Bwlch Gwynt – “wind-pass” - lies between the two westernmost summits of Mynydd Preseli’s moorland ridge. The name fits perfectly with this bleak saddle marred by extensive forestry clearcut. Views distract attention from the ruined immediate landscape. They spread wide, take in Ramsey, the craggy crest of Ynys Bery off its southern tip, isolated rocks of the Bishops and Clerks in the sea beyond, and all the magnificent headlands – Dinas, Strumble, Penmaen Dewi – that ruckle the northern coast of Pembrokeshire.
Stonehenge’s bluestone menhirs were dragged from Preseli millennia ago in a dumbfounding, still-incomprehensible feat of megalithic engineering. But the oriental end of Preseli’s seven-mile whaleback whence they came (they’ve been identified as originating from the spiky outcrop of Carn Goedog) has a different character to its occidental heights. Here the ridge reaches its 536-metre highest point at Foel Cwmcerwyn, two miles distant from and 140 metres above the road that crosses through the bwlch.
On a June evening I set off from the latter, the ancient trackway of the Golden Road still mirey from the winter rains, its surrounding vegetation typical of high moorland: cottongrass, sedge, heather, sphagnum moss, bilberry and the red moor grasses. My route to the summit branched off the trackway at the end of the old plantation.
It veered away to zig-zag gently up the shoulder of the hill. Swags of winter-bleached moor grass gave the landscape a spectral feel, a very few wind-seeded spruce darkly punctuating it.
On the topmost spike of one of them, a small and restless bird perched, making frequent forays down into the grass to probe around the roots before returning to his vantage point in a flurry of flicking tail and white-barred wing-beat. The still evening and the quiet place amplified the sweet, staccato notes to which he gave voice from his perch.
Too melodious for a stonechat, then? I focused my glass on him, saw clearly the broad eye-stripe of a whinchat – rare now, though these west Wales coastal heights seem a last stronghold for the species.
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