Wednesday 18th March 2026
Walk start time: 8.55am
Walk finish time: 11.35am
Walk area: Maritime, Penycoedcae, Coedberthlwyd, Y Graig
Miles walked: 3.7
Today I just need to walk.
Sometimes, as the sun shines and the energy of spring starts to fizz, our moods feel out of kilter with the joyful expectation it brings.
The turning from winter to spring is an enormous shift in our senses, and whilst we welcome it joyfully, we sometimes need to remember that our bodies are just emerging from their longest deprivation from the sunlight.
Physiologically, Spring can find us at a low ebb, and whilst the first sunny days urge us to jump into action, for many of us, carrying winter’s residual fragility, we do better to ease gently into the bright season.
The sun shines with newly ferocious intent as I manage what can best be described as a steady plod through Maritime industrial estate.
My brain and legs are both tired, and they argued about going out, but I wrestled them into submission. I keep my pace steady, settle in to walking, wanting today very much to let the walk, the route, the scenery, control me, rather than the other way around.
Nature can be my mistress today, and I’d quite like her to be a sparkly kind-eyed old lady of the valleys, proferring tea and scones.
On the route up to my pathway, the heat of the morning sun is causing a gentle mist to rise from the mossy bank of the culvert. The water rushes gleefully, refracting fine droplets in myriad colour, and the bird song, as if fuelled by it’s energy, intensifies.
Arriving at the little clearing that marks my start point, (route 76 on the RCT definitive map) a gentle breeze rustles over the leaves underfoot, and a woodpecker echoes its steady taps through the avian chorus.
This way through the woods appears little used, but I followed a track through it last week, (Walking Diaries – The Forgotten Woods) and I feel pleased to be making my footprints here again, helping to mark its tenuous path.
I take a slightly different course this week, following the bank of the stream to my right through some thick mud, before ascending a pathway of sorts over half buried pipes through the trees.
Great tits bounce insistent calls from one side of the woodland to the other, joined by the more tuneful melodies of robins and nuthatches.
As I reach the edge of the trees at the border with the open land, I stop.
The sun is beating down on me now, with clear blue skies above, all is quiet but for the birds and the rushing water of the stream down the hillside. Across the trees of the copse, a movement overhead, a swift flitter of tiny birds passes close, casting dancing shadows on a nearby sunlit trunk.
I catch my breath a little, take off a layer of clothing, and continue up the soft tussocked pathway through the field, absorbing the brilliant green of the mountain, dotted with vibrant gorse bushes, before arriving at the gate to Llantrisant road.
The hard pavement feels like an insult to my feet after the field, but the views over the town, and the farmland beside me are breath-taking.
Dry stone walls tumble over sunny tufts of long grass, strewn with huge boulders, and occasional sheep. Sharp mountain top horizons are adorned with the bold silhouettes of bare trees, and the fields fold and sweep beneath me in striking contour.
As I cross to begin walking Maendy road, a bleat from the field on the other side of the wall reveals a pair of early March lambs, one sleeping blissfully stretched out in the sunshine, the other capering boldly behind its mother.
It is superbly peaceful up here on this high lane, and bar the occasional car passing, the rhythmic tramp of my footsteps on the gravelly road is the only sound to accompany the birds.
Country lanes are a landscape in their own right, and whilst lacking the softness of grass or the adventure of woodland tracks, sometimes being able to settle into a steady, even walk, unimpeded -one foot in front of the other – is a moving meditation.
On this lane, I am heading directly into the morning sun, and I close my eyes, allowing it to gently warm away some of my winter fragility.
I pass the solar farm, in the fields to my right, and then I find the entrance to the next bit of path, a slightly overgrown kissing gate that leads to a mud and stone open track across farmland. Sunlight glitters from the water lacing beneath the stones underfoot, and wide sweeping views show the valley below in early spring splendour.
I find the divergence in the path I am looking for, at the beginning of the stretch of ancient woodland of Coedberthlwyd. Instead of tracking back out across the open land to my right, I follow a steep but wide track down to the left, further into the woodland.
The path should split again here, one direction a lovely track through the trees to the edge of Treforest, the other rising steeply back up to pass through the grounds of a farmhouse, and it is the latter track (path 93 on the RCT definitive map) I am aiming for.
I walked it once last summer, in Hidden pools in the land of lost treasure. I was coming from the other direction, and the path from the farmhouse was almost entirely covered by brambles. It also took me some time and exploration to find a track beyond this point, and I hope today I might connect the dots from the other side.
I have seen a number of footpath signs on my way, which is reassuring, but despite the gate ahead of me being possible to open, I am disappointed to see that it is held shut with a barbed wire loop. Not exactly inviting, and I actually scratch my hand as I try to gingerly replace it after going through.
From beyond the gate I can see where the farmhouse is, and I know I have gone too far, I need to cross the rushing copper coloured waters of the stream that rushes down the steep little valley beside me, and besides being fenced off, I can’t see an easy place to cross.
Retracing my steps, I eventually find a track much higher up, closer to where I turned off, with more footpath signs and a little stone bridge over the stream.
The landscape here is magnificent. The coppery stream winds steeply down through the ancient woodland, with enormous moss covered boulders, flecked with sunlight, casting their imposing shapes across its banks.
I felt the magic ancient sense of this spot once before, and I feel it again now as I gaze at the scene, surrounded once again by only the sounds of water and birdsong. Above and to my left, fields of yellow straw-like grasses sweep up to a blue horizon, dancing gently in the breeze, and reflecting the morning sunlight.
As I cross the bridge into this landscape the going becomes tricky. Rivulets of water are forming little copper coloured streams through the grass beneath my feet – a mulchy sticky mud that is reluctant to let you through.
I try two or three possible pathways through the mud and long grass, and am quite pleased when I inevitably slip over that my bottom lands on the soft grass rather than the wet mud, until I realise I have put my hand straight onto a bunch of nettles.
Now armed with a somewhat ineffectually small dock leaf clasped across all of my fingers, I continue gingerly over the boggy grass until I reach a dry but steep culvert, which I foolishly step into, unheeding of the well primed mud in a thin layer on its base. This time, I land on my knees, which are less than impressed, and I scramble back up quickly, feeling relieved that my graceless maneoeuvres are unlikely to be witnessed by anyone in this remote spot.
As if by way of consolation, a brilliant yellow-green brimstone butterfly appears, and flutters silently over the sparkling grasses for a moment, just a few feet away from me.
Just up from my crossing place, I spot a little wooden bridge with another footpath sign, where I could have crossed the culvert. The pathway through the grasses back in the direction I came from looks narrow, and I question how easy it will be to see in summer, but I feel empowered by now at least knowing the approximate direction of the route.
Turning toward the farmhouse on the hill above, there is a narrow grassy track between gorse bushes, already being encroached on a little either side by brambles.
The final approach to the stile is thankfully not the jungle I found last time, but the path is still somewhat impeded by greenery, the stile itself onto the farmland in pretty sorrowful condition, and the short stretch of track across the farm behind the barn overgrown and unused looking.
I walk past the barns of the farm, this time with the confidence of knowing that I am on a public right of way, but at the first opening into the main farm yard a van is parked directly across the exit to the track, leaving me only a little space to get around.
Beyond the farmhouse itself, where a gate and stile leads back out to the open pathway, a large trailer has been placed within inches of the gate, and partly obscures the view of, if not the actual access to the stile. These parking decisions may of course be entirely coincidental, but had I not walked this way before, or been confident in my route, I may have turned back for fear of trespassing.
On the other side of the stile is one of the most spectacular vistas I have seen on my walks. Since last summer, a fence seperates the path from the sweeping field with idyllic lake below – but you can still see it.
A gently sloping open field, from which skylarks rose abundantly from the long grasses last year, falls to a curving lakeside, an island in its centre, occasional trees and sheep flanking its perimeter.
The spring sunshine sparkles jewel-like from its surface, Canada geese waddle in comical exploration around its green banks, and red kites hover on the soft breeze above, calls echoing in the open skies.
Above it, just beside the track from the farm, a smaller pond yields a selection of ducks on the other bank, who immediately set about chattering to themselves before launching into the pond intently towards me, clearly hoping for some morning snacks. As I stand on the ponds edge, huge black fish swim silently through the murky blue depths, just a few feet away.
The place is magical, and my pace slows deliberately as I walk the grassy hilltop. It is a land to linger in, delighting in nature’s ripe fullness.
I rejoin the main path which takes the back route across Y Graig, through mixed woodland between stone walls, numerous tributary tracks leading in from the bracken covered open mountain.
Three geese fly noisily across the sky above me in the sunshine, and I watch them pass as I arrive at the highland cow field, which marks the exit of this path, and the near end point of my walk.
I am fortunate in that Florence is in residence today, and she is right next to the pathway, positively basking in the golden sunshine, a picture of bovine tranquility. Her companion, Pansy, also looks utterly contented sitting on a huge pile of mud, steadily chewing her cud in a sunlit shed.
I think my much needed fortification from today’s walk is a lesson from these two cows. To slow down, to enjoy the moment, to relish the simple things in the spring sunshine.
bewilderbrain 
Thoughts or ramblings welcome here…