I’m back at home now after a few days away with my dear writing chums/ We had a splendid time, and it wasn’t even spoiled by the fact that when I was dropped off at home, I couldn’t find my house key and husband was rehearsing with his new band. Nothing daunted, I went down to the boatyard and sat in the sun reflecting on the last few days, and when it got a little chilly, I drifted along to the Dolphin and waited there. This is what I wrote on Day 2:
Yesterday, the first full day of our short writing jaunt, we decided to explore the locale on foot and left our rather lovely and definitely interesting accommodation and set off. I’d no real clue where we were going (in fact, I had no real clue as to where we were apart from knowing we were in south Wales on the outskirts of the town of Tredegar) I just followed as we turned left out of our house and then left again up a narrow road, heading towards a green mass of trees. A woodland walk? We kept on up the road and walked beside what was obviously part of a larger wood then continued up through an estate of houses. You might have noticed there were two ‘ups’ in the previous sentence, and one on the sentence before. There was a huge amount of up with a very severe gradient, in fact it was so severe that to me it seemed almost ferocious.
I am a very slow walker – my excuse is that I have very short legs, but it didn’t really wash as my two chums are not exactly giraffe-like. I can’t remember now if we knew exactly where we were going, but we were following directions in the local information left in the house, and in fact we were heading up to St James Park. The more we ascended, the slower I got, but all was well, we’re the sort of chums who each go at our own pace and before long (but with much panting from one of us) we arrived at a most lovely sight, and a lovely site, a beautiful lake reflecting the brilliant blue sky and the surrounding trees.
St James Pond, as it is actually called is not only lovely but is a popular place for fishing, and we saw several people with their lines out, hoping to catch the carp, perch, roach, rudd or trench which swim there. We only saw some plump black tadpoles! Apparently, the site is also one of five Dark Sky Reserves in Blaenau Gwent.
An IDA International Dark Sky Reserve is a public or private land possessing an exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights and nocturnal environment that is specifically protected for its scientific, natural, educational, cultural, heritage and/or public enjoyment. (darksky.org)
We circumnavigated the lake, pointing things out to each other, and no doubt storing all sorts of details in our mental filing cabinets of all sorts of ideas which were springing in our writerly minds. If we visited again I would love to wander up into the woods, maybe taking a picnic as well as pens and notebooks. One unfortunate thing we noticed was the amount of rubbish lying around; if we’d had a plastic bag we would have picked up some of it – and in fact as we completed our stroll round the lake/fishing pond, we met a lady with a rubbish-grabber and a bag and we thanked her.
Of course, for every up there is a down, and going down with achy knees is sometimes worse than going up! Slow but steady, and plenty of stops to admire the magnificent view, and before long the path evened out and in less time than it took us to go up, we were back in our temporary home and deciding whether a cup of tea or glass of wine would be the thing!
“Just think of the nice cup of tea we’ll have when we get home!!”
Lois Elsden 