July 22nd, 2007

This morning I cleared vegetation from a footpath near Criag-y-nos, then in the afternoon I went to Brynaman to assist on a walk with Wyn. There was five other people on the walk - all hoping to improve their fitness levels. To of the ladies on the walk local and had a lot of knowledge about the area and about life in general. One handy hint they gave was that blackberries make better jam when there’s been a dry summer as to much precipitation makes them watery and thus makes rubbish jam! Part of the walk followed the path over Foel deg common. The vegetation is ‘accidentally’ burnt here every year without fail by an unknown local farmer. The burning is actually quite good in that it encourages lush new growth which the cattle and sheep here find palatable and so stops the grasses from becoming overly clumpy. However the unknown arsonist tends to burn at the wrong time of year as it’s usually during the nesting season - which is bad news for the birds. the moorland was very wet for this time of year and there where a few wet feet by the time the footpath met the road! The route took us through Rhosaman - an old mining settlement - which felt like a forgotten place. One of the local ladies on the walk told us that when the mine shut down there where plans to turn the area of open-cast mine workings into a leisure park with a huge lake but unfortunately it never happened.