Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future

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So wrote poet Edward Thomas of Sarn Helen, one of Wales’ ancient ways. The Romans invaded Wales in 43 AD, and built a network of roads connecting their camps and forts across the country. Some are now busy dual carriageways, such as the A5 – all remnants of its history squished beneath layers of tarmac. But others, such as Sarn Helen, still lie peaceful and half-hidden in the Welsh landscape, their 2,000-year-old stones accessible on foot or by mountain bike. Sarn Helen might have crossed the Afon Dyfi at a ford or ferry near Cefn Caer, a small Roman fort at Pennal in southern Gwynedd.

From coastal castles to the steep pitches of Snowdonia National Park, mountain passes to the UK’s first trail centre at Coed-y-Brenin, traversing the ‘desert of Wales’ through the Cambrian Mountains and spectacular Elan Valley and lastly crossing the rough and wild Brecon Beacons National Park into the valleys of South Wales, there are few long-distance routes that rival the variety of landscapes that you’ll find on Sarn Helen. In the same way, the landscape itself contains multiples. You can be walking past a cluster of yews that are older than Christ, turn a corner and find yourself in a standoff with a herd of alpacas. As Bullough presses on through the guts of the country he encounters Roman hill forts guarding post-industrial villages and natural springs bubbling up in the middle of housing estates. Sometimes the timeshifts are crammed into a single building: a nonconformist chapel is turned into a bijou domestic home by the incongruous addition of a front porch that appears to have been filched from a county hall. Deeply moving... If nature writers want to draw more people to the environmental cause, this book makes clear that love works much better than fear * Spectator * Just on that first day, Sarn Helen brought communities struggling to recover from Covid-19 and from flooding caused by unprecedented rainfall – both, of course, symptoms of the CEE. It brought mountains reduced to a virtual wasteland, but it also brought relics of the Age of Saints – of the 5th and 6th centuries, the roots of Wales, when the natural world inspired a divine awe. To write about the CEE, really, you have to do little more than observe: the crisis is no less than everything we are. What that first day provided was the shape of the book, but also (as it seems to me) its basic music: the disjuncture between who we were and who we have become. Bullough speaks to a series of environmental scientists, mostly based in Welsh universities. Some are so sad that they seem about to weep in the middle of their Zoom calls. Others are frustrated by a continuing misapprehension among the public. While thinking about Wales in relation to global heating can sound funny – what could be nicer than turning up the thermostat on the country’s habitual chilly drizzle? – it turns out that the results will be nastier than anyone anticipates. As Prof Mary Gagen of Swansea University explains: “We can expect a lot of very, very wet summers and winters and the crop failures that accompany that will cause severe food shortages.”Sarn Helen is “an attempt to depict what is actually here, who these people are, but also the situation we exist in environmentally. This,” Bullough gestures to the sheep pasture and non-native conifer plantation that surrounds us, “is what we think of as our heritage, we think that this is nature, this is how it should be. It can be very beautiful but it’s a skeletal landscape ultimately.” The transformation of landscape and society is a revolution. What happened in the second world war was nothing compared to this I thought this mix of travel, nature and environmental writing was really good. Bullough gets the balance between each element right. The road gives its name to the annual Sarn Helen Hill Race that starts and finishes in Lampeter in mid-Wales. The 16.5-mile (26.6km) multi-terrain race, founded in 1980, takes place in May each year. It claims to combine "the speed of road racing with the rigours of cross country and fell running over a challenging picturesque course". [7] In popular culture [ edit ] I recount all this to illustrate just how far my concerns had come over the course of the previous decade. As I detail in my 2021 defence statement (following a second arrest), there was evidence that this type of direct action had affected UK government policy and, to me, this made it a moral imperative. To remain beneath the ‘safe upper limit’ of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average – a global necessity on countless counts – required drastic and immediate changes from government, and, like so many others, I was willing to do anything that might make these changes come about. He continues to hear the call throughout the final section of the book but no discussion of them is otherwise provided so, for me, it starts to become sinister.

A rapturous lamentation, and a winding tale with an unswerving message. One of the best books I’ve read on the climate emergency” Sarn Helen refers to several stretches of Roman road in Wales. The 160-mile (260km) route, which follows a meandering course through central Wales, connects Aberconwy in the north with Carmarthen in the west. [1] Despite its length, academic debate continues as to the precise course of the Roman road. Many sections are now used by the modern road network while other parts are still traceable. However, there are sizeable stretches that have been lost and are unidentifiable.A deeply engaging, and deeply engaged, travelogue by one of our finest and (old-fashioned word that I can find no modish synonym for) noblest writers -- Gregory Norminton Our history has never been a simple strand, and so threads of Celts and Romans are interwoven with Anglo-Saxons and Normans, Taliesin and the Mabinogion. Bullough especially loves the Age of the Saints and one in particular accompanies him on his journey. St Illtyd. Sarn Helen also includes alarming scientific detail. Over Zoom, Bullough speaks with a range of experts who provide information about the climate and ecological emergency and what it means for Wales: how best can we use the land so steeped in farming traditions; the upland, lowland and middle grounds; the defence of the coastline and future worries for coastal villages, transport and infrastructure; drought, storm surges, flooding. The statistics are absolutely terrifying.

Sarn Helen was an ancient and mighty highway. Built by the Romans, it ran all the way up Wales, from Neath near the south coast to Caerhun in the north. Much of it has vanished – but that only added to its allure for writer and novelist Tom Bullough.

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A wondrous and arresting journey teeming with wisdom, insights and humanity. Walking through Wales with Bullough is to see the nation - and the UK - with new eyes -- Ben Rawlence