Two go wild in Wales

Retracing George Borrow’s footsteps to discover his ‘wild hills of Wales, the land of old renown and of wonder’, father-daughter duo John and Freda Lewis-Stempel ask: ‘Is Wales still wild?’

- John and Freda Lewis-Stempel

Part I, by Freda Lewis-Stempel

GREY-SLATE ruins rose up on the hillside across the valley, the arches like spectacles sitting on the bridge of the hill’s nose. Against the blue sky and the hubs of the hills, Castell Dinas Brân was a dramatic welcome to an expedition based on George Borrow’s classic book Wild Wales. My father and I may not be Victorian gentleman explorers quite like Borrow, who literally walked the talk, but we decided to be the 21stcentury, driving version of him. Traveling from Scotland home to Herefordshire, down the traffic-choked M6, we branched off on the ultimate scenic detour—Wales from north to south, in Borrow’s footsteps of 145 years ago. Is Wales, we wondered, still wild?

The castle rules North Wales’s Dee Valley and the artisan town of Llangollen below, home to the International Eisteddfod and, also, the best gluten-free pork pie in Britain. It took four months to develop, apparently—time well spent. Indeed, from crumbling pastry to crumbling walls, the greatest beauties of Wales are those that take longest to build; Castell Dinas Brân, Crow Castle in English, has origins as far back as the Iron Age. The jewel that remains today dates to the princes of Powys Fadog, under whom it was besieged and set fire to by Edward I’s army in 1277.

The castle guards the A494 valley towards Dolgellau. Contrary to Borrow’s journey down North Wales, it wasn’t raining thick and fast or swarming with thick mist when we drove the route in March, but brimming with azures and puffy whites amid the grass, with wild daffodils turning to pastel and snowdrops un-clustering. The air held a sweet moistness, that hidden promise of the turning of Nature.