And she’s gone!

by the Curious Scribbler

Clearly I was too pessimistic yesterday in my account of the dismembered Hot Toddy on the Tanybwlch shore.   Later that day the broken hull was indeed removed, and has been recorded on Facebook by Bethan Thomas.

Bethan Thomas’ photo – The Hull is removed!

And loaded onto a council lorry

Well done everybody involved and I guess the removal of the mast and metal parts was just the first part of the salvage operation.  It is so good to see this dramatic stony beach return to its pristine condition.   If only the permanent repair of the retaining wall between the bridge and the river could also be achieved before this winter’s storms remove yet more of the parking area by the stone jetty.

The white bags protecting the riverside wall have mostly collapsed and more of the wall will soon follow.

 

Share Button

Ignominious end of the Hot Toddy

by the Curious Scribbler

I wrote in August about the two boats beached at Tanybwlch, the second of which remained un-rescued and acquired a council notice for its removal under the terms of the Aberystwyth Harbour Act 1987.  It was no surprise that notwithstanding this enforcement notice the boat continued to sit stranded on the pebbles.  It was an old  fibreglass boat with its cabin closed off with a piece of hardboard and we speculated it had been abandoned.

The two boats beached in early August

On Monday it was still there, its mast clearly visible from the car park. But today things are different.  The shell of the hull is now in two pieces and fragments of fibreglass and other detritus litter the shore line for a considerable distance.  There has been a high tide and a good swell is rolling in, so the pieces have probably been knocked around a bit.  But the critical observation is that the aluminium mast, the rudder and keel  and much of the other metal work of the hull have disappeared.  It has been cut in two.

The fibreglass remains of the Hot Toddy

There is even a neat pile of less important metallic odds and ends sitting on the shore waiting to be collected. And an empty fuel can which probably powered the tools used to dismember the boat.

Small items of salvage left behind on the upper shore

I think that some opportunistic salvage, perhaps by moonlight, took place this week.  Certainly nothing of any scrap value remains.  The fibreglass hull is is a negative asset –  it would be very costly to recycle and would be treated as landfill waste. However its removal from the shore is even more pressing as the eroded fragments break down to release fibres damaging to all forms of filter-feeding marine life.

There is an urgent need for  a beach-clean to remove the many fragments already scattered along the upper shore.  I shall be happy to take part.  But the broken halves of the hull need professional disposal as soon as possible.

The wreckage of the Hot Toddy

Too many people view our rivers and seas as waste disposal units.  Only yesterday on facebook  several people also recorded three men dumping planks and other trade waste from a trailer into the Rheidol River in Penparcau.  There are some folk who don’t deserve a good night’s sleep.

Planks tossed into the river at Heol Tyn y Fron

The perpetrators’ load.

Share Button

Hot Toddy on Tanybwlch Beach

There is a new piece of litter on the beach this month, a rather aged fibreglass yacht which lies stranded on the shingle at the north end of the beach.

The abandoned boat now wears a bilingual enforcement notice

I first saw it on 5 August, when not one but two boats had come ashore, the Hot Toddy and another boat  which was on the sand half way down the strand near the concrete barrier.  That second yacht has now been removed, while the Hot Toddy has today been pasted with a Council Notice.  Under Section 40 of the Aberystwyth Harbour Act 1987 it will shortly be removed and disposed of unless the owner serves a counter notice and removes it themselves.

The Hot Toddy on tanybwlch beach

Passers-by gather to inspect it and exchange news.  I have been told that the second boat got in to difficulties trying to help the Hot Toddy and both ended up on the beach. Another source had heard that the Hot Toddy was sailed ( or motored) by a complete amateur with no sailing skills who had bought the old boat in Cardiff and was trying to sail it to Liverpool!  It certainly appears that the owner has not identified themselves, and has abandoned it.  I looked more closely at it today and met an experienced sailor who owns a similar boat  He told me that, unlike with cars, the registration of boats is voluntary and an old one such as this could be bought for £2000 or so.   The costs of disposing of it will probably exceed any scrap value.

Further down the beach I checked up on another piece of flotsam, the Tanybwlch dragon which I first wrote about in December 2019.  This heraldic-looking tree trunk has been moving around the beach ever since, ( it even disappeared for a while), its dragon head steadily eroding away as storms rolled it on the pebbles until the likeness was lost.  Now it has had its final come-uppance, its headless body incorporated into a beach bonfire,  and now burnt through to create two pieces of charred trunk.

Demise of the Tanybwlch Dragon

A copious amount of timber, trunks and branches, brought down river, washes up on the south end of this beach and is soon de-barked by the action of the sea.  I wonder who was the creative soul who came down with saw and screwdriver and fashioned  the fine rustic bench which looks out to sea from the stones where the Wheatears breed.

A driftwood bench overlooking Cardigan bay

The Tanybwlch bench

For a while there was also a driftwood arbour tied together with fishermens’ rope and twine, but this blew down and disappeared.  Always something new to look out for on my favorite beach.

It is to be hope though that along with the disposal of the Hot Toddy the Council’s attention with be focused on the continuing collapse of the retaining wall above the river where the cars park.  It is two years since a temporary repair was done with white bags full of rocks.  Most of these have now washed away and the winter storms will play havoc with the remaining structure.  If only the small hole which developed before during Storm Ciara in 2020 had been promptly filled with cement!

The white bags protecting the riverside wall have mostly collapsed and more of the wall will soon follow.

Share Button

Aberystwyth Allotments

by The Curious Scribbler

Fine days have been few and far between this summer but Sunday afternoon in Penparcau proved a happy exception. The sun shone, there were unthreatening fluffy clouds,a paraglider wheeled overhead from its launch at the top of Pendinas, and at the bottom of First Avenue, many people took the opportunity to visit the allotments during the Open Afternoon in aid of the National Garden Scheme charity.

The axial path between the Aberystwyth allotments

It is more than ten years since I last came on an open day and once more was charmed by the range of gardening skills on display. At one end I found Veronica’s traditional vegetable plot bursting with rows of flourishing foodstuffs runner beans, french beans, broad beans potatoes, carrots and many more besides. A retired soil scientist, she has gardened this plot for a couple of decades, and recollects the year when floods covered the allotments, the water rising two feet and more inside her garden shed. Hers is a full sized allotment, the generous space deemed necessary in the post war days to feed a family.

Aber Allotments Veronica’s generous vegetable plot

At the other end of the axial path I found another long-established allotment with quite different use of space, largely devoted to fruit trees, elegantly lawned, with tubs of vegetables and flowers and a restful place to sit and relax at the distal end.

A tranquil oasis of fruit trees and lawns. Aber Allotments

Other allotments bristle with garden technology, raised beds, edging, hooped cloches made of alkathene pipe, fruit nets and trellises. There are several living willow structures and exuberant roses on the boundaries of many plots. And every allotment has a shed, some just tool stores while others are little home-from-homes, places to heat up a cup of tea, sit back and enjoy the peaceful scene.
In recent years, as they become vacant, some of the old allotments have been divided into two or three parts, better serving the needs of townsfolk without gardens. There is great contrast amongst these too, reflecting the owners’ enthusiasms for flowers, food or nature. One mini-allotment is dominated by a wildlife pond. Nearby I found another with two keen gardeners devoted to an amazing range of choice and exotic vegetables – Chilean Guava, several different cultivars of blueberry, grafted vegetables growing upon a gourd rootstock, unfamilar cultivars of familiar herbs and greens.

Raise beds and wood shaving paths at Aberystwyth allotments

Flowers and vegetable blend at Aberystwyth Allotments

The visit put me in mind of the allotments at Konigstein in Germany which I visited with the Cardiganshire Horticultural Society as part of a twinning visit to Kronberg in 2015. Up to half of the space in these allotments could be devoted to recreation, and many plots contained substantial chalets, dining areas, play equipment and ornamental trees, while the rest would be devoted to edibles or flowers. Many of the holders would have been flat dwellers, who spent whole days at their allotment homes. I remember how impressed we were by the feel-good ambience of these German allotments. The Aberystwyth allotments are evolving in a similar direction.

The Konigsberg allotments in Germany

A homely chalet in the Konigsberg allotments in Germany

The Konigsberg allotments in Germany

The Konigsberg allotments in Germany

The Konigsberg allotments in Germany

Share Button

The brimming bin of Bryn Eglur

I often walk my dog on the cycle path between  Rhydyfelin and Llanfarian.   At either end of this stretch there is a dark blue bin.  The slim one at the Rhydfelin end is lined with a black plastic liner and regularly emptied by Ceredigion  Council.  Strangely the similar, but double-sized bin at the other end has been overflowing for months.

Oplus_0

Yesterday I met the man who empties the bins.  He tells me that the Bryn Eglur bin is an unauthorized bin ( although it looks very much like a council bin) and it is not their job to empty it.

The Bryn Eglur bin is almost exclusively full of bagged dog poo and smells pretty unpleasant.  It is on the edge of a small picnic area which I imagine was specified by the Council as an amenity area when Planning Permission for the development at Bryn Eglur was obtained.

oplus_34

Perhaps the Planning Department specified a bin but failed to ask the Waste Collection Service whether they could empty it?   I wonder whether this situation will ever be resolved.

Share Button

Dafydd ap Gwilym’s Kestrel

by The Curious Scribbler

There is a celebrated yew at Strata Florida.  It is certainly old, and by tradition is deemed to be the yew under which the fourteenth century poet Dafydd ap Gwilym is buried.    Its status was marked by a painted stone bearing  his dates which lay in the undergrowth at its foot, and was then further established with an inscribed slab installed by the Honorable Society of Cymmrodorion in 1951.  To further advertising the poet they at the same time installed an even larger inscribed slab within the adjoining abbey ruins.    Walking through the footings  of the north transept one cannot miss the huge commemorative slate rectangle, like an outsized gravestone, officiously engraved in Welsh and Latin,  which is affixed to the wall by iron cramps.

Current scholarship is a little less emphatic. The excellent little book, The Poetry of Strata Florida, by Dafydd Johnston examines the evidence and exposes the assertion to a measure of doubt.  The antiquary John Leland writing in 1540 stated that there were 39 vast yews in the cemetery, while by 1874 there were only three.  Statistically, Dafydd ap Gwilym could have been under any one of these trees!

Johnston further points out that he may not be buried there at all.  A substantial strand of evidence for the grave under the tree has been a poem by ap Gwilym’s contemporary poet Gruffud Gryg.  The poem is addressed to the yew tree above Dafydd ap Gwilym’s grave.  However I now learn that writing marwnadau ffug  – mock elegies –  was a popular pastime for fourteenth century poets.  There are several known instances of pairs of poets writing reciprocal elegies for one another – obviously at least one in each of these pairs must have been alive at the time, and possibly both were.  These elegies were complimentary, as were the praise poems which poets composed about the homes of the the princes and landowners they visited.

Dafydd ap Gwilym was a native of Llanbadarn Fawr and may have learnt to write at the abbey scriptorium.  He was not just a professional sycophant turning out eulogies about broad acres, fat cows, and fine houses.  Much of his work celebrates nature, love and indeed lust.  He sounds like a cheerful chap, addressing his love poems to Dyddgu  or Morfudd or indeed improper suggestions to the Cistercian nuns of Llanllugan in Montgomeryshire.  He depicts woodland as a church and bird as clergy, or holly as a lover’s bower.

So irrespective of the exact truth it seems very apposite that he should have a tree as his memorial.  When I visited it today,  the silence of this deeply rural spot was only broken by a party of screaming swifts  flying low over the ruins and the intermittent  clamour of baby birds from the top of the yew.   I discovered that  pair of kestrels have chosen to rear their nestlings in the top of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s tree.   This is surprising, for kestrels barely build a nest and typically nest in crags or old buildings.  Perhaps an old crow’s nest has provided a sufficient platform for their eggs.  I feel sure Dafydd ap Gwilym would have approved.

St Mary’s church Strata Florida and Dafydd ap Gwilym’s yew

 

An alternative stratagem for remembrance  is represented by the huge black marble memorial situated between the church and the abbey wall.  Sir David and Lady Grace James died in the 1967 and 1965 respectively.   His business interests had expanded  from his father’s  London dairy business to foodstuffs and cinemas.  He acquired a country estate, Sutton Hall, Barcombe,  and a knighthood. His roots were at Pantyfedwen and the couple  were justly proud of their wealth  and their worth as  philanthropists and patrons of Welsh culture.  Bold capitals on six faces of the column assert their names, their charitable trusts, their characters and their  claims to fame in considerable detail.   Will this massive memorial outlast the reputation of the poet, or vice versa?

The memorial to Sir David and Lady Grace James.

 

 

Share Button

Idyll and Industry at the National Library

by The Curious Scribbler,

The leading exhibit in the Gregynog Gallery is undoubtedly the Canaletto, loaned out for the summer under an initiative to share the National Gallery’s collections with those of us in far flung corners of the UK.

The Stone Mason’s Yard by Canaletto

The Stonemason’s Yard was painted in about 1725 and donated to the National Gallery by Sir Thomas Beaumont a hundred years later.  It depicts an early morning scene in  a lesser square the Campo San Vidal.  The rising sun casts long shadows across the scene and, as the accompanying caption describes, there is much human activity going on.  There are gondolas and gondoliers on the Grand Canal, and women attending two lines of washing  in the middle distance. The foreground shows women engaged in traditional activities – housework, spinning and childcare.  At centre are the stone carving activities, a man with a mallet  and chisel is carving a large block of limestone, while another with his back to us is splitting stone into pavier slabs. But the third stone mason on the right of the picture is the one who caught my attention, for here, working on the interior of a huge freshly carved basin or well head is undoubtedly a burly woman.  It is unexpected to find a woman mason, but it appears that Canaletto painted what he saw.  Surprisingly  she is not mentioned in the caption.

The lady stonemason

The rest of the exhibition is spread out to either side,  Turn right for ‘Idyll’  scenes of rural Welsh landscape in paintings in the collections of the National Library, or turn left for ‘Industry’, –  iron works, mines and quarries depicted over two centuries.  Adjoining the industrial views are also a few abstracts, so abstract that only the initiated would know that they are about Wales.  I’ve learnt a useful expression –  ” deeply personal response”  is a good description for baffling representations of named locations!

Among the more representational works, are pictures by Turner, Ibbotson, Richard Wilson, Thomas Jones of Pencerrig, David Cox and other well-known artists.   For locals like me it was interesting to see a 1955 painting of Hafod by Joyce Fitzwilliams of Cilgwn, Newcastle Emlyn. The house is party roofless and viewed I think from the path up towards Pendre cottage.  Demolition of the Italianate wing added by Henry de Hoghton has already begun.

Joyce Fitzwilliams’ Hafod 1955

Also of local interest was a painting by  World War I Belgian refugee Valerius de Saedeleer of the land dipping down to the sea, probably near of Llanrhystud.

Valerius de Saedeleer Coastal landscape near Aberystwyth painted during WWI

Turning to the industrial side  there are some powerful images such as Miners returning from Work by Archie Rhys Griffiths, a depression-era painting which nonetheless evokes the grandeur of toil.  Many of the more  recent industrial views  are more grim or dismal in tone.

Archie Rhys Griffiths 1932 Miners returning from work

But my eye was caught by a work by Penry Williams, thought to depict the Dowlais Iron works. Like the Canaletto, the scene is bright and lucid, with long shadows cast across a foreground of great activity.  The bare grassy uplands gleam in the background with neat fields and scattered farmhouses on the slopes, while lurking in full view is the industrial behemoth.  Four tall chimneys, five flaming beacons, long sheds with with rows of chimneys each emitting a gleam of fire and puffs of white smoke.  Everything is neat and new and sharply designed.  The tall chimneys have ornamental tiers, and a huge sphere on a stone pedestal indicates an owner of wealth and  discernment.  Doubtless many men worked perspiring in the heat of these sheds, but the only humans we see are two top hatted gentlemen on horseback and a gardener with his wheelbarrow, meticulously edging a broad graveled path through the immaculate garden which adjoins the works.

Penry Williams’ evocation of industrial glory in the early 19th century

There came a time when industrialists moved away from their factories to unspoilt rural locations, sometimes donating their former parks to the people, but in the early 19th century one can sense the excitement of new industry bringing huge rewards to the iron masters, and new jobs to the rural poor.  Penry Williams came from a modest family of stonemasons in Merthyr Tydfil.  Without the patronage of the newly enriched iron masters he would never have studied at the Royal Academy or  settled in Rome to pursue a career painting Italian scenes for young gentlemen on the Grand Tour.

Share Button

Curating Nature

by The Curious Scribbler

The School of Art has selected gardens and gardening as the theme of this year’s long running summer exhibition.  The exhibition forms a part of the undergraduate course in which students act as curators – selecting the works, mounting, framing and displaying them in the gallery.  For this they sifted through the substantial collections belonging to the School of Art, bringing various long-unseen artworks into the light. The result is an intriguing collection on the general theme, including paintings, etchings, prints,photographs, decoupage and even ceramics spanning a time frame of 150 years. There is also a cabinet to explore.

Each drawer in this cabinet was compiled by an individual student. Here the page is open at Phallus impudicus,  the Stinkhorn fungus.

My eye was first caught by two exquisite botanical illustrations by Mildred Eldridge, wife of the poet R.S.Thomas.  The first is of Sanguisorba canadensis growing in 1959 at Eglwysfach, possibly in their garden, or in the collections of Mr Mappin at Ynyshir Hall.

Sanguinaria canadensis by Mildred Eldridge

A second painting dated 1960 shows the delicate pastel shades of a bicoloured Camellia japonica.  Mildred’s illustrations appeared in several books in the 1940s and others were published as art cards by Medici Society.

Camellia japonica by Mildred Eldridge

 

I was also arrested by a powerful winter scene by Belgian artist Maurice Langaskens, showing a man with secateurs mounting a ladder to prune a tree, dark birds whirling overhead.  He spent much of the first world war in captivity in Germany.  How did this picture find its way to Aberystwyth?  Was he perhaps a friend of our better-known Belgian refugee Valerius de Sadeleer, who spent those years living at Tyn Lon, Rhydyfein, painting local landscape scenes?

An etching by Maurice Langaskens

This rummage through the archive makes serendipitous connections.  Who knew that George Cruikshank had a cartoonist great nephew whose wood engraving in the magazine The Leisure Hour pokes fun at the Aesthetic Movement of the late 19th century?  The tiny print shows the industrial production of serried rows of sunflowers, along with people, bees, gnats and savoy cabbages.

Woodcut by Cruikshank’s great nephew Cruikshank Jnr

Sunflowers get a grittier treatment in a lithograph by kitchen sink realist John Bratby from the 1960s.

Sunflowers II by John Bratby

Several more recent artists in the collection have close ties with Aberystwyth and I was pleased to see two of Jenny Fell’s calendar linocuts from 1989 on the walls.  I am an early investor in Jenny’s work, four other months have adorned my kitchen walls since 1991.  Hung here is October ( a bonfire) and April ( Violets and Primroses).  The captioning has a very modern slant:  burning autumn leaves now brings a homily about carbon dioxide and global warming.

 

October by Jenny Fell

Works by Art School staff are also to be found.  Prof John Harvey’s small spikey drawing evokes the steep hill and neat gardens  of Elysian Grove while Prof Catrin Webster’s huge colourful canvas dominates the room.

Elysian Grove by John Harvey

The very same evening I was at the Arts Centre for the launch of John Hedley’s exhibition in the upstairs gallery.  John paints and burnishes slices of tree trunk, many of them from Bodnant or from Anthony Tavernor’s amazing garden at Plas Cadnant on Anglesey.  When at his alternative home in Crete ancient olive boles provide his canvasses. The designs develop in the studio, suggested to him by the grain and form of the pieces of timber.  The combined rich colours and metallic finishes of copper and gold leaf are bright and vibrant.  We read a lot about mental health and well-being in relation to nature these days.  This exhibition though has no subtext, it is just unapologetically cheerful.

Trees trunks felled by Storm Arwen are canvasses for John Hedley

 

Share Button

Kidney Vetch on Constitution Hill

by The Curious Scribbler,

Blue sky, blue sea and green Alexandra hall encased in scaffolding.

Today’s  brilliant May sunshine is so welcome after the humid mist of the last few days and the months of rain which preceded it.   Dare we hope that we are to be rewarded with a lovely summer?  My excursion along the Prom took me to the foot of Constitution HIll, where a small path zig zags up towards the bridge over the funicular railway.  The winter storms have removed quite a bit of this path above the shore and a new footway is beginning to be eroded on the slope above the missing bits.  Just now though, it passes a sea of pale yellow. The dominant plant here is the Kidney vetch Anthyllis vulneraria. 

Footpath up the hill

Perhaps the grey days have diminished my recall but I don’t remember ever seeing it look so lovely.  Later in the season the slope will be bright with pink and white valerian, which I remember well, but just now it is the Kidney Vetch and bright patches of clear white Sea Campion Silene uniflora which catch the attention.   I looked both flowers up Arthur Chater’s magnificent Flora of Cardiganshire, and was interested to note that he comments that flowering of Kidney Vetch varies greatly from year to year.  Surely this horrid winter must have been just the tonic it required.

Kidey Vetch and Sea Campion

 

The distribution map for the occurrence  of Kidney Vetch forms an almost uninterrupted  black line along the coast of Ceredigon, and indeed he comments that it is almost always found within 100 yards of the sea.  What a contrast with its bed fellow the Sea Campion,which ventures far inland, flowering blithely on the toxic spoil heaps of the old lead and silver mines,and on the shingle of the Rheidol  and Ystwyth rivers.  Plants which flourish where others fail to thrive sometimes attract superstition, and it has some odd alternative names.  Dead Man’s Bells or Witches Thimbles.  There is a folk tradition that if picked it brings death.  As a child I enjoyed popping the bladder-like calyces as if they were tine balloons and I’m still living!

Kidney Vetch by contrast has the folk seal of approval, used by medieval herbalists to relieve swelling and heal wounds, and to treat problems of the stomach and the kidney. One can also eat it apparently, both the young leaves and the small pea like pods,  but I hope it will be left for everyone to enjoy.

The double-headed flowers of Kidney Vetch

 

Share Button

A Gigantic Puffball

by The Curious Scribbler

I like to think I am quite observant but yesterday I discovered to my chagrin that I had been walking my dog regularly past the largest puffball fungus I have ever seen.   To give it its proper name   Calvatia  gigantea must have emerged as a huge white blob in the depths of a bed of nettles late last summer. It would have been somewhat obscured by the growth around it until the nettles died back in winter. If I noticed it  at all I suppose I must have dismissed it as a pale boulder lying on the surface of the field.

Then yesterday, after rain, my attention was attracted by a big irregular brown object, beaded with raindrops and with a fragment broken away at one side.  Too big to be a poo of any known animal, but with a strangely smooth internal texture.  I poked it with a stick, expecting it to be hard.  Instead is proved to be extremely soft and light, and rolled away at a touch.

This fruiting body or gleba contains literally trillions of spores, ready to be released into the wind.  It grows from the underground mycelia with a narrow neck which eventually breaks allowing it to roll around like an oversized football.  I found the patch of bare earth nearby where it has until recently sat, like a large stone, inhibiting the grass roots underneath.  It is cleverly designed by nature to stay dry so that the spores can blow away.  The fungus is so water repellent that the rain stands in tight globular droplets on the surface. The leathery skin which formerly contained it has peeled away except on the lower surface.

Water droplets bead the upper surface of the giant puffball

The under surface of the puffball

Far lighter than a loaf of bread and as soft as a sponge we lifted it and turned it over to admire its form.  Tapping any part of it with a stick released clouds of spores into the air.

Calvatia gigantea releases millions of spores into the air

This remarkable fungus would have been edible if I had spotted it in summer when it was firm and white.  Now mature and brown it has no culinary use, but I have read that the mature spongy material used to be sliced into layers and used for wound dressing, especially for veterinary purposes.  It was valued for its  styptic effect, stopping bleeding and encouraging coagulation.  This 18 inch monster would dress quite a few wounds.

I found a second much small puffball still in situ nearby.  The thin leathery skin had only just started to peel away from the upper surface to reveal spore tissue beaded in water.  Where the skin is intact, the water just runs off it like a gaberdine.

A much smaller giant puffball still mainly covered with its waterproof skin

Surprisingly little is known about giant puffballs.  They occur rarely and unexpectedly and even where they have been found another may not be seen for many years.  It is thought that they perhaps take their nutrients symbiotically from the grasses or other plants,  rather than saprophytically from rotting wood.  They are not found amongst trees. The underground network to produce this huge growth must be substantial. We know very little about these fungal networks.

The excitement of finding my gigantic puffball is matched by another winter mystery, the Crystal brain fungus or star jelly I wrote about last year.  A number of local people have posted pictures of this material recently.  We may be exploring space, but we still do not know exactly what these gelatinous masses are and whether they come from fungi, meteor showers or vomited frogs.

Share Button