ieuan morris

My first visit to this spot, not fifteen minutes walk from my Cardiff home, was guided by my daughter. She and her friends had explored many of the wooded areas on the periphery of Cardiff during the first Covid-19 lockdown, restricted as we all were to physical exercise in our own localities. 

It’s a relatively small area with a disused railway embankment, free of its rails and sleepers and now an unlikely (and now, very muddy), perfectly straight, elevated path, bisecting its length. To its south, a small ancient woodland of larch and oak, leading to pasture land where horses graze; to the north, arable land leading to a thick, pine forest. It is this variety of natural surroundings that makes a circular walk so captivating. 

What surprised me was how, on entering the woodland, I quickly felt fully immersed in nature. None of its paths has official “public footpath” status. They have all clearly emerged as a result of the curiosity of its visitors and their negotiations with terrain, incidental obstacles and seasonal changes. It is anarchic and, somehow, organic. 

There are paths through fern whose courses seem arbitrary, others detour around fallen trees or winter ponds, and still others appear to lead to objects of interest such as a majestic old oak tree, or through a collection of young saplings. The winter has also provided an opportunity to travers a now barren wheat field, rather than having to skirt around its edges. Such traces evoke the activity of countless others along the same routes, something I found strangely comforting in amongst the ghastly events of the pandemic. There are other, more interventionist traces, also: a makeshift den created by embellishing on a natural canopy that resulted from a tree fall, and tree stumps have been burnt, creating striking sculptural forms. 

The events of the summer, autumn and winter of 2020 have, of course, at various times, limited my natural impulse to explore new landscapes and terrain, but this rich and intimate corner of Cardiff’s hinterland provided much solace.

(Photographs from this series features in the inaugural  Inside the Outside Group's Journal, Right to Roam, 2021)