 11 on map above.)

 

 

 

 

 Friday 22^nd October 

(site 12 on map above.)

More rain this morning but after doing some geological read ups about the incredibly ancient, varied and mixed up rocks hereabouts, together with the thick layers of glacial drift overlying in places, we ventured out in the afternoon, this time to Porthor (Whistling Sands.) The name comes from the fact that at certain times and when the sand is dry, the shape of the sand particles makes them squeak as you walk.

 

 There was still a good rough sea pounding this north coast but we were surprised to see quite a few people around especially family parties and older kids. Is it half term?.

We saw this seaweed here and at Penllech. We don’t recognise it.This frond was about 40cms long.

We walked the length of the beach to the east end, and looked at the tortured rock. Now  we are familiar with the sight of the lava flowing from the recent Icelandic volcano shown in the U Tube videos, one can imagine that viscous material being stirred up like a black Christmas pudding and then left to harden. That’s what the rocks here look like. Pre-Cambrian in age, they were then at sometime cut off horizontally and then who knows what happened to this surface over the millions of years before a layer, tens of feet deep, of ice-age glacial deposits were laid down on top.

 

 

We walked back along the base of the cliff which showed signs of almost continuous slumping at different times and of varying size. The whole thing is acutely unstable, always on the slide, the clayey debris with unsorted stone from fine gravel to boulders, is lubricated by frequent runnels of water. Brookweed, Fleabane, Reed, Greater Horsetail, were growing on the cliff slopes.

We detoured on our way home to get some Purple Loosestrife and Water Mint roots for the new pond planting.

 

Saturday 23^rd October

Returned home today after a successful visit, as always , full of interest and we made the most of a ‘thank goodness for waterproofs’ week.

Holy Wells in Cornwall.

 Many years ago, when I was surveying the Camel Trail for the Council, I came across a spring in a rocky outcrop near Bodmin. A plaque named it Scarlett's Well and its magical waters were claimed to cure stomach and other ailments.

One of four sacred wells in Bodmin, this rather unlovely well looks as if it's surrounded by breeze blocks but they are in fact granite.

 A strong flow of clear water gushes out among the stones and runs away under the dead autumn leaves to join a stream from Bodmin running north to join the Camel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It struck me that this water issuing from the rock would be pure and uncontaminated and so the local people who could have been drinking polluted water with a resulting history of stomach complaints could have their symptoms alleviated if they drank the pure  spring water. In time this little understood effect would be attributed to mystical properties and accordingly venerated.

When the country was converted to Christianity, these springs would be claimed to be Holy rather than attempts to ban the earlier beliefs. Holy Wells occur all over Cornwall and elsewhere, and are frequently dedicated to saints.

Some are still marked by their later Medieval protective stonework, others have reverted to almost invisible trickles, their past significance lost apart from their enduring name.

The water supply for the Saxon town of Kelliwig, now our nearest town, Callington, was from Our Lady's Well (now known as the Pipewell) The water is reached by a few stone steps down to a stone-lined tank fed from a pipe, and protected by a small stone well-head (built in 1816) and a railing.

The Pipewell in Well Street, Callington

The explanatory plaque.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A nearby hamlet, called Frogwell, getting its water and name from the sacred well, has no such structure. It is these days just a weed-hidden spring by the road.

Dupath Well a little to the South of Callington is a handsome medieval well-house or chapel, erected in the early fifteen hundreds by the Canons of St German's and dedicated to St Ethelred the King of Mercia who died in 709. After the reformation when the cult of worshipping at these wells was abandoned, the structures marking the wells were usually allowed to decay until their significance was again recognised and many were restored in a gothic style in Victorian times. The original stones were used when possible but we can only guess how accurate these restorations are.

 

 

The handsome well-house or chapel at Dupath. Inside, it has a corbelled roof of big granite slabs.

Dupath Well.

The sacred water, claimed to cure whooping cough, runs from a spring, into the cistern within the well-house and the overflow runs into the little trough outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

St Mallett's Well

The most enduring of the Holy Wells had post-pagan stone constructions to mark the springs of sacred water, otherwise they tend to disappear in overgrown  weeds and bushes. 

 The remains of this well outside Stoke Climsland, has been smothered by a conifer plantation.  We thrashed our way though overgrown vegetation and the branches of a fallen tree a few days ago but failed to find any signs.Yet a lady who has lived in the parish for ninety years remembers when she was a girl, the annual ceremony of 'Well Dressing' when the young girls of the parish processed to the well and laid posies of flowers around it. The then Canon of the parish church banned the ceremony as 'pagan'.

Nearby Rezare Holy Well shows signs of sporadic care although at present the fence is broken and there are some fine dandelions growing among the ornamental plant pots.

St Mellors Well is a handsome well in a patch of wet woodland a little to the south of the parish church of Linkinhorne. It was constructed in the fifteen hundreds and dedicated to the youthful St Mellor who was maimed and then beheaded for his beliefs as a boy in Brittany in the 8th Century.

This well-house also has a granite corbelled roof.

The interior. The 18 -inches deep clear water was used in baptisms but traditionally it was claimed to cure sprains in horses' legs. The cold water I suppose was the ancient equivalent of our ice packs.

There are niches in the walls perhaps for candles and effigies.

The Holy Well of St David at Davidstow has already been mentioned in my blog about the source of the River Inny a few weeks ago. St David was the son of St Non, the Irish nun who came to Cornwall and is dedicated in the church at Altarnun.The  pure water from this well is claimed to be used in the manufacture of cheese in the nearby factory, but I can hardly believe this supply would sustain the need for the huge gallonage used in the routine cleaning of a large creamery!

 St Cleer Holy Well

This handsome well house in the middle of the village was originally built in the 15th Century but abandoned and fell into ruin until it was restored in Victorian times. The sacred spring is dedicated to St Clarus, an 8th Century English saint who eventually died in Normandy. Alongside this building is a Christian (not Celtic) stone cross thought to be the same age, perhaps erected to lend validity to the Christian connection of the Holy Well.

 

It was a ducking well in which people with Rickets, Epilepsy and insanity were repeatedly immersed to cure them. A possible version of our Electric- shock treatment? Although I'd have thought the effectiveness was dubious especially in cases of diet-caused Rickets!

I understand that local children still take part in the annual well-dressing here on May 25th.

 

St Keyne Holy Well 

Constructed in the side of a slope from which several springs erupt, this well is a mile or two south of St Keyne village.

The well house was built in the 15th Century and restored by the Old Cornwall Society in 1936. It is dedicated to the hermit St Keyna, one of the many sons and daughters of the Welsh King Brychan, who travelled from Wales to Cornwall as missionaries in the 500's AD

It was claimed that the first member of a newly-wed couple to reach the well and drink the water, would be the dominant partner in the marriage!

St Cleder's Well.

A couple of days ago we walked up the Inny valley from St Clether's Church for about half a mile. The hillsides were russet-coloured as the bracken died back and robins' sweet winter songs were trilled all the way.

As the mist dissipated, the spiders' webs shone with the remaining water vapour and the pungent smell of a fox lingered in the chiily air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone had obligingly mown the grass surrounding the chapel no more than a day ago

Looking from the  west. This sturdy building ,originally used as the Parish Church of St Clether, until another Parish Church nearer the village, was built in the 13th Century. The chapel was re-built in the 15th Century but then fell into decay until it was again re-built in 1895. The roof was rebuilt once more, a few years ago..

 

 

 

 

 

St Cleder, one of the sons of King Brychan who ruled in part of South Wales, came to this spring as an old man and made his hermitage here . He set up the massive granite altar, which now stands in the adjacent chapel.He died in about 550.

 The Holy Well of St Cleder. Just to the north of the chapel, a  clear  spring of water issues from the hole in the bottom back corner of the trough, and the overflow runs through a pipe into another trough inside the chapel next to the altar, and then out again through the south wall to another healing well before running away down the valleyside to join the River Inny below.

 The massive granite altar below which are buried the bones of the saint. The water from the well flows over these bones and into the troughs before it runs away outside. It is said to have powers of healing.

 

 

 

The dipping well built into the south wall of the chapel takes the water from the trough inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The well and chapel are on private land but open to the public and are lovingly maintained by the owner and a supporting group.

As we walked back to the car we were watched by a young female Kestrel who flew down from their regular nest site among the rocky outcrops of rock above the chapel and perched on the electricity line which runs through the valley.

 

 

Lost or at any rate, apparently un-documented?

 When walking in a fairly remote area of Bodmin Moor with the children some forty or more years ago, we came upon the dramatic spring near Rusheyford. It lies between the abandoned little farmstead of Rusheyford Gate, and the complicated remains of the medieval village of Trewartha  with traces of tracks leading among little houses and enclosures.

Was this generous spring the water supply for these settlements?

There is no sign of any stone surrounds, just a deep pool of crystal-clear water bubbling  and erupting up from the bed of granite gravel some two feet down. We stood at the rushy margin, looking in when Tony dropped his camera into the water! So we have no pictures. If I was fanciful I'd say the spirits of the spring didn't want it to be seen. But I will spoil the end of the story because, if the spirits were malign, the camera was ruined, but if they were healing, the camera would have dried out safely. And I can't remember!!

Surprisingly, despite the size of the spring and its site, I can find no reference to it either as a water source or any sacred properties.

There are many more Sacred Springs in Cornwall, many now overgrown or obliterated, inaccessible and forgotten. In any case, too many for a short piece such as this.