Into the Cothi hell-pool

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/05/into-cothi-hell-pool

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The lane from Ffarmers descends to the afon Cothi and turns sharply north-east towards Rhandirmwyn. Every verge, every marshy field corner hereabouts billows with creamy blossom of meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria). The air is heavy with its honeyed astringency – the defining smell of summer and Wales, lingering into autumn, carrying a powerful synaesthetic charge.

Salicylic acid was first identified from meadowsweet root, and synthesised as aspirin in 1897. Far back beyond that date, the plant’s alternative name – meadwort – suggests its old usage. Traces of it have been found at beaker burials, in bronze age tombs.

It’s present too in Math fab Mathonwy – a late 14th-century redaction of much older folktale motifs that’s one of the masterpieces of medieval Welsh literature. In the story, the enchanter Gwydion creates a wife for his nephew Lleu from the flowers of the oak, the meadowsweet and the broom. She’s called Blodeuedd – “of flowers” – and it ends badly. She betrays him, in punishment for which Gwydion turns her into an owl – Blodeuwedd or “flower-faced”.

I leave the road, clamber over rocks into the upper gorge of the Cothi. Those swirling Celtic narrative patterns seemed inscribed upon smooth and water-sculpted rocks. The green filtering light and rushing stream were apt accompaniments. It’s a sporting little gorge, this, for those addicted to such places. Rock traverses above deep pools, leaps between boulders or across narrow clefts lead you to the final impasse. This is Pwll Uffern Gothi – the Cothi hell-pool.

A waterfall jets down from the farther side into a rock-cauldron, its sides glistening, mossy, impendent. The roar of water is amplified by them. Thunderous and dark, it’s one of those places where the forces of landscape are gathered into fearsome expression. And it’s remote, no pathway to it but the river, beside which remains of a Roman leat for the Dolaucothi goldmines can be found if you search diligently. At dusk, tawny owls screech among surrounding oakwoods. The old stories still echo here.

• Forty Years on the Welsh Bird Islands, the 2015 memorial lecture in honour of the late Country diarist William Condry, will be given in Machynlleth on 3 October by Professor Tim Birkhead.