My current book project is a very Welsh endeavour. I’m researching the life of our last Prince, Owain Glyndŵr, who raised his standard in rebellion against the English King Henry IV in the final autumn of the fourteenth century.
The Middle Ages were a rich and vibrant time, when people had a quite different conception of the universe and how it worked. In a time before the Renaissance, before the Reformation, and long before the Enlightenment, ancient myths and beliefs were still real and powerful. It was a time before the discovery of the New World. A time when the Roman Empire still clung to life in Constantinople.
So, another part of the book is about how people lived, what they believed – and how, in some ways, they inhabited a different reality to that in which we live today. In many respects, it was as good as – even better than – our contemporary lives.
The Welsh legends are a little different to those of other nations in that they’re incredibly local and grounded. In many cases, of course, they take place in the otherworldly nowhere of all myths – but in many other cases they are tied to specific places which we still know and live in today. Both our historical and mythic landscapes exist within the same postcodes.
I wanted to walk my way through these places. It’s a quest which will take me from Pembrokeshire in south-west Wales to the Wirral, just across the border from northeast Wales, in Cheshire – and onwards to Staffordshire. That’s because I’m not just searching for Glyndŵr, I’m also exploring the tale of King Arthur, and specifically the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
I’m not walking the whole distance, of course; there isn’t any real reason to walk the stretches which haven’t got specific locations or themes that I want to encounter. Nor am I doing it in any specific order. Generally, it’s two or three days of walking at a time, in the places which are convenient.
I started last Halloween in Machynlleth, a place with strong connections to Glyndŵr and his rebellion – and which is close to Cadair Idris, a mountain rich in mythological meaning. Since then, I’ve done stretches in Pembrokeshire, including Slebech – once an important centre for the Knights Hospitaller, an order of warrior monks who keep cropping up in surprising ways as I do my research. I’ve walked in the Preseli mountains, littered with the standing stones, cairns and circles of the prehistoric millennia. I’ve walked through Caron Bog, and through some of ‘the desert of mid-Wales’.
It’s difficult to adequately communicate how glad I am to have embarked on this project, despite the blisters that have come on my last two trips.
To start with the most obvious, it’s helping me to improve my physical health. At first, I struggled to walk seven or eight miles in a day; now I’m doing twelve or so with the same level of tiredness. I hope to improve further. I’m not losing any weight yet, which I badly need to do, but that will come.
Since I moved back to Wales from China in late 2020 I, like everybody else, had to endure the isolation of lockdown. As things opened up again, I found myself sacrificing my plans in order to become the carer of an elderly relative who had also been alone during the lockdown, and who had become very frail. With no-one else to help him, I took on the responsibility of helping him stay in his home, as he wished, and arranging for him to receive care. It’s been a difficult couple of years, but things are now running smoothly. It all took a heavy toll on my mental health, though. Getting through those challenges was a huge struggle.
Walking for days on end in the open air, out in the countryside and surrounded by the natural world has been true medicine. It’s a reminder that this is how we are meant to be: smelling the soil, the leaf mould of autumn, and the intoxicating scents of spring. Marveling at the sun-spears piercing the clouds over the hills and the sea. Being left speechless by the hillsides aflame as the late-afternoon sunlight illuminates the russet winter bracken. Gazing at dozens of birds of prey circling overhead. Walking for hours without hearing any man-made sound.
It’s been a time of deep connections as well. Connections with the people who raised the stone circles and who worshipped in the small stone churches. Connection with the people and communities I’ve encountered along the way. Connections as well that verge on spiritual.
It’s challenging, of course. The last few miles, every time, are taxing. Hills can be a struggle. But it’s always the same: just put one foot in front of the other and trust in the process!
Being outdoors, immersed in nature, has other benefits as well. It removes us from our normal, artificial environment. It stimulates all of the senses, and the mental processes which we evolved to use but which numb and deaden in our striplit offices and submersion in online information overwhelm.
This is why I’m a huge believer in outdoor coaching. It gets us out of our normal limits, and stimulates not just the whole body but the whole psyche as well. It’s why I’m training to be a guide in shinrin yoku, or ‘forest bathing’; its Japanese roots in the nature-based religion of Shinto are totally compatible with the Welsh bardic tradition of the eighteenth century.
So maybe step outdoors for a while. Connect with the natural world. Connect with the histories and tales of the generations who were here before us. Connect mind with body. You’ll be glad you did.
Photo by Zoltan Fekeshazy on Unsplash
Traethiad 