Lonely Shepherd

 “There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.” 
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

Time to  resume my treasure hunt today, with a journey with K1 to celebrate the lifting of the 5 mile travel restriction in Wales and a visit to the Lonely Shepherd, a rough pillar of limestone left by 19th century quarrymen on the rim of Darren Disgwylfa overlooking the Clydach Gorge. 
This was a brief recce visit, about 35 years since K1 and I were last here together. I'm also planning another visit in search of another of the "Inscribed Stones" (or "religious stones") which is apparently located somewhere near the line of the old tramroad which runs across the upland moors to Nantyglo. The name J Rushton, reputedly the "author" of the inscribed stones, is chiselled into the Lonely Shepherd, plain to see after all these years. 
This is a fascinating area for me, full of family history and mythology; my great-great-grandfather was a haulier, his horses dragging heavily laden trams of limestone across the bleak windswept moorland to the iron furnaces at Sirhowy. But this is more than a stroll on the hillside; if you sit and listen quietly, the "song" of those long gone can be heard on the wind; their stories carved in the landscape, rising from the earth where they carved out their living for the briefest moment in time, and then were gone. I'm following a hidden pathway in plain view, an inner journey guided by the Song of the Earth, Awen.