Today I would love to be back home on Mynydd Epynt

It's a beautiful day here at present, and the forecast for the whole day is sunshine, sunshine and then more sunshine, so I have nothing to grumble about really. However, I think that I have a touch of hiraeth this morning, because I need to get my regular dose of beautiful Wales! To be more specific, where I would really love to be is out on Mynydd Epynt, on home ground. This is the place where my spirit is free to celebrate all the beauty of the Welsh mountains that God has created. It's vast, fairly empty of human habitation --- although there are masses of sheep --- and yet always alive. To some these great empty spaces might seem desolate, but in reality they are humming with life of all sorts.


To walk or drive across the Epynt early in the morning, the dew still on the ground and the mist creating a sense of the mystery of the mountains, is an incredible experience which is worth discovering for yourself. 

Nowadays the greater part of the Epynt has been taken over for use as an army training ground, and the farms and homes that were the heart of a thriving community of around 220 people seventy years ago have all but disappeared from view altogether, yet they still remain in the mind's eye of many of the folk who live on the edges, or whose forebears lost their homes and livelihoods when their land was requisitioned back in 1940. The photograph above shows a typical Epynt farm of the period. The letter requisitioning the land arrived through the letterboxes of the Epynt folk in March 1940, and by the end of June, just over three months later, the community had completely gone, erased from the area, just as their farms and homes would also soon be. Today the wounds are still open for many folk, and forgiveness is scarce.


Ah well, back to the sunshine here in Cheshire!