Deep
In 2022, when Shirley and I had to clear up the detritus of my brother Simon's life, I saved a few of his books. One of them was titled "Deep Country" by Neil Ansell. It is an account of "Five years in The Welsh Hills". I have just finished reading it. Earlier in this millennium, the writer lived in a remote, abandoned house in the middle of Wales without electricity, running water or even a telephone. In place of those things, he observed the nature that he found himself amongst - most especially the bird life. "The place was a Victorian gatekeeper's cottage. ... You could cross two fields and you were on open moorland; you could walk west for twenty miles without seeing another house, or a road, or a fence. This uninhabited swathe of the Cambrian Mountains right in the heart of the country has been called the green desert of Wales, its empty quarter. Just downhill across the track there was once a farmhouse, presumably Penlan Farm.." He ...