Letter from the south-east of Cymru; Magwyr

The third dispatch from each of the four ‘corners’ of Cymru travelled to by bus and on foot from Machynlleth which is somewhere near the middle.

Julie Brominicks

Here’s glasswort and cordgrass. Saltmarsh, slowing the movement of water into Aber Hafren (the Severn Estuary). It looks like an Andrew Wyeth painting. Each grass blade defined, the scene otherworldly and flickering.

I step out of my boots and onto the saltmarsh that’s awash with gold light. The cordgrass is less abrasive to feet than trailing fingers. It’s like walking on flooded rush matting.  

In Y Drenewydd (Newtown), Evans Café enticed me with amber light and bread smells spilling onto the street. ‘I don’t know if you know anything about Welsh Italians?’ said Gian Antoniazzi, the baker. Gian’s Grandad came over in 1912. This cafe was set up by his Dad, who slept in the office on a camp-bed at first. Gian worked in a bank before joining him. ‘He put me on cleaning tables and washing up and that brought me right down to earth. It made me realise everyone is valued.’ Gian and sister Anna know all their customers. ‘Small coffee, one shot, one sugar?’ ‘How are you young Simon?’ ‘Morning George. George is a celebrity isn’t that right?’ ‘Seems that way’ said George.

Here are butterflies. Flowers of the air. Great whites on the seawall and small whites blundering about the saltmarsh.

‘Listen’ said Gian, ‘at quarter past eight’ ‘oh yes’ said Anna, ‘every Wednesday…’ and on cue Jan from Leiden arrived with dark rings under his eyes and an articulated lorry full of flowers. ‘I am coming through Belgium and France. I am on the M4 in the Oxford, Caerffili area. And I am coming up from Cardiff and Port Talbot. I sleep in the big lorry, I am just coming out of it.’ I saw petals on the pavement as I hurried for my bus.

Out there is a salty haze. I can’t tell sky from land. I squint through binoculars and am astonished when a large ethereal bridge materialises.

Branches played the T4 window like a glockenspiel. Buses are not quiet. They shake and vibrate. You’d fall off your seat if you slept but I curled up and it was warm and felt nice. Y safle nesa yw Eglwys Dewi Sant. The sun burst out like chrysanthemums beyond my closed eyes. Y Safle nesa yw Auto Palace.. Most passengers were also somnambulant, as we trundled through hills uprising.

It takes me ages to notice the birds. Blurs. Oystercatchers and some kind of gull. One is coming towards me, wind-ruffled from behind, descending down a mud bank and lost to the creek. The wind flings shadows about and brings warbles and duck laughs.  

From Caerdydd the X30 to Casnewydd, where all the buses are electric. ‘Greener, Smarter, Safer, Make the Switch.’ A man sashayed by with a bouquet in one hand and a phone in the other. An elderly man in a navy suit and the woman leaning into him, whose arm he is gripping, her low heels clack-clacking, crossed the terminal at a fixed trajectory like a boat to a mooring.

The birds have left their prints in the mud. Their impressions. The incisions of a heavy heron. And these that barely indent the surface, are they sanderlings? Not far away the preserved footprints of Mesolithic humans have been found.  

A final bus, fair coasting along the M4 past turbines and out-of-town stores so incongruous with Magwyr (Magor), a medieval square awash with flowers, that when I finally arrived I’m discombobulated. It’s taken nine hours to get this far and I’m a little way yet from the edge. And despite owning all the OS maps of Cymru it turns out this little coastal triangle is on top of the Bristol map and I don’t have it. But stepping into what I thought was a café I found Bill, of Magor and Undy Council, behind a computer. ‘The water’s nice when the tide’s in, when it’s out it’s like the Mekong Delta. Now let me see what I can do for you’ Bill said, and printed me off a map. Just twenty minutes in Magwyr village but the impression I had of it was good. Two boys dragging a fallen sycamore branch across the grass. In the church, red light falling onto the carpet like prayers.

It was the Romans who first built a seawall and drained the marshland with reens, to reclaim land on which to graze their cavalry horses. Clip clip clip. What’s this? A horse and trap sped round the corner so fast I jumped into the umbellifers. And then, with pylons overhead and a rank stink from the sewage works (and bullfinches in a goat willow), I arrived at the seawall below which was a small patch of golden saltmarsh and beyond that, acres of mud. Low tide.

I hear a tractor and mud popping. See dykes and creeks. I can’t see the water. It’s like land meets sky here instead. I step onto the mud and it gives. A black gooey layer squidges up between my toes. The wind has a warm breath as if the land is exhaling. The mud is slippery. I try to stand still. And begin very slowly to sink. Not evenly. I tilt, subside and slither. It seems I am anything but grounded.

They didn’t explain their methodology, but huge thanks to the Ordnance Survey Cartology Department for clarifying the northwesterly, northeasterly, southeasterly, and southwesterly points of Cymru.