Yesterday on Waun Cas-mael

Food parcel delivery to an address in the isolated village of Puncheston (Cas-mael being its Welsh name) presented an opportunity to follow a soggy footpath across the common. It's an ancient area of swampy land that's home to all manner of  plants and animals that thrive in the  ooze and squelch of ground that's too wet for any human use.

The birds, flowers, insects and wide skyscapes make the common special to anyone who  relishes peace and solitude (and doesn't mind wet feet.) The  Welsh poet Waldo Williams who once taiught at the village school in Puncheston wrote a poem about this place that reflected his deeply-felt pacifism.  In particular he deplored the munitions dump just a few miles to the west.  Waldo was revered  as a Welsh nationalist, a Quaker and a man of principle, once  jailed for withholding his income tax as a protest against its use on  military defense spending. He lived the simplest possible life, never owning a house or a car but living in small dwellings and travelling around by bicycle and deriving spiritual succour from places such as this.

The day was overcast but there were drifts of damp-loving wild flowers: valerian, ragged robin, bog asphodel and marsh orchids (above). In the drier churchyard orange hawkweed (fox and cubs) glowed like cinders.

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