The Edge of Cymru

Product Information

Several days later I told my dad about our walk and asked him if he knew anything about the strange dam up the valley. He told me that we’d clearly walked a long way and that the dam was part of the perimeter of an old factory. The factory was dangerous, he told me, and we should keep well clear of it. His first task was to plot his route on a map, which he reports was no easy challenge. Inspired by Finch’s book, I tried today to draw up a walking route around the outer edge of my own local authority area and can confirm the difficulties with this process that he writes about. Other than the sections of Cardiff’s boundary where it follows a road, a river or the sea, transposing a line on an OS map to the reality on the ground is no mean feat; especially if, as Finch decided from the outset, you rule out knowingly trespassing on private property. The Rhydymwyn Valley was ideal for such a facility because of its steep sides and dense woodland, which concealed the factory from enemy bombers, and its natural limestone tunnels, which could be used to keep the chemicals safe. Bobby also told me:

What emerges in form of a book, is a homage – to Cymru, its past, present and potential future, and to its peoples, land, language and biodiversity. But now, driven by human activity, it is turning into hothouse rather than icehouse at a truly disarming and a fearful rate. This is a fascinating and informative book. It is also, perhaps, a source of inspiration for those of us who feel tempted to try something similar in our own area.With Edging the City, Finch has created a work that is not just a walking guide, but is an historic record of a particular time and place. He puts flesh on the narrative bones of his journey with the monochrome pictures and coloured maps he uses to illustrate his book. There are also links to useful online resources he has created.

We read about a Cymru which is ‘now one of the least wooded and most biodiversity-poor countries in Europe’ where ninety-eight per cent of flower-rich hay-meadows has disappeared,’ where pollinating insects are in steep decline. Microplastics are found in half the mayflies in some Welsh rivers. There is litter in the sea, and so, so much of it. The Alun is a river of tranquillity, of droughts, floods and trade; fortunes made and lost. At times it doesn’t exist at all and yet at the same time it is two rivers! Sad to say what she describes is in a parlous state, a small part of a planet which should, if we follow the patterns of the past, be heading for another Ice Age.

Support our Nation today

There were families that were practically living under martial law and people think you’re exaggerating now, because they couldn’t imagine it. (Christine Powell) The short stories presented vary in style and length and, it has to be said, they are of variable quality too. But I think the whole point was to present a representative picture of Welsh crime fiction in the twentieth century, some of the work good and some necessarily not quite so good. In fulfilling this objective Martin Edwards has fully succeeded and has produced a very entertaining collection with an extremely helpful introduction and notes on each author. The most extensive industrial intervention on the Alun is the Victorian-era Milwr Tunnel. This runs some 10 miles from the upper Alun at Cadole to join the Dee estuary at Bagillt. It was built to help drain Flintshire’s lead and zinc mines and still discharges an average 23 million gallons of water a day. Her journeys take her to Dartmoor, Wales, Scottish salmon rivers, the Fens, the chalk streams of southern England and rivers closer to her home in Yorkshire. Beer writes in a style that is discursive, but which is at the same time engaging and easy to follow. We come from water, and water runs through us. It carries our chemistry and our stories. It shows us more than itself: all the colours and none. We are mostly water for all of our lives, but water is only us for a short time before it becomes something else. Perhaps we leave something of ourselves with it.