We all have our touchstone places. One of mine is the Monk’s Pond on the Begwns – a little group of bracken hills north of the river Wye as it heads eastwards out of Wales. For more than half a century I’ve made regular pilgrimages to this pool, the southern Welsh uplands wrapped round it like a protective barrier. The view takes in the Black Mountains to the south, the Brecon Beacons in the west, and those smooth, heathery highlands of Radnorshire to the north.
There’s a stand of drowned Scots pine at the pool’s western end. Their roots were submerged when it was enlarged for a local farm’s water supply. The pines are sibilant with goldcrests. Buzzards that range this wide country perch here and watch for prey.
In high wind the trees rattle and slough off twigs and small branches. Sometimes, when it’s fine and quiet– though officially this is forbidden – I sleep out here, cut a square in the turf, light a small fire. Come morning, I leave no sign of my passing.
Over the past few years, to my delight, a pair of mute swans had made this sky-reflecting pool their home, built a nest among the reeds, reared successive fine broods of cygnets which the huge cob, come the next spring, chased away to begin their own lives and find their own lifelong mates. What is there more beautiful, more pure somehow, than these great white birds?
Like Yeats, “I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, / And now my heart is sore”. Why? Because on a day last year, perhaps when “Under the October twilight the water / Mirrors the still sky”, someone with an air rifle came up here and put 21 pellets in the cob’s brain. What vicious skill was this! In brutal political times, the populace grows thus.
Passers-by found the swan. Still just alive, it was taken to a rescue centre, and there put down. The wildlife protection officer for Powys Constabulary is seeking information on the perpetrator. Contact her if you have any.
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