Post-Conference Report

CONFERENCE WALKS TO VALLE CRUCIS AND MYNYDD Y GAER

A view from Mynydd y Gaer

VALLE CRUCIS

“Twas in this Chapter-House I wrote the first sentences of my own Owen Glendower and left it uncorrected because the spirits of those Cistercian monks were inspiring it....”

On Saturday afternoon a group of Conference-goers followed the towpath, a short distance, beside the still waters of the Llangollen canal as far as Pontefrelin and then by field paths with fine views of Bryn Hyfryd and glimpses of the buttresses and arches of the Abbey seen through the trees, to reach the well preserved remains of JCP‘s “scholastic sanctuary in the mountains.”

Links with JCP are very strong here. He visited the Abbey in 1935 with Phyllis and wrote in his diary that he wished to be buried here, beside Glendower’s bard, Iolo Goch. He came here again in 1945 on a holiday with his son, Littleton, who had just been ordained in the Roman Catholic faith. JCP loved the cool interior of the chapter house, and must have found the tranquil riverside location, and the historical connections of the place, as well as its associations with the mother church of St Mael and St Sulien in Corwen very appealing. It was thus here on 24 April 1937 that he began to write Owen Glendower.

The Vale of Llangollen, and the area around Valle Crucis, with its local traditions, myths and stories about King Arthur, and a Grail castle on top of Dinas Bran reminded JCP of Avalon and the Glastonbury legends, just as the monk’s fishpond in the Abbey grounds, the beautiful west front, circular window and rib vaulting of the Chapter House also reminded him of Glastonbury Abbey and the remains of a once prosperous Cistercian abbey in Montacute,

On the way to Valle Crucis green fields and flower filled meadows could be seen reaching down to the edges of the canal leaving space for sheep and cattle to roam freely along its muddy banks. On the other side, the towpath follows the route of the steam railway and the river Dee, connecting, at a point beyond the motor museum, with the Horseshoe Falls and the Chainbridge Hotel, where the river plunges dramatically and noisily over fallen trees and massive boulders. Gaily painted leisure barges, some drawn by horses, now occupy part of the route to Valle Crucis which was once crowded with vessels carrying raw materials to the industrial centres of England.

The views of Dinas Bran, with its foundations “sunk in the mysterious underworld of beyond reality” seen from the two path, or, more prominently, from Coed Hyrddin, the hill on the other side of the road opposite the entrance to the Abbey, leave the visitor with no doubt why JCP thought that this was a very special place. In an essay in Obstinate Cymric, Wales and America, JCP recalled  that: “...never...not even in Glastonbury – have I felt the spirit of what Spengler would call the Spring time of our Faustian culture as powerfully as in this holy ground.”

MYNYDD Y GAER

A small fleet of cars transported other conference-goers further afield to Corwen where our ‘ael’ and goal was the summit of Caer Drewyn -- the impressive Iron Age fortress called by Powys Mynyd Y Gaer – a name which you can also see on a local sign post pointing the way to the hill.

Our route to Corwen took us through a landscape made familiar by repeated readings of Owen Glendower and Porius. Leaving Llangollen we went past the tiny community of Berwyn where the gaunt peaks of the Llantysillio mountain range could be seen in the distance, till we reached the picturesque villages of Glyndyfrdwy and Carrog, passing the heather and bracken filled hilltops of Coed Pen Y Garth, Craig Y Rhos and Coed Bwlch Coch.  Entering Corwen, which JCP in Porius frequently refers to under its other names of “The White Choir” or “The White Circle” we easily found good parking in the middle of town in the rather grandly named Corwen Interchange (a car park with facilities and a bus stop!). We crossed the Dee by a modern bridge. At this point the river is broad and deep. Willows bend low over the surface of the Dee creating shady spots, like the “pools of Cybele”, where lamprey, Atlantic salmon, brown trout and grayling can sometimes be seen. On the clay banks we looked for green woodpeckers and kingfishers that are frequent visitors here. Perhaps further down stream where the river is shallower there might be found a possible location for JCP’s “Ford of Mithras” which Porius uses to get to St Julian’s fountain on the other side.

Ahead the great round mass of Caer Drewyn confronted us. Early fruiting blackberries in the hedgerows suggested Autumn was on its way. The ever-changing late summer light and muted chiaroscuro effect of the variegated colours of yellow, green and purple that covered the surface of the hill refreshed our eyes. The colour schemes of JCP’s Welsh novels devised by Wilson Knight came to mind -- red and gold for Owen Glendower, and silver, grey and dark brown earth colours for Porius.

Beside Corwen Leisure Centre we followed the course of a disused railway path where oak and elms grow thickly and the sound of blackcaps and warblers fill the air with their song, then skirted the edge of Caer Drewyn untill we began to climb steadily up the north side of the hill to a spot near the summit surrounded by the stone walls of the Gaer. Standing on a carpet of bracken, fern and gorse, we surveyed the spreading valley below trying to identify some of the locations in JCP’s novel Porius, in the panoramic view spread out before us. The Dee itself could easily be identified twisting round the town.  We spotted Cae Coed, which JCP explained means “the clearing in the forest” and the meadow he refers to in his abandoned novel Edeyrnion, known locally as “Dol-pur-gresyn” or “the field of unbearable pity” situated beside the original Pont Corwen, constructed in the eighteenth century, and perhaps  another possible location for the “Ford of Mithras”. Could the gap between the trees in the “greenish black” ancient forest opposite us be the Path of the Dead leading to Y Grug, or “The Mound” - the burial place of Iscovan in Porius? Turning north we could see the “Swamp of the Gwyddyl Ffichti”, the village of Gwyddylwern,  and looking down again at Corwen, on the other side of the river, its buildings seemed more like JCP’s “Brythonic dwellings” than modern houses, we could  pick out  Coed Pen Y Pigyn, the hill behind Corwen church, and a favourite destination for JCP on his daily “round” and walk amidst the thick oak woodland above the town.

We debated the location of Snowdon but dark purple edged clouds had suddenly descended and the tops of the mountains were no longer visible, so we could only discern its general direction.  

As we spoke our voices were lost in the vast open space of the Gaer. Approaching the very top of the hill the cry of a buzzard startled me. A raven flapped its wings nearby.  I thought of the croaking raven of Llangar, of Sycarth, Mithrafael and the descent of the Kings of Powys Fadog. I thought of Powys himself, for whom Caer Drewyn never lost its fascination, the omphalos of his imagination. I thought of Powys newly arrived in Corwen, “ a wayfarer from Dorset”, ascending the “purgatorial mount”, situated high above the Dee Valley, and making his way to the ruins of an abandoned shooting lodge, called Liberty Hall, built in the early twentieth century by a local landowner, Lord Northborough. Here JCP erected stone “stele” – memorials for family and friends  - “a regular burying ground of my Dead Heroes and Glory Ground of my Living Ones!” he told Katie.  From here JCP looked back across the river at the Gaer. In his mind he had already filled “the absolute blank” of Dark Age history with his own self-created stories and invented characters.

The Gaer, empty now, felt however preternaturally alive. The buzzard and the raven had fallen silent. The sound of the wind in the thorn trees and bracken was all that accompanied our descent to the car park. Somehow I felt that the past and the present were not so far apart. The image of the Mithraic Sun God, the lion headed figure encircled by a serpent, the deos leontocephalus, the god of time and eternity worshipped in the Hellenic mystery religions, whose statue Porius glimpses in the Cave of Mithras, but which left his “religious sensibility” quite cold, rose up, fleetingly, in my mind, then disappeared, and I thought I understood what Powys had meant: “As the old gods were departing then so the old gods are departing now.”

Chris Thomas