Day 24 - Corris to Dinas Mawddwy

So began my dad's day. After a much better sleep, I set off to retrace his steps. Corris looked splendid in the sunshine. I passed a motoring enthusiast’s house with a 1934 MG parked outside and two vintage petrol pumps. Last pic is the working pump lamps lighting my way home the previous evening but without the MG which he presumably doesn't leave out overnight!

The band of enthusiasts got their way although it took until 2002 before the Corris railway finally reopened to the public. It only runs on Saturdays at present though so I just had a quick look at the station and got on my way.

Not knowing whether the Post Office in Aberllefenni still existed, let alone sold anything for a decent lunch, I bought mine from an upmarket but very friendly deli called Idris Stores in Corris. Pretty sure that wasn't around 50 years ago!

The valley heading North-East out of Corris is very scenic and unspoiled. Along the way I heard a buzzing noise and a lot of baa-ing, the sound of sheep being sheared nearby. Upon reaching Aberllefenni the first thing that struck me is the enormous hole in the side of the mountain that looms over the village (just visible in 2nd pic below), an abandoned mine.

I saw a red post box and then saw the house it was attached to bore the name “The Old Post Office”, now clearly closed down. For some reason seeing that building that had once been that little country post office where my dad bought his lunch hit me emotionally more than anything else in this trip so far. I can't explain why that small detail should have mattered but it did. Maybe because it was because it was such an innocent moment. Whatever the cause I felt myself welling up with tears and missing him then and even more so as I write this the next evening.

Although the tramway was dismantled in the late 70s and the slate mine itself closed in 2002, the slate mill is still operating, processing slate from other quarries (first pic below). The mines may not be open but there’s no hiding the catastrophic impact they made on the landscape. I walked up a footpath into the quarry areas to look about. Huge hills of slate, much of it looking perfectly usable, were piled high in dangerous heaps. A builder could work the rest of the life without buying any more materials just by using what's discarded here. The remains of the mines, especially Foel Grochan, the gaping hole in the mountain that dominates the valley, are undeniably striking, if blights on the landscape but I felt a strange sort of melancholy draw towards them. I’d like to have taken one of the tours of mine workings in Corris if I’d had the time.

Funnily enough I chatted to an English guy outside the old post office who had driven past this village 20 years ago after taking a wrong turning whilst going on holiday and been struck by the hole in the mountain and the funny littoral row of workers cottages. Then years later he’d been offered a job at the excellent Centre for Alternative Technology down the road and wound up living in the very same cottages.

Back following my dad and although the signs were long gone, I located the same road he travelled which is now a fully paved public road, although smaller forestry tracks that maze through the plantations still branch off from it.

I followed this road all the way. I didn't pass many more people than he did, a couple of builders fixing a bridge and a single cyclist. The route wasn’t through as deep a forest as he walked though, presumably because the parts nearest to the road had been recently felled, so I wasn’t as immersed in the forest, even if the views were better. It was sad to see all these plantations with scarred hillsides of dead trees next to others awaiting the same fate. As the evidence now shows, trees communicate with and support each other and are no doubt well aware when they are all being cut down en masse. It’s the tree equivalent of a slaughterhouse. And all so needless when there are so many more sustainable methods such as coppicing that can provide everything we need without the same ruthless disregard for the rest of life. At one point I saw a dead tree with a plaque on it, saying it had been planted in 1956 by the International Union of Forest Research Organisations’ delegates from several countries. I’m glad they can't see it now.

Dovey Forest, or at least this path through it, had its moments, chiefly amongst them the small stretches of ancient woodland that are are too steeply situated along the river valley to be economically viable to chop down. These run alongside the road for much of the way. Another highlight was seeing a red kite fly close overhead. Any chance to relax and enjoy the tranquility however was constantly interrupted by the ear-shattering sound of the Americans doing bloody loud military aircraft testimg out every few minutes, which made the whole valley shudder in its wake.

The old railway can be clearly seen just down the valley, in a straight path in the first pic and leading over an embankment in the second.

Here our paths diverged slightly, as the YHA in Dinas Mawddwy has long closed down so I crossed the river to the nearby hamlet of Mallwyd where I checked into The Brigand’s Inn, a very old inn named the famous red-haired robber bandits that terrorised the area many moons ago. Here is how George Borrows describes his arrival there in 1830:

190 years may have passed since those words were spake but the inn still had a roaring fire (if in a burner, a comely-looking bar damsel from Staffordshire with whom I chatted, and a comfy bed in my room upstairs in which I disencumbered myself if my backpack and fell into a doze, dreaming off my adventures. Suitably rested I set off for an evening walk to try to find the former hostel my dad stayed in.

This always struck me as one of the best passages from my dad's travellogue. I went off in search if the old hostel, following a lovely quiet back lane with the river flowing past, until I spotted a farmer getting off his tractor and speaking to a friend.

On a whim I asked then if they'd lived in the area a long time and they nodded. “Do you happen to remember a pair of Brothers named Hughes, one of whom ran the hostel and the other carved walking sticks?” I asked.

“Oh yes, they're both gone now but the warden Gwilym’s family still live in the bungalow next door!”

So I followed the lane up past an old woolen mill, and suddenly there it was, the old school house, hiding behind trees but clearly recognisable. Seeing a bungalow next door with a man and his son sat outside in the garden. I went and said hello, and sure enough discovered that I was speaking to no less than the son and grandson of Gwilym himself, the warden who'd greeted my dad and shown him his brother’s handiwork. The man didn't have any of his late uncle John’s carved sticks any more but apparently John’s widow is still alive and has some so who knows maybe one day I may see them! Funnily enough the craft is still alive, as there was a carved wooden walking stick in the pub in Corris that I’d asked about but were told they were recently made by another local man.

I asked about the old school to happily discover that it too is still uses as a bunkhouse, but now owned by a school in the Midlands who use it for school trips. I thanked them and went to take some shots of the former hostel before returning to my hotel, delighted at having made that fantastic connection! Here is the old school now, looking almost identical to how it was when he was there, according to old photos I looked up.

Across the road I spotted the Buckley Arms Hotel, where dad made his phonecall home from, and is alai depicted on the payday he sent home that day which survives and is included in his diary. When trying to book this trip I looked then up and they were closed down, having failed to survive Covid. I was happy to see that they have now reoepened again.

Back at The Brigand’s Inn, I had a pie and a pint of cider outside in the evening sun then, feeling flash, went indoors and followed it up with a cheeseboard and glass of port. Following on from this and a funny conversation about cheese with the comely-looking bar damsel, she nicknamed me “The Cheese Man”, so before retiring to bed I signed myself “Cheese Man” in their visitors book.