push-bike, and we thought they’d follow, but this one mare kept defying us and looking back. After we got them there she broke out one night, four others with her, but a fence stopped her. We found them 6 miles away, all of them making in a straight line for the Epynt. If the fence had been down they’d have got there.’
The Army attempted its own round-up, using three planes, fifteen tracked Bren-gun carriers and a hundred men. By the time night fell, one plane had collided with a rock, and several carriers were bogged down in the target area but, to give credit where it’s due, 60 ponies and 4,000 sheep had been brought down to the valley. The only thing was, at first light most of them were back on the mountain. Later the Army, employing its finest horseman, managed, after many attempts, to capture a white stallion.
In the end some sheep were allowed to remain, otherwise the mountain would have reverted to the wild, and it is ironic that there are more sheep there now than there were in 1940. This has allowed people to revisit the mountain, said Iorwerth Davies, but many, his mother among them, could not face it. Others, a dwindling number, still come back for the annual service held by a pacifist group in the ruins of Babell chapel. But what Herbert Hughes found when he began to research his book was how many of his countrymen had forgotten what had happened. Their memories were jogged once when in 1955 the Army proposed firing long-range guns into the Epynt, which would have sent live shells over the A40 and its holiday traffic. They laid on a demonstration with a 5.5-inch gun, watched by farmers on horseback. Unfortunately, the moment the gun was fired every horse bolted, with the riders clinging on for dear life. The proposal was quietly shelved, and the Army has learnt PR skills, one of its commandants regularly attending Welsh singing festivals in the neighbouring chapels.
It is their world up there now, with their names like the Burma Road, Journey’s End and Piccadilly Circus, though local people have their own names like Hellfire Pass, one of the crossings above which the red flags fly. The safety record is impressive, even though once the German motorcycle team, rehearsing for a rally, rode through the target area with guns firing all around them, a nostalgic occasion for some of the older gunners. The Senny-bridge Hunt has also materialised unexpectedly up there. But it is the cold that soldiers remember.
The Farmer and I, we watched a lorry pass, full of young men, their faces blackened for a night exercise, but under this still looking about as miserable as it is possible for human beings to look. When they come down from the Epynt it is the custom to shower first in full kit.
The Farmer laughed. ‘You can see why some wouldn’t want to go back,’ he said.
‘Would you?’
‘Oh yes. When you bring sheep down off the Epynt, the old ewe wants to go back.’ He looked around him at the miles of moorland, and his voice was mild.
‘And the lambs?’
‘The lambs won’t follow.’
Roman Twilight
1
ICTURE MOORLAND , a remote, barren moorland, the horizon a long way off and the sky huge. Now imagine a sunrise up there, the drums in Strauss’s Thus Spake Zamthustra giving way to a single, unearthly trumpet. In front of you, ringed with light, is the great black monolith out of the film 2002. It stands at the side of a road unknown to the AA, and there are no signs to indicate where this goes. But then there would have been no need of any sign: when that road was built, men knew exactly where it went. It went to Rome.
On an Ordnance Survey map, Sheet 160, find Glynneath on the A465, the Heads of the Valleys road to Merthyr. From this trace the yellow mountain road north to Ystradfellte. The green shading drains away, until where you are is just the white space and contour lines of moorland. Two and a half miles north of Ystradfellte, on your left, you will see on the map the dotted lines of the
The Army attempted its own round-up, using three planes, fifteen tracked Bren-gun carriers and a hundred men. By the time night fell, one plane had collided with a rock, and several carriers were bogged down in the target area but, to give credit where it’s due, 60 ponies and 4,000 sheep had been brought down to the valley. The only thing was, at first light most of them were back on the mountain. Later the Army, employing its finest horseman, managed, after many attempts, to capture a white stallion.
In the end some sheep were allowed to remain, otherwise the mountain would have reverted to the wild, and it is ironic that there are more sheep there now than there were in 1940. This has allowed people to revisit the mountain, said Iorwerth Davies, but many, his mother among them, could not face it. Others, a dwindling number, still come back for the annual service held by a pacifist group in the ruins of Babell chapel. But what Herbert Hughes found when he began to research his book was how many of his countrymen had forgotten what had happened. Their memories were jogged once when in 1955 the Army proposed firing long-range guns into the Epynt, which would have sent live shells over the A40 and its holiday traffic. They laid on a demonstration with a 5.5-inch gun, watched by farmers on horseback. Unfortunately, the moment the gun was fired every horse bolted, with the riders clinging on for dear life. The proposal was quietly shelved, and the Army has learnt PR skills, one of its commandants regularly attending Welsh singing festivals in the neighbouring chapels.
It is their world up there now, with their names like the Burma Road, Journey’s End and Piccadilly Circus, though local people have their own names like Hellfire Pass, one of the crossings above which the red flags fly. The safety record is impressive, even though once the German motorcycle team, rehearsing for a rally, rode through the target area with guns firing all around them, a nostalgic occasion for some of the older gunners. The Senny-bridge Hunt has also materialised unexpectedly up there. But it is the cold that soldiers remember.
The Farmer and I, we watched a lorry pass, full of young men, their faces blackened for a night exercise, but under this still looking about as miserable as it is possible for human beings to look. When they come down from the Epynt it is the custom to shower first in full kit.
The Farmer laughed. ‘You can see why some wouldn’t want to go back,’ he said.
‘Would you?’
‘Oh yes. When you bring sheep down off the Epynt, the old ewe wants to go back.’ He looked around him at the miles of moorland, and his voice was mild.
‘And the lambs?’
‘The lambs won’t follow.’
Roman Twilight
1
ICTURE MOORLAND , a remote, barren moorland, the horizon a long way off and the sky huge. Now imagine a sunrise up there, the drums in Strauss’s Thus Spake Zamthustra giving way to a single, unearthly trumpet. In front of you, ringed with light, is the great black monolith out of the film 2002. It stands at the side of a road unknown to the AA, and there are no signs to indicate where this goes. But then there would have been no need of any sign: when that road was built, men knew exactly where it went. It went to Rome.
On an Ordnance Survey map, Sheet 160, find Glynneath on the A465, the Heads of the Valleys road to Merthyr. From this trace the yellow mountain road north to Ystradfellte. The green shading drains away, until where you are is just the white space and contour lines of moorland. Two and a half miles north of Ystradfellte, on your left, you will see on the map the dotted lines of the
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