I walked through the Cambrian Mountains in the footsteps of a Victorian snob

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Author and ‘extreme rambler’ Ursula Martin compares her walk to George Borrow’s 170 years ago. Will she be rude about redheads too?

In 1854, George Borrow set off on a walk from Machynlleth to Devil’s Bridge as part of his extended perambulation around Wales documented in the book Wild Wales which still remains in print today. Inspired, I decided to follow the Slow Way Macdev, a route which runs between his same start and finish points.

A sense of direction

It’s difficult to determine whether Macdev follows the same route. If I wanted to truly do as Borrow did, I would ask the ostler in the courtyard of the Wynnstay Hotel for directions. I would then walk up into the hills with a few sparse placenames to aim for. Without compass or map, Borrow asked as he walked along, approaching the residents of the scattered houses he saw and questioning whether he was on the right route. People gave him directions by the shape of the land, not its roads. 

The Wynnstay Hotel is still in place, serving good dinners, but the horses are gone from the yard. Instead of asking people who probably would not know, I download a route map onto my pocket computer and set out to walk in the glowing sweetness of a spring morning.

The path skirted the golf course, rolling out on a springtime carpet of old bracken, tufts of sheep’s wool and lichen and last year’s leaves, oak and beech. It was the early days of sunshine, hot and bright; the new leaves’ growth fuzzed the lightest of neon mesh onto the bare branches, tree skeletons still visible.

An English ‘gentleman’ 

The route goes from one river valley to another, up from Machynlleth and the river Dyfi into the high mountain lands around Plynlimon, the highest point of Mid-Wales. It eventually drops down to the Mynach valley and the hamlet of Devil’s Bridge, containing a few scattered houses, a large hotel, a steam train station, a waterfall, a gorge walk, and a bridge. Three bridges actually, built one over the other in increasing heights up the gorge. Layers of history in plain view, from plodding hooves and feet to thundering wheels.

I thought of this walk as a way to retrace the steps of George Borrow, an Englishman who went for long walks around Wales. I was more interested in his journey than I was in his perceptions of those he met along the way — he was prone to making patronising remarks about the people he encountered. There’s a lot of value in his book, detailed descriptions of rural Wales and its people in an under-documented era, but crikey, the Victorian English snobbishness and superiority is a bit hard to stomach.

There’s a lot of value in his book, detailed descriptions of rural Wales and its people in an under-documented era, but crikey, the Victorian English snobbishness and superiority is a bit hard to stomach

Here’s Borrow talking about a dodgy peddlar he encounters before proceeding to be rude about red-haired people:

Suddenly I found myself close to a man who stood in a hollow part of the road, from which a narrow path led down to the house; a donkey with panniers stood beside him. He was about fifty years of age, with a carbuncled countenance, high but narrow forehead, grey eyebrows, and small, malignant grey eyes. He had a white hat, with narrow eaves and the crown partially knocked out, a torn blue coat, corduroy breeches, long stockings and highlows. He was sucking a cutty pipe, but seemed unable to extract any smoke from it.

He had all the appearance of a vagabond, and of a rather dangerous vagabond. I nodded to him, and asked him in Welsh the name of the place. He glared at me malignantly, then, taking the pipe out of his mouth, said that he did not know, that he had been down below to inquire and light his pipe, but could get neither light nor answer from the children.

I asked him where he came from, but he evaded the question by asking where I was going to.

“To the Pont y Gŵr Drwg,” said I.

He then asked me if I was an Englishman.

“Oh yes!” said I, “I am Carn Sais;” whereupon, with a strange mixture in his face of malignity and contempt, he answered in English that he didn’t understand me.

“You understood me very well,” said I, without changing my language, “till I told you I was an Englishman. Harkee, man with the broken hat, you are one of the bad Welsh who don’t like the English to know the language, lest they discover your lies and rogueries.” He evidently understood what I said, for he gnashed his teeth, though he said nothing. “Well,” said I, “I shall go down to those children and inquire the name of the house;” and I forthwith began to descend the path, the fellow uttering a contemptuous “humph” behind me, as much as to say, “Much you’ll make out down there.” I soon reached the bottom and advanced towards the house. The dogs had all along been barking violently; as I drew near to them, however, they ceased, and two of the largest came forward wagging their tails. “The dogs were not barking at me,” said I, “but at that vagabond above.” I went up to the children; they were four in number, two boys and two girls, all red-haired, but tolerably good looking.

It’s not tiresome George I want to think about, but what he saw. The working mine up at Esgair Hir, buildings appearing in the mist, a smoky turf fire, a man who tells him he’s not native to the area but instead comes from Aberystwyth, an entire 12 miles away. The shepherd’s children who run out with a glass of buttermilk for a tired passerby. Descriptions of a people who live on what they keep alive themselves, who almost never leave the places they were born, who get visits from peddlars, who believe in the strong pitiless hand of an almighty God.

Descriptions of a people who live on what they keep alive themselves, who almost never leave the places they were born, who get visits from peddlars, who believe in the strong pitiless hand of an almighty God

I think of the woman dressed in “the ancient Welsh female fashion” who snorts when asked the way to Devil’s Bridge (at that time called Pont y Gŵr Drwg in Welsh, or ‘The Bridge of the Evil Man’ — so they did not have to speak the Devil’s name). She refuses to speak to Mr Borrow, just splaying out her fingers to give him a direction.  

Almost 170 years separate us; her inability to have a bank account, to be alone with men that are not her husband, to easily live alone unmarried or control her childbearing. There is more to her experience of life, that I do not begin to understand. How would it be to live in a society so completely controlled by obedience to a Christian God? Would she speak to me if I knocked on the door? In tight bright clothing? With the full outline of my legs on display? With my head uncovered? We would appear as aliens to one another. 

The past is now

Once I climb from natural forests I am in the uplands. There are tracks worn through swaying grass. Single trees dotted far away. Seedheads swaying in the brittle breeze. The light and the sun are unrelenting up here, bouncing off the sea of golden grasses, until I feel like cracked glass, splintered and no longer whole. I am the only human for a few hours, walking around the gentle slopes, looking for a lake that takes an age to come into view.

Lone barns are all that’s left of ancient smallholdings. There are no shepherds to speak to. Borrow recounts falling into bogs up to his knees but I walk on tracks around a reservoir, where hectares of waterlogged upland ground has been dammed and flooded into Nant-y-Moch reservoir, used to produce electricity. A hamlet lost underwater, a graveyard twice-buried — years of Welsh land being done in by English masters is woven into George’s sense of superiority.

A hamlet lost underwater, a graveyard twice-buried — years of Welsh land being done in by English masters is woven into George’s sense of superiority

The roar of present society is quieter in the uplands. There are no cars, no shops, no people, no phone signal to crash a wave of clicks over me that distract the senses and fragment me into the wash of a thousand stories. Just dry yellow grass that bounces underfoot, and the occasional sheep nosing about contentedly, deep in their shaggy coat. 

Here, the tumbled stones of a cottage speak louder than they would ‘out there’, down in the lowlands where humans thrive. Up here the stones tell the story of hard lives and cold winter winds, of shawls wrapped around shoulders and wizened apples stored in the dark. They tell of carts, the slow clop of a pony coming home from a visit out to town, sugar and flour in paper bags, dinner ladled from a pot that has been swung to hang from chains over the fire.

I camp up there, by a lake where the geese splash down with the sunset. Two vans bump their way slowly to the edge of the water. I imagine the beds inside, the pots and pans shifting and swaying. The sense of remote wilderness here is an illusion — I’m only five miles from a main road and came up here once with a boyfriend to learn paddleboarding. The vans don’t stay, and I have the peace of the nighttime to myself; I watch the light dilute into deep black and say hello to the placid sheep in the first movements of early dawn.

A simple life

I’d been working too hard, trying to write a book while getting bogged down by ominous news of world war and climate chaos. This walk made me remember joy again. Living life like this is very pure and straightforward: sit and eat at road edge, enjoy the sunshine, fill water from stream, get up and leave. Easy, that’s all there is. My entire task was to walk from one place to another and enjoy it, nothing else to fill my time but admiration of birds and flowers.

There is a simple joy to walking as far as you can in a day. Walking until you’re exhausted. Until the sweat slipping into your eyes makes you stop to blow a bit and take a swig from your water bottle. Walk into the afternoon until you think you can’t any more, until you throw down your bag in a beautiful patch of grass and lie there, full length, under the quiet branches of surrounding trees. 

Walk into the afternoon until you think you can’t any more, until you throw down your bag in a beautiful patch of grass and lie there, full length, under the quiet branches of surrounding trees

In these moments I stare dazedly at the twigs and the moss as a small spider climbs and fells innumerable grass blades in a quest you can only guess at. Lie there until you doze a bit, in that face-slapped, shocked-tiredness kind of way and then you get up to walk some more, thinking that your feet will always hurt but they don’t after a while and you go another hour or two while you’re looking for a good place to sleep.

I walked up from Machynlleth into the hinterland, into the wilder world where the trees don’t grow and the water pools in soggy ground, and then down again to Devil’s Bridge, into the wooded valleys where the river splashes and runs towards Cardigan Bay. It took 36 hours but I’m sure you could do it more quickly. 

I took my time though, stopped and stared, fell asleep by a lake, admired the hairy bracken unfurling, laughed aloud at the incredible beauty of light on leaves and water, sang songs to the horizon and slogged my way with a grin all the way to the hotel at Devil’s Bridge in time for a good pint and a cheese sandwich. I’m sure George Borrow did too.

Ursula Martin

For the last ten years Ursula has either been walking or writing about walking. She wouldn’t call herself an adventurer, more of an extreme rambler. Her first book, One Woman Walks Wales, is about an ovarian cancer diagnosis and subsequent 3700-mile walk in Wales. Having finished a 5000+ mile walk across Europe, she’s been staying still for a while to write the next book, due to be launched in March 2025. Ursula will be celebrating with a very long walk between bookshops, on Slow Ways! Watch this space…

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