A higher level of living

The distinct 'fingers' of the Black Mountains

In this current hot spell all I want to do is lose myself in our beautiful countryside (and with my map reading skills I’d probably do just that if Harri wasn’t around to issue me with frequent directions). Seriously though, there is nothing more uplifting for the human spirit than to trundle for miles along centuries-old tracks, footpaths and mountain trails, pausing only occasionally for a bite to eat or a dip in a cool stream.

On Wednesday we completed the ninth walk for Harri’s forthcoming book Day Walks in the Brecon Beacons (commissioned by Vertebrate Publishing) – at 16 miles, the loop from Llanbedr, crossing from one Black Mountain ‘finger’ to another, is the longest.

Harri studying boundary stones

It was a scorcher of a day, but the vast landscape – and the fact that Harri is currently reading Raymond Williams' People of the Black Mountains – got us thinking and talking about the last Ice Age. Although the line of rocks marking the upper edge of the glacier is clearly visible in many places, it’s difficult to picture the landscape as it would have looked then and almost impossible to imagine the day-to-day lives of our nomadic cave-dwelling ancestors further south.

When you are trekking across the peaks of Pen Cerrig Calch, Pen Allt Mawr and Pen y Gadair Fawr discussing massive historical geological events, our own insane, materialistic, overly-competitive and overly-complicated society feels not just thousands, but millions of years away.

Yesterday, Radio Four’s Ramblings programme featured Stuart Jessop who, with his dog Poppy, is walking around much of the coast of England as part of a campaign to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.

Stuart has depression and he spoke eloquently and movingly about it. He describes walking as ‘a form of therapy’ and writes on his website ‘when I’m feeling low, a day spent out walking can lift my mood significantly’.

I didn’t catch the whole programme, but Stuart’s determination to manage his depression in such a positive way really impressed me and reminded me of an urban myth I once heard about a GP in Crickhowell who allegedly refused to prescribe his patients with medication for stress and anxiety but instead ‘prescribed’ a list of walks in the surrounding area. Only if the walks failed to lift the person's spirits, he told them, would he be prepared to consider medication. 

Feeling small on the top of Waun Fach

I’m not trying to downplay mental illness and the terrible impact it has on many people’s lives, but I do think Erich Fromm was onto something in the fifties when he wrote (in The Sane Society) that man’s removal of himself from nature has had a detrimental effect on his emotional health. Written half a decade later, there are definitely echoes of Fromm’s theory in Oliver James’ excellent Affluenza, which postulates that the dogged pursuit of status and material possessions, i.e. selfish capitalism, does not result in happiness, rather the opposite.

While I can't compete with Fromm and James, I do have a few crumbs of advice for anyone who is weary of the ideology that drives our growth-obsessed culture, or is sinking under the arbitrary bureaucracy of the typical working day – find a mountain and climb it!

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I've gone off bacon sandwiches for good!

Two decades ago, as a breast-feeding mum, I watched a lamb tugging at a ewe’s underside as it tried to suckle and felt a sudden affinity with this other, slightly woollier, mother.

From that day, I stopped eating lamb completely except in situations when to refuse would offend, or worse, embarrass, my hosts.  I even went vegetarian for a few years until another pregnancy – and severe anaemia – sent me heading back to the meat counter.

After an abysmal April when our walking boots barely saw the light of day, we’ve been getting out and about again. And guess what – I’m getting all sentimental about baby animals to the point where Harri is forbidding me to take any more photographs of sheep, lambs or anything else with four legs.

Worse, I’m starting to consider vegetarianism all over again – yesterday’s evening meal was a delicious homemade butternut squash curry. 

You see, while it’s easy to divorce those hermatically sealed packs of raw flesh from live animals when you spend your days in town, it’s horribly difficult to cook bacon after you’ve spent a good ten minutes chatting to two friendly and oh-so-cute tail-wagging piglets on the escarpment above Llangattock.

Still fancy a beefburger?

And has anyone looked into the eyes of a young calf recently? Those big trusting eyes and eyelashes to die for – oops, wrong word but you get my drift. Somehow even the leanest fillet steak loses its appeal when you start joining the dots and working out what happened between number 1 and number 20.

Thankfully, I’ve never eaten mutton – I mean, how could anyone look at those dozy animals and think ‘haute cuisine’? 

Go into a field full of sheep and the entire flock does one of two things – runs away from you in terror or runs towards you in anticipation. 

One of the braver lambs

It’s impossible to predict their reaction from day to day. My theory is that it’s linked to what we’re wearing. Yesterday’s pink fleece was clearly sheep language for ‘we're here to feed you’ because we were quickly surrounded by up to a hundred sheep, while last week’s mass exodus was down to the subliminal message sent out by my navy fleece (‘we're here to eat you’).

I admit I’m a bit sheep obsessed. I must have taken at least thirty sheep photographs yesterday – most now consigned to the rubbish bin it’s true – but sheep are entertaining in so many ways. For a start, ewes are hapless mothers who seem incapable of keeping their young charges in the same field, let alone under mama’s watchful eye. There’s a tragic inevitability to what happens when we climb over a stile into a field of ewes and their lambs on a recognised footpath. One sheep spots us and baas loudly to warn her own offspring of oncoming danger (navy fleece warning). Within seconds, there are lambs running around in all directions, each one beating desperately like the kid in the Rolf Harris song ‘I lost my mammy’ . Meanwhile, another ewe emits a few gentle baas but doesn’t look unduly worried that in his blind panic, junior has managed to get his head stuck in a fence.

Oh, the joys of spring hiking. Where’s that tofu?