The Wild Rover: A Blistering Journey Along Britain’s Footpaths Read Free Page B

industries slowly die were going the same way, but until the Commission’s money began to run out in the 1970s, our village blossomed.
    Before its brief hiatus housing captured German officers, the camp had been built in the 1930s as an instructional centre for the unemployed of Birkenhead and Liverpool. They were bussed out of Merseyside and made to work for three months in the hills, blasting the new forestry roads through whatever got in their way: farms, walls, houses, woods and mile upon mile of ancient path. It goes on still today, albeit without the jobless Scousers.
    For most local people, then, the Forestry Commission is seen as a benevolent force, for it gave work, self-respect, homes, high days and holidays. Arriving here long after the party ended, however, has given me a far sourer view of the Commission and its effects locally, for the blanket destruction and alteration of the landscape – the power to play at tin gods – created some serious arrogance in its protagonists. It always does.
    On my bookshelves are numerous old guides to Wales. Some, when talking about this area, mention something that sounds quite dazzling, a cave called the Siambr Wmffre Goch (the Chamber of Red Humphrey). This had given its name to an obscure local stream, only a mile or so long, and it’s by that name that it appears even today on the OS map. A Ward Lock guide from the 1970s records the siambr as ‘a cave behind a waterfall which long served as a highwayman’s hide’ – Red Humphrey being that highwayman. The Shell Guide to Wales , from 1969, is a little more effusive, calling it ‘an extraordinary place’, and going into some more detail: after passing through a cluster of ash trees, you come to ‘apparently a simple, caved entrance into the hillside, but on passing through the arch you find yourself under the open sky, with a pool and a fall of water and a further cave-like formation ahead of you’.
    The siambr sounded magical, like something out of a fairy story, and I’ve searched for it on a number of occasions. The valley of the little stream named after it has since been heavily forested, and it is a difficult search, necessitating either numerous scrambles and slides down sheer banks, or an attempt to walk along the stream and hop from slippery rocks to fallen timber. And all to no avail. How on earth can you lose a cave and a waterfall in a small Welsh valley?
    I was keen to feature Siambr Wmffre Goch in one of my TV programmes and, having exhausted enquiries around the village, I wrote a piece asking for help for the local freesheet, delivered to all the nearby villages. Our most celebrated local naturalist got in touch to suggest we go and search for it together, as he too has always been intrigued by the siambr’s reputation. Whereas before, when I’d been searching alone, I’d wussed out at the really scary bits, with Jack it was different. The man is fearless. When I met him at the bottom of the little valley, he took one look at how ill equipped I was for a proper search, wandered over to a stout young hazel tree, lopped off a straightish branch with his knife, swiftly pruned it of all twigs and presented it to me as the ideal tool to hack our way through the thick under-growth. From tree part to bespoke walking-cum-scything stick in about 45 seconds.
    Over the next few hours, we hacked, slashed and hopped our way up every last inch of that stream. Branches and brambles snapped across me, slashing my arms like a teenage goth. As Jack (a man nearly 30 years my senior) nimbly galloped between rock and tree trunk, I crashed along in his wake like a hippo chasing a gazelle. We found nothing. I was prepared for the guidebooks to have exaggerated the elfin appeal of the cave and waterfall, but to have conjured it out of thin air seemed bizarre, impossible. Jack was as mystified as I was, and we finished our day with a handshake and a solemn promise to share any information that might yet bubble to the