Lugg Slate Water

The house at Kinsham is perched above a dramatic valley, the course of the Lugg, a steep river valley with hillsides of grey bare trees, distant pine woods. The valley was supposedly used by Lancastrian soldiers fleeing their defeat at the battle of Mortimer's Cross in 1461. The river at the bottom is about twenty feet wide and from the hillsides was an astonishing green colour, green the way slate can be green, appropriate for a Welsh river perhaps. It looked cold and ancient, still running through a valley it made how-many thousands of years ago. And then we saw it again today, from the sawmill at Mortimer's Cross, where we were buying firewood. The river runs past the saw mill (a strangely North American sight) towards the water mill, still powerful and turbulent, and still defiantly slate green. It runs many miles south of here before it joins the Wye.