BONES, BANDITS AND A COUNTRY-LONG VIEW
How an idle trip up a little Welsh hill became one surprising day.
You don’t meet anyone else up here,” said the lone walker we met up there. Cadair Idris lurked over his shoulder, the Arans stood over mine, and at the edge of my vision were the Rhinogs. The lone walker stepped aside a bit and nodded out to the surrounding landscape. “Not bad, is it?” I squinted at some bluish bumps near the southern horizon and consulted a mental map of Wales: “Is that... are they the Beacons, those hills?” I then turned and pointed the other way. “I’m fairly sure that’s Snowdon. Is that Snowdon?” All of us stood and looked around. “Are we looking at the whole of Wales?”
Maesglase sits towards the south-east of Snowdonia and is the highest of the Dyfi Hills. At 674m it’s not the highest of many other hills, pretty much just those, but its position and shape draw attention. I first spotted it after climbing Cadair Idris. That night, I spread out the map and scanned the contour lines around Dolgellau: to the left was the sea, no hills; to the right, amid swirling contours and blocks of forestry was an angular, steep-sided peak. It stood connected to, yet distinct from, most others, its edges marked with the dark lines that mean crags. It was just down the road, and would fold neatly into a day. I marked it and folded the map neatly into my pack. At this point, I had yet to actually set eyes on the hill.
Seen from above, on three sides Maesglase is almost square, its north-eastern cliffs backing up against each other at blunt angles. From below though, it looks entirely different and my expectations, drawn from the lines on the map, were entirely skewed. Where cartography showed straightness, geology showed curves. From its flat roof, Maesglase sweeps downwards in graceful lines, unbroken and flowing, like you might draw with a fine ink pen. Some aspects of the hill glow in the sunlight, others lie deep in shadow. We drove in that morning on a day when the valley below was dark, cold and skinned with frost; while the top basked flat in early sunshine.
The lines of the hill make a natural lilting route and photographer Tom and I opted to follow the crags like a path. We’d start by climbing through woodland and abandoned quarries to neighbouring Foel Dinas before crossing a ridge to Maesglase and its edges.
The sun flickered through leaves as we strolled upward, birds singing, the shadows cool. The quarries caught the early morning sun and bounced its light around their pale walls. At the bottom a stone tunnel disappeared into the hillside, a stream trickling out of it. I crept in – it smelled like cold, damp darkness. Later, I would look at a snap and see distant light: this tunnel bore straight through the hill.
After clambering steeply upwards, we emerged on a gentle, grassy top with an immense sense of openness on all sides. Maesglase stood across a short, deep valley, its cliffs dropping sharply to the floor. Over we went, to the wooded linking ridge, down and up the other side. The bulk of the hill rose to the left and a flattish wedge to the right, where the cliffs capped out. We aimed for the drops. I edged out and peered down; at my boots, where the ground vanished away, was a pile of tiny bones. A bad sign when you’re standing on a precipice?
I gathered them into my pocket before standing carefully back. Peregrine falcons like a high and wide view, so they can spot prey from afar. Cliff edges like this are prime territory and I let my peripheral vision rest on the open sky at our feet, hoping to see one dart out over the green valley. It lay cupped beneath us, squares of field stitched together with hedgerows, stuck about with trees. A perfectly encapsulated patch of land, every inch of it visible – if you have the eyes of a hawk.
We only had poor substitute human eyes though and after doing our best to make out tiny things far away, we left the cliffs and headed for the hill’s rounded head. This time I didn’t need sharp vision to notice something peculiar as we trekked toward the 674m top: the grass we were walking over was short, in a regular sort of way, with vague parallel lines tracing over it back and forth. “Tom,” I had to check myself before saying this... “has this mountain been mown?” We looked down – this was not the close crop of sheep or the low growth of altitude, this grass had been cut by a blade. It wasn’t the whole hill, just a close shave over the summit. Someone had been over it with a lawnmower.
The summit itself is indistinct and we didn’t look closely for it, at one point we just stopped walking and started looking. Everywhere around us were rippling blue-green hills, Cadair huge off to one side. Over there the Rhinogs, there the Arans, Plynlimon, Snowdon. We stood in one place and pointed out all the major mountain groups in Wales. Not imagining them, but seeing them, pale blue and hazy on the horizon, some close enough to make out their distinct shapes. It was here that we bumped into our lone walker and on this small hill we all stopped and stood and stared. I had expected to see a mountain but we were gazing across a country. There’s a natural, lazy sprawl to Maesglase, several ridges reaching out to
drop down to the valley or link up with more hills. Our route stayed high and traced the edge of steep terraced cliffs.
The day was bright, the sun falling warm, with only a faint touch of wind – a friendly sort of day. But this wasn’t always a friendly sort of place. Once upon a time it was a terrifying one, a lawless area terrorised by thieves and bandits. These outlaws, the Red Bandits of Mawddwy, turned up around Dinas Mawddwy in the 15th and 16th century. This wild area being quite outside the reach of the law and the gangs themselves pretty violent, they could largely do what they wanted. They stole cattle, possessions and money from householders, creating such fear that – according to one story – local farmers built scythes into their chimneys to prevent the thieves coming down them. Punishments were barely less ruthless than the crimes themselves – not far away was a rock by a small lake, from which criminals were thrown to their deaths. Now the rock is gone and the A487 cuts through the place where the lake was, the Red Bandits live on only in stories and the name of a Mallwyd pub. Now, it’s a quiet, safe and peaceful place. Then, without warning, the air is shredded open with a screaming roar.
I barely have time to get my eyes in focus. The underside of a military jet plane rears up in front of us, banks sharply and tears off down the valley. Tom is ecstatic; I am confused and tingling. Another jet rips down the valley. As it turns out, there is precedent for this. The summit might be seldom visited but the slopes are not – the pass below funnels into a narrow gap where keen photographers wait to see military aircraft on low-flying training loops. The Mach Loop – the happily sonic-sounding shortening of Machynlleth – is famous, and not just among plane spotters. The aircraft at times fly so close to the hills that you could see into the cockpit, but so fast that you would never be able to look in time.
We wait, ears pricked for the sound of approaching engines, but the valley is quiet again. I gaze along it as we traverse the downward slopes. Parts have lain in blue shadow all day, still grazed with last night’s frost; other areas have baked in umber sunlight for hours. The contrast is distinct, highlighting the angular lines of this hill, its shadow marked in light ice on the ground. The route back to the car will be simple once we reach the road, following footpaths, ending in a little village, with a pub.
I think back over the day, without the unusual stuff: we’ve climbed gentle, quiet slopes in golden sunlight; explored a hill with beautiful lines; seen for miles. Even without the surprises, it would be glorious. I was expecting a simple hill with good-looking cliffs – not bones, bandits and jet planes, or views the length of Wales. But small things do often contain multitudes and the hills do frequently surprise you.