bewilderbrain

Beacons of elusive sunlight, a bounty of birds, yet more unwalked pathways, and the stark beauty of a winter mountain…

Thursday 29th January 2026
Walk start time: 9.50am
Walk finish time: 11.01am
Walk area: Graig mountain pathways
Miles walked: 2.3

The shimmering mists and sun we were treated to yesterday -which provided such a dazzling slice of relief from the constant rain -are sadly but a memory.

The forecast for today is something along the lines of dark grey cloud that is reluctant to take no for an answer.

It is, however, not raining, so I must get out before the newly installed Welsh monsoon season reawakens.

I am physically tired this morning, but my brain desperately needs a walk, and I set out in a random direction, not uncommon for me, having no real idea of my intended destination.

As I make my way down one of my neighbourhood streets, away in the distance, a beam of low winter sun through a narrow shaft of blue sky descends onto Graig mountain.

It is a portent, I decide. So that way my feet must fall.

Further along the road, a silly gull appears to be nesting on a chimney pot. It is perhaps sensibly warming its bottom, but it looks comical nonetheless.

Ascending the steep slope of factory lane, the birdsong is full and vibrant from the small patches of wooded scrubland that flank the road.

I stop to take in the variety of conversational twitters and calls, like an infinitely elevated version of a morning catch up around the coffee machine.

Small birds flit in and out of the trees, the morning light silhouetting their tiny forms against the bare branches.

My bird app identifies one of the delicate melodies as a firecrest, and I catch the tiniest flash of green between the boughs.

Wending my way up through the higgledy piggledy terraces of the Graig, a black and white cat eyes me curiously from a corner window, it follows me to the next window, and attempts, alas unsuccessfully, to bat at me through the glass.

I reach Graig Avenue, and one of the entrances to the mountain, immediately seeing that monsoon season has left abundant muddy puddles for me to manoeuvre through at the start of the path.

Logistical ungainly leaning and leaping completed, a short way on, I stop again. The path either side is surrounded with young bare trees and bushes, which are alive with birds.

I let their songs envelop me, and watch the bold robins and more furtive tits darting and landing, darting and landing.

Two or three bullfinches are spotted, their deeper red bellies and smartly contrasting black caps adding tiny splashes of colour to the barren branches.

The song of dunnocks weaves through the other notes, a common bird, but with something uniquely cheerful about their trill, fluting melodies.

I am about to move on, when the movement of a larger bird just a few metres ahead startles me.

It leaves the side of a small tree and disappears in a flash, but not before I catch an all important glimpse of a white belly splashed with red – distinct bright white spots throughout the tips of its black wings.

A woodpecker.

It’s the quickest of glimpses, but the red is at the base of his belly, and I’m reasonably certain he’s wearing a black hat not a red one, so I think he’s a Great Spotted. But greater or lesser, and fleeting or not, what a wonderful sight to start a walk with.

Though any bird, any nature experience in fact, is important. (See also Bird Therapy – The RSPB Big Garden mood lift)

As I move onto the main mountain path, the view of the town starts to open out to my left, further patches of distant sun illuminating swathes of mountain through the surrounding grey.

The open bracken topped mountain and its diverse variety of trees and undergrowth seems to be a magnet for birds on this very chilly January morning. Amidst the interludes of determined robin song, I hear some unfamiliar notes, and spot a little shape balancing precariously on the top of a conifer. My bird app identifies the song as a Siskin.

The barren winter landscape offers some particular advantages to the walker, one of them being visibility. Smaller, wending cross pathways, so often overgrown or entirely invisible in the summer months, magically appear.

I find it hard to resist an unwalked pathway – so today I take a small turn off into the bracken blanketed land to my right, where a clear path seems to follow a tumbledown wall gently up the hill.

As I ascend the slope, the dry bracken crunches satisfyingly under my feet. The sound of the traffic becomes distant as I move further from the roads, and the gentle crunch and the sound of the birds becomes a soothing personal soundscape.

There is no frost today, but the air is chilly and the wind brisk – I am reminded as I zip my collar further around my neck, that at this point of the year we really are still in the very depths of winter.

(See also my last walk – Into a frosty wonderland)

Over to my left, beyond the drystone wall, further walls are strewn across the hilltop, many of which are doubtless hidden in other seasons.

I love the way they ramble, reassuringly ancient, over the bare winter mountain, accentuating its stark seasonal architecture. They are innocuous but immovable, like tenacious bones of history – holding the landscape together.

I do get a bit excited about a nice drystone wall.

The view over the bracken, bare trees silhouetted on the horizon, showcases a battle between sun and cloud, light and shade. Sweeping dark clouds are dominating, but the war is far from won, and sunlight seen next to shade is, after all, more brilliant in contrast.

At what feels like a pinnacle point, the path diverts into several slender offshoots, like trickling tributaries of a stream. My sense of where I am on the mountain, tenuous at the best of times, is rapidly disintegrating.

I turn in a direction that feels like I am going slightly back on myself, and the path becomes narrow and trickier, even in its winter garb. I doubt this route would be passable at all in summer.

A deep gulley falls way in front of me as I approach, adding to my sensory uncertainty – I feel sure I have never seen this part of the mountain before.

I take a steep and narrow path, slippery with mud, down to what appears to be an open grassy patch of land some way below. Amidst the deep browns and oranges of the bracken, the brilliant greens of ferns and mosses act as bright reminders of growth and renewal, even in the fallow time of winter.

The clouds have been drawing in again on this stretch, and the wildness of the mountaintop has me thinking of wuthering heights, and dark liminal landscapes that seem to straddle night and day, dawn and dusk – reality and imagination.

I am enjoying this particular thought process as I balance precariously on my heels on the narrow path, photographing the moss, when I look up in momentary horror to see four Irish Wolfhounds materialising from the now misty path ahead.

I have imagined myself into the Hound of The Baskervilles…

They are followed however, by a very un-ghostly looking chap in a flat cap and camouflage jacket, and the amount of leads and canine paraphernalia that you would expect to see when walking four dogs the size of medium donkeys.

They disappear ahead of me, and I emerge from my little mossy pathway to find myself at yet another grassy crossroads.

I randomly stride off to the left, having now lost all sense of where I am entirely, but with a reasonable degree of (historically misplaced) confidence, that I can find my way back via the same path if I need to.

The path ahead follows the line of the ravine that was visible above, and descends into a woody landscape where all the sounds surrounding the mountain are muted, and the birdsong, as well as the trickle of a small stream are intensified.

As I stop to identify some birds in a tree, and a little robin lands close to my feet, scuttling back and forth, and well camouflaged in the russet leaf mulch. He pecks busily, and then pauses to look serious for a moment, as if trying to remember where he had left a particular worm.

As I descend the path further, the curve of the landscape ahead begins to look familiar, and I arrive at the kissing gate I have passed through several times before on the Graig circular mountain trail. I know this bit.

If only I could now remember exactly where I had come from…

Instead of going through the gate into Treforest, or taking the steep uphill climb to join the circular, I retrace my steps on my newly discovered pathway, in order that I can take one of its many unknown offshoots to find my way home.

I am rewarded further on, back past the woodland gulley, with a grassy path over rocky open hilltop. Rivulet streams pass busily beside me, and a little flurry of bluetits takes off from an apparent drink or bath in a large puddle.

I reach a meeting point, and realise I have joined up to the main circular pathway at what I think of as the “Shetland cow field” due to the magnificent beasts that regularly inhabit it, and I am therefore nearly home.

For a moment, the sunlight regains some force against the chilly air, and I stand listening – to the many birds – and to the delicious gurgle of water down the rocky wall.

The Shetland cows are sadly absent today, but I spend a few minutes watching a female blackbird ferreting around in a farmyard corner.

As I reach the last stretch of the path, woodsmoke curls invitingly from a farm dwelling, a backdrop of deep green pines beyond. A vision of seasonal homeliness in an ever changing winter landscape.

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