bewilderbrain

Monday 24th March 2025
Walk start time: 8.59am
Walk finish time: 10.07pm
Walk area: Gelliwion and mountain path
Miles walked: 2.56

It’s the start of a new week, and after the chaos of the gas engineers being in the house all of last week, I am hoping that this will include much more time outside, and some walking…

There is a lot I would like to achieve today, as always, but I dismiss the part of my brain that is telling me there is too much stuff to sort out in the house.

Everything is easier after a walk –  it’s the most important thing for me to include in my day. It won’t be a long one, but I will enjoy it.

The weather feels relatively mild for March, and there is a soft haze in the air, not quite sunshine, but that pre-sun light, where the sun sits behind the thinnest layer of cloud – strong enough to cast faint shadows on the green banks of the roadside – but not yet completely revealed.

As I start the approach to the mountain road, I try to download a Dictaphone app – which of course involves some stress, and my phone starts asking me to update things and various other questions about permissions that I haven’t got the foggiest clue about. It distracts me from the earliest part of the walk – which is annoying – but I’m keen to have a go. To give my brain a little nudge by recording details as I go.

On a brick wall outside a house, a Jackdaw stands about two feet from me, on top of a bin, bolding looking at me, with a sturdy piece of twig in his mouth, as if challenging me to find one better. I guess that nest building must be in full swing.

As I ascend the steep hill, the sun comes out fully and my jacket comes off and gets tied around my waist. I seem to have got the app working on my phone, so I start talking quietly, feeling like a proper berk. People don’t say berk enough these days. Such a satisfyingly ridiculous word.

At the top of the allotments, a repetitive bird song catches my attention. The bird in question is a small brown affair, perched on top of a large shrub, unperturbed by my presence watching him. My Bird App identifies him as a Dunnock, and I listen happily for a few moments to his trill song to me, which is a fluting lilt, perky and cheerful.

Along the verges and garden edges up here, bright patches of yellow primroses join the array of spring sights. I adore the scent of primroses, but there is something so particular about the shade of yellow as well, its pale lemon freshness holds an innocence and hope, and there is something of a childlike simplicity about the neat little clusters they grow in.

A tall brightly blooming yellow shrub in a garden provides a burst of colour in the still principally bare landscape, and I vow to try and identify it when I get home. I photograph a few bunches of simple wildflowers on the verge, vowing to identify them also.

A huge variety of birdsong now surrounds me as each step takes me further from the road noise. This is joined by the sounds of people sweeping and moving pots around in the large front gardens and driveways up here. There is a sense that both nature and people are finally realising that spring has actually arrived, and that they better be outside, to ready themselves for all the new season may have to bring.

By the time I turn onto the mountain, the traffic noise has faded still further – one of the things that makes this direction one of my favourite to walk in. Three vivid clusters of daffodils herald the turn-off onto the circular path that runs along the edge of the mountain, behind farms and across heathland.

As I amble along the path, more bursts of primroses peep from the bare banks, and a wood-pigeon begins to coo calmly amidst the trees.

This is one of my absolute favourite sounds. It somehow instantly evokes something vague and undefinable, but idyllic, about childhood. It also instantly makes me think of camping in the early morning, which gives me a little thrill of excitement.

The sun continues to lazily poke in and out from behind the clouds, as if it will determine the arrival of spring in it’s own time, and its feeling pretty chilled out this morning thank you very much.

 The general hubbub of birdsong is now dense and purposeful, and two Great tits add in their persistent saw-like call, to and fro, across the pathway ahead, seeming to reverberate around the valley.  

I pass the large and idyllic looking houses that hide away up here, including one with a beautiful front garden in which abundant bird feeders surround a tree, bordered with bright narcissus.  I pause to photograph some more primroses.

I realise that the Dictaphone app has come up with some more messages to distract my attention, one of them appears to say that it has infected my phone with a virus. This is probably nonsense, but at this point I’m not prepared to let it distract from my walk, so I close it. My bird app and camera will suffice.  

I ascend to the highest point of the circular walk here, where the views over the valley are spectacular in the hazy sun. I had been intending to retrace my steps today, to keep my walk relatively short, but I gaze at the path stretching out behind the farm before me, gentle sunlight making the auburn hues of the bracken bright and inviting, and I can’t resist continuing.

The path continues with a gentle slope of mountain up to my left, and the field and outbuildings of a farm down to my right. A cockerel belatedly advises me in no uncertain terms that morning is very definitely here, and as he does so, lambs add their urgent bleating to the farmland soundtrack. I can see a small pony, as well as two goats grazing, the grass of their field appearing so as expertly trimmed as if someone had been over it with nail scissors.

The sun is warmer again now as the path slightly descends, and I am almost sorry to enter the woodland walkway leading to the main mountain path. But as I do, the dense, resinous scent of the pine trees greets me, and I inhale deeply, enjoying not just the pine but the earthy mulch smell of the woodland track.

The path stretches openly before me, not a soul in sight, bare deciduous trees flanking the sides before giving way to the dense evergreens of the mountain.I think for the hundredth time how lucky I am to have such access to nature on my doorstep.

Another birdsong, this time a Chiff Chaff, adds to the immersive sounds around me, and a little further on I pause to identify another song, a nuthatch, adding its chirp to the spring chorus.

As the path moves on to the wider main track which wends its way all the way up the mountain, the dry crunch of the gravelly stone lends a particularly satisfying air to my footsteps. Left, right, left right, breath, walk, breath, walk. Its rhythmic sound is calming, grounding.

An older man with two fluffy dogs pauses to talk to me. I usually dislike small talk, but its somehow different when I’m out walking. Someone else is out sharing nature too. We talk about what a beautiful spring day it is, and I give his dogs a stroke and he tells me about them and I listen.

After a minute or two we smile and move on, and I wish him an enjoyable walk. I think, as I have done many times before, about how simple things can make such a difference to someone’s day. A conversation, a smile, a kind word, all subtlely feeding into the mood and tenor of your day.

You can never know what experience a stranger may be having, but I always try to smile, or to chat if a person seems to want to. You never know when you could be the thing that changes their mood or brightens their day, and it will only improve your own.

As I reach the bottom of the mountain path, turning the corner and changing direction to walk along the lane next to the fields, the sun is now full on my face, and I feel a full proper heat from it, which my whole body seems to respond to and revel in.

I think of this heat warming the earth, warming the roots of burgeoning trees, flowers or vegetables, breathing life into sleeping soils, giving nature permission to begin its great unfurling.

The excitement of spring bubbles gently in my thoughts, buoying the short remainder of my route home.