Over the last couple of years, we have explored and reported from communities across Europe. Always trying to distil the essence of a place, whether it be an abandoned township in Spitsbergen, a rural village in Sicily or a bustling street market in Sarajevo. But the texts in hidden europe rarely reveal anything of their authors. The personality behind the pen lies largely hidden.
The unattributed texts in hidden europe are, almost without exception, written by Nicky Gardner. So what of her? In a break with our usual practice, I invited Nicky to write about an area of Europe that has very palpably influenced her feelings for remote rural communities and her understanding of landscape. Nicky has lived and worked in some remarkably obscure places — but the wild moors and mountains of Wales, and the villages of the Welsh valleys, are full of happy associations for her (Susanne Kries, joint editor of hidden europe).
So, just for once, a more personal piece written in a tone and style that is very different from regular hidden europe writing. I hope you like it. If you are blessed with a Welsh accent (or can affect one) and read the piece aloud, you’ll hear it at its best.
Just as the sun set, I caught a glimpse of peat red rills, of deep fissures in the slate, and rough-hewn steps in the rock. There was a moment, just as dusk slipped into night, when the birds fell silent. Even the call of the curlew faded. I was a thousand miles from Wales, but that night I dreamt of Wales. I stood on the bank of the Teifi as it meanders around Tregaron; I touched the heather-clad Cambrian grits, and stumbled up the ancient pony track that edges its way into the heart of the Rhinog mountains.
I have not lived in Wales for years. Yet Wales still haunts me. Ever more with every passing year. I return from time to time for another fleeting encounter with the Welsh hills, to watch the sandbanks grow on the Mawddach as the tide runs out at dawn on a summer morning, and to drive the old drovers' road from Tregaron over to Abergwesyn. That narrow strip of worn tarmac, little more than a dozen miles in all, is my favourite road in all the world. The road, the communities at either end of the route, and the scattered farmsteads along the way, are the very epitome of Welsh-speaking Wales.
Time does not dim the Welsh landscapes of the mind. On the contrary, the gaunt outline of Cadair Idris grows more vivid by the day.
Time does not dim the Welsh landscapes of the mind. On the contrary, the gaunt outline of Cadair Idris grows more vivid by the day, and still I could recite, flawlessly even, the names of all the railway stations on the route to Pwllheli. For me, the Welsh landscape is a reference point, a sort of homestead that gives meaning and value to a hundred other territories. Small towns from Sicily to Sweden become outposts in a heavenly schema that pivots on Machynlleth. Cymru is everywhere. The Matterhorn reminds me of Cnicht, that happy little triangular peak that overlooks Cwm Croesor and the golden sands of Traeth Bach.
Moments across Europe become shades of a Welsh past: a sugary milk shake from a kiosk in the Crimea, where a woman with a smile mutters grazie to all her customers, is more than just a cold drink in the Black Sea sunshine. It becomes a kind of Eucharistic cup that commemorates a coke float from Leno Conti’s café in Lampeter. A drink in memory of the Teifi, the Tywi and a hundred other Welsh rivers. A drink in memory of a hundred wet Welsh afternoons happily spent in small town cafés from Dolgellau to Dowlais.
This is more than mere hiraeth. Of course there is the sweet tristesse of memory, of lost friends and of a thousand missed opportunities. But there is something else besides. For me, as I travel the by-ways of our continent, Europe becomes Wales — and Wales becomes Europe.
In the depths of last winter, on one of those bitterly cold January days when icicles hang down from the eaves, I travelled through the hill country of Thuringia - an area of eastern Germany which has a legacy of slatemining. Even the bus shelters have neat slate roofs. Villages nestle in little clefts in the hills and for an hour or two German Cursdorf became Welsh Bethesda. I dozed on the little train that ran through narrow valleys where the hillsides tilted ever sharper and snow hung heavy on all the trees. Then, as the train bumped to a halt in Lauscha, I suddenly awoke and thought I was in Llanberis. Slate and slag nuance many European landscapes, and in Germany’s Slate Mountains (called the Schiefergebirge in German) there is more than a hint of Blaenau. Squint a little, ignore the yellow gold streak of the fire salamanders and the snuffling of the wild boar, and look, just look, that wisp of smoke curling over the slope on the other side of the valley might even be the steam train chuffing up from Porthmadog.
In my regular meanderings around Europe - journeys that might in a typical year move irregularly from Andalucía to Karelia, from the Hebrides to the Hellespont - and in the allegorical journeys of my dreams, Wales is the ultimate reference point, the alpha and the omega. All Europe is full of Welsh visual allusions. Does not the Lago Bianco at the top of the Bernina Pass in Switzerland have a hint of Snowdon’s Glaslyn in the summer sun? And in Slovenia, are not Piran’s harbour walls, and its elegant little square behind, a welcome echo of Aberaeron on the coast of Ceredigion? The Sabbath singing that wafts with the misty Faroese haar across the harbour at Tórshavn is a faint echo of an Abergwesyn Sunday. Unaccompanied male voices in an Orthodox church in Russia become unwitting ambassadors for Wales.
The church at Talyllychau in Carmarthenshire (photo © Marilyn Barbone)
It is not just churches that remind me of Wales. Consider Europe’s old synagogues - marvellously evocative places, many of which sadly no longer resound to the chanting of the psalms. Happily, the Zion temple in Oradea is still used by the Romanian town’s small kehillah. The domes of the synagogue are a fabulous sight. Like all the other Zion synagogues around Europe, the Oradea temple begs visitors to remember the congregations lost in Shoah. But for me they touch another chord - one that links all the Zions, Horebs and Rehoboths that stand tucked away in Welsh valleys, tiny chapels that were once the lifeblood of communities, but now have their doors locked, silent witnesses to Wales’ rich nonconformist past.
Theodore Herzl may have wandered the streets of Vienna and dreamt of one Zion. I sat last week on the early evening tram as the rain lashed down on the Hofburg Palace and dreamt of a dozen Zions: in Blaenafon, in Llanidloes and the little Zion chapel at Aberfan where on a cold October day in 1966 an entire community gathered to decide how best to keep the memories and bury the small bodies of the more than a hundred children who died the morning the colliery waste tip swept down Merthyr Mountain onto the village school. One Zion mourns the lost communities of Jewish Europe. In Aberfan, another Zion still mourns a lost generation. Arglwydd, arwain trwy’r anialwch.
Day slips into evening as the road dips down past mossy banks and slate walls. I pull off the road and look into the valley below.
The young and fit don’t often go to Frantiskovy Lázne. It is a small spa town in the Czech Republic, where the old go to soothe the aches and pains of troubled lives. Frantiskovy Lázne is a deliciously perfect place, an appeal to order and good sense. Manicured gardens, statues, terraces and viewpoints. Places where you can watch the pace of small town life. In the bubbling fountains of the Czech spa town, I hear echoes of Portmeirion, a Welsh village that is a little symphony of Italianate flair, nestling in a lush cove on the edge of Tremadog Bay. Portmeirion is the happiest of Utopias, a gentle folly, created by the engagingly eccentric architect Clough Williams- Ellis. I love Portmeirion, when I have it to myself. But across Europe I run across other little Utopias. Frantiskovy Lázne is one. Portmeirion’s creator argued that every decent man and woman deserves a few years of easy, carefree living before they die. Too true. I would like those years to be in Wales, but if the aches and pains of life take their toll, then Františkovy Lázn? might fit the bill.
The tides in the Mawddach estuary never come too early. Nor too late. The rain never beats too hard on the road to Abergwesyn. In the patter of the rain there are voices. Voices of the drovers who for generations trod these trails urging their sheep to market. Walking through the hills of Trás-os-Montes (the name in Portuguese means ‘Beyond the Mountains’), the path tracks down to a little river. I stop at a ford, its waters swollen by the rain that still falls heavily. This could be one of the headwaters of the Tywi. Abergwesyn might be just over the hill. But no, this is Portugal.
High on a mountain road in the Slovakian Tatras, I stop by an abandoned mine. Gaunt gable ends and roofless shells for cottages. I trace a single word in the dust that lies thick on an old slate. Cymru. All the while, ring ouzels snap for fear that I might disturb their young. Day slips into evening, as the road dips down past mossy banks and slate walls. I pull off the road and look into the valley below. I count the lights of isolated farms. And then I dream of Wales.
I dream of places where hart’s tongue and spleenwort creep over long neglected pitheads. Of the chapels barred and shut. Of the curves of the Teifi. Of coke floats and Conti’s. Of the time I waited at Llanwrda’s little railway platform for the slow train that never came. Of the red phone box that stands lonesome sentinel on the mountain road. Of the ghosts of the drovers who still walk the road to Abergwesyn.
In time I shall be called to the Great Confession. And I shall stand up and say with pride: “Yes, I lived in Wales. To be sure, I knew the road to Abergwesyn”. And so one should, for where’s the guilt in that? For all roads, surely, lead to Abergwesyn.
