The
Hay Festival comes to an end today. This is the first year I have been since 1996,
when I heard Sebastian Faulks discussing his latest novel Birdsong. I have been for two days this time, and have greatly enjoyed
the atmosphere, the talks and discussions (some of them superb, others decidedly
quirky); I like the relaxed feel of the Festival, and the scope for whole
families to come and immerse themselves in a place where (of all places in
Britain) books count. Yes, it has been
good to be back in Hay, good to be surrounded by bookshops, to see the swifts
above Hay Castle and the late sun on the Black Mountains.
Taking
in this view while waiting for the bus back to Hereford, I remembered that, ten
years even before my first visit to the Festival, I had once been for a
memorable walk along the Olchon Valley, the other side of Hay Bluff. I wrote
about this walk at the time, and only the other day turned up the typescript. I
don’t think it ever appeared in print, so here it is now. If I had been
blogging in those days, it might have been an early and rather self-conscious post
to my blog – but (hard to believe) the World Wide Web had not been invented
then.
A Short Walk in the Olchon
Valley (1986)
At 10pm the night
before the great Olchon Valley parish walk, I was stuck in a traffic jam trying
to get out of London. The rain was dreadful – real Wye Valley weather in the
West end – and my only consolation as I sat wondering what time I should be
home was that the Black Mountains hike next day was bound to be cancelled. I should have known better.
At 2pm the
following afternoon I was shouldering my rucksack and setting off from Red
Darren car park (in truth little more than an improvised lay-by) in pursuit of
some thirty friends, most of whom had already done a full morning’s walk from
the tail of the Cat’s Back down to Longtown – aptly named – and up the mountain
lane that climbs the NW side of the valley. The weather was ideal, dry and not
too windy. I only got my feet wet once, and that was when fording the Olchon
Brook, a very respectable stream that flows into the Monnow just north of
Pandy. We were to follow the Olchon almost to its source behind Hay Bluff,
climbing up an old track (sunken in places) that led to the top of the pass
and then over and down into Powys.
It must have been
along this same track that Vavasour Powell, the celebrated Puritan preacher,
came on his visits to the dissenting congregation who had made the Olchon
Valley famous as a centre for the Baptist cause as early as 1650. These
Baptists practised immersion in the Olchon Brook, and the names of their first
ministers, Thomas Watkins and Thomas Parry (Llanigon) are still honoured in the
district. The ‘gentle flock of Olchon’ as they were known, met openly at first
in each other’s houses, holding services in Welsh and English; after 1660,
however, they were harassed and had to meet secretly before persecution drove
them out of the valley altogether and westwards into Wales. Wherever they went
(and some finally settled as far west as Rhydwilym in Dyfed) they spread the
Baptist cause that had been nurtured in the barns and cottages of the Olchon
Valley – the same neat buildings we could see from the ridge of the Black Hill.
Some people hold
that walking should be a solitary activity, and jib at the thought of being
part of a crowd on a mountain. I have a certain sympathy with this view, but the
fact is we weren’t a crowd: we soon spread out, and one of the pleasantest things
about such walks is the ebb and flow of conversation as you catch up the person
in front, fall back to wait for someone behind, or simply measure your pace
alone. Thus, in the course of the afternoon, I spoke with a hospital physician
about geriatric care, and negotiated with a small boy who wanted to carry home
in his anorak pocket the remains of a sheep’s skeleton; I discussed the
changing shape of boiled sweets in Britain and the diversity of Welsh
devotional poetry, swapped stories about the perils of automatic doors on tube
trains; argued over the correct name of the hill behind Ludlow that we could
see – just – in the distance (Clee Hill, The Clees, Brown Clee; which was it?
We never agreed) and startled a late lark in the heather.
The varieties of
clothing and gear worn by those walking was always a good topic of
conversation. The joining instructions had advised, with mandarin
understatement, that ‘something rather waterproof is indicated’. In the event,
green wellies, dubbined boots and ladies’ tennis shoes all made it to the top
and down again, although the owner of the tennis shoes had to be given portage over a ford by two members of the PCC.
A man who rather resembled Clegg from Last of the Summer Wine or the whipper-in of a Northumbrian beagling pack was kind enough to compliment me on my turn-out; he did not fail,
however, to remark the trouble I’d had preventing my thick walking stockings from
falling down – an embarrassment I hadn’t experienced since early days at
school. If only I’d remembered my headmaster’s advice: “Never go out without
your garters, boy!”
We were off the
Cat’s Back, that narrow ridge leading down from the Black Hill’s summit, by
5.30pm, and home an hour later. It had been a perfect walk, the ideal antidote
to London traffic jams and all other hazards of the way we live (most of us)
now. The youngest member of the party was four; the oldest – well, much older
than that, anyway.
And why did we do
it? I suppose you could say because the vicar asked us to, because the church
windows needed money spent on them again; but we did it also for the company,
for the change and for the pleasure of discovering a very beautiful valley few
people ever explore. We went for the exercise, we went for the view, we went
for the supper afterwards. All in all, you could say we went for the sheer
heaven of it.
I
have reprinted this piece in memory of two people who had a great influence
on me and who, though they belonged to different generations and different
traditions (one Welsh Baptist, the other Church in Wales), liked and admired
each other: the Rev. Tomos Richards and Canon James Coutts. Each of them
contributed, in different ways, to the writing of ‘A Short Walk in the Olchon Valley’.
Adrian
Barlow
[Illustration: The Olchon Valley, looking
toward Hay Bluff; ©
Copyright Jerry Fryman and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
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