Hillsides and Rivers

This valley has been inhabited since the Iron Age, but it has no name. Geographically it is the upper valley of the River Lugg, part of the Teme Valley and indirectly part of the Vale of Severn, a spiralling series of river-names to describe an unfolding of the land. It is a flat agricultural valley dominated by low steep thickly-wooded hills, with other unnamed valleys leading off and so making further low hills; suddenly they open up and then disappear again, secret places, thick with woods, uninhabited. But it is a landscape created by water. The river Lugg is about five hundred yards across the shallow valley from us and at this point is about ten feet wide, overhung with young trees and creating a wide marshland clearly separated from the dry ground around it. The houses are built on the dry ground and even during the floods of recent months - when the river burst its banks many times and flooded the marsh - none of the houses here were touched. It is a Welsh river and rises over the border, where it is called Llugwy; as if the English have hacked off the letters or syllables they cannot use or do not understand. There is perhaps a connection with the Welsh for light; and also with Lewis, distant, faint, ancient word-cousins. Once in England the river meets the river Hindwell, which rushes through the valley from near Radnor. William Wordsworth had family connections at the source of this river, Hindwell farm, where there is a large pond and a Roman settlement and groups of standing stones. At a different time his cousin also farmed at Broad Heath, about a mile from here, down the valley towards Wales, and I often wonder if he walked along the Hindwell between the two farms. He is supposed to have considered this Radnor/Wye landscape the most attractive in Britain - after the Lake District.

At night we can still see the farm-lights on the hillsides across the valley, although these will vanish as the leaves reappear on the trees. A strange thing, unnatural light here; I have become preoccupied with cutting light pollution and the small spills from the house I try and stem with folds of curtain. The darkness seems more important, the starlight and moonlight the natural lights of night-time.