16/12/2025
Do you talk to yourself? (inside your head, not out loud!) I do. Yesterday, I needed exercise, I rode my bike up by Llyn Crafnant and over to Capel Curig, inside my head I talked to myself...
"It’s cold on the nose this morning, but it’s a good cold. I breathe in and feel my lungs fill with lashings of clean, fresh woodland air. Below me, to the left, a nearby stream is getting on with its business, confident now it’s been filled by days of heavy rain.
I follow a road, a tiny single-track back road, slick after morning drizzle. My bike rolls over it in near silence. There’s no sound from the tarmac at all. The only noise is water running.
Woods line my way. I can smell their dampness, and I wonder if petrichor comes in different flavours depending on the woodland. I hear a tributary stream before I see it, growing louder as I get closer. Every 'nant bach' is full, every 'ffynon' brimming. The sky is grey. It might break, but for now it’s just nice to be out here.
Further on, a steep hillside rises on my right. At first it looks like a jumble of bracken and gorse, but once I slow down I start to notice saplings pushing through - birch, holly, rowan. Conifers are edging in too, spreading out from plantation blocks to the east. It feels like accidental wilding. Maybe this land was once more open, grazed hard for years, with few trees able to take hold. Farming here has changed though; stock numbers are lower now, and the land is responding.
That open ground matters, especially for birds. There are crossbills and siskins in the conifers, but this lightly wooded hillside is where the action is. You might hear a heron passing overhead, or a skylark on a summer’s day. Ravens scavenge here; owls, merlin and harrier hunt; pipit, wren and robin are taken. In spring, some of these slopes are awash with bluebells, and it’s a fine sight when it happens.
Left alone, though, these places can disappear under bracken. In the past it was often controlled with strong herbicides, now banned due to their effects on people and soil. These days the better options are trampling at the right time of year or cutting where the ground allows. If it’s left, bracken takes over and nothing much else gets a look in. It can be shaded out, but that takes time and grazing management. Gorse burning has its place too, but in dry years, like 2025, it carries a real risk of getting out of control. Again, succession will see it out, if left to run its course.
Days like this remind me that observation is not passive. To move through a place attentively is to witness its decisions - where water goes, where trees gain a foothold, where open ground still matters. The smell of damp wood and soil hangs in the air, and the steady sound of running water becomes my companion, it talks to me. In such company, it feels possible to hold complexity without needing to resolve it, to accept change without rushing to name it as loss or gain. I ride on, heartened just enough by having looked, listened and scented my homeland."
