Brutalist county

The Welsh aren't mad, but their county is really severe and brutal, so they have every reason to be so.
 No sensible person ever wanted to go there. It's brutal enough in its rock hard base to knock sense into any softy silly enough to try to make a living there on the land.

There isn't really enough soil there to attract farmers and the largely Cambrian and old Ordovician rocks resist even steel-edged tools, roadmaking and house building, just for starters. Thats generalizing a bit ,but its not easy land to farm. 

And when the rocks do finally weather, they turn to mud and silt, making the prospect of a sandy loam soil or asandy beach here, where finally landed in DA, a really rare thing. More on that elsewhere. 



Nothing is made easy for visitors even now, with town names you can't possibly say, let alone remember. Our normal fights over where we are going would have turned into absolute get out of the car standoffs except there is no space to get off the road. Be thankful you are travelling with us, but not in the car with us.  

The brutes of old loved to build fortresses with these hard rocks but, as always, the labor dried up.

Clearly too, there is a whole new language barrier with TV stations and dramas that speak only that language. This is all on an island about the size of Victoria ,whose formerly warring tribes have supposedly been united for at least a thousand years.  Mind you, their news on Europe is much more diverse and comprehensive than the monoculture of the Aussie ABC version.
A lot to be said for home grown diversity.




Something has to be said for true diversity in thought and practice, Distictively different aspects of Welsh culture is a good part of meeting some of the people such as we did in a tightly conformed old coal mining villages in the bottom of a valley, 

This Wild county to the West was such a no go land through history that it wasn't studied for the Doomsday book ( which we found a copy at the Oxfam shop ) , The British people just would not go there; Anyone with any sense has thought of emigrating to Australia where they have real beach sand and a climate to have a holiday from its relentless dark. Mind you they could all be moving back up here, now that climate change has taken over??
We visited the site of "the worst disaster in history" (as a youth in town described it) -where 114 school children died as a result of a preventable landslide in deep valley country like that shown diagrammatically. More here.  

Here's the rub -- the locals we met there were wonderful.  This was in great contrast to living in manor house toffee territory; we were treated to gifts and a concert where the men sang and the women in the audience, and me, joined in the celebration of St David's day with community singing. Got to know 3 people quite well,  one who used to run the wonderful "Angel " Hotel and one young illustrator artist and a local policeman.  
And while it was hard work climbing up and down the normal stairs of a normal workers house ( shown ) we got to experience a vision of a miner's kids old school yard ( in front of us and facing south) where the kids would grow vegetables in that narrow gap between hill, house road and boulder stream,  

The people at church wore yellow flowers and the letter post boxes were covered with "toppers ", yes the natural colors were dull, but the locals were celebrating. The daffodils ,and a few lambs were appearing .  

And would you believe it, In a place where brutal is normal , we found out what might be a Welsh  connection .
The Modra name can end in "i" in Germany ( Modri) and just about every name in Wales has too many y's and d's in it . 
Sorry folks, but we were afraid to approach these Modrydd's ,The genuine farmers on this farm near Becon are clearly the dangerous types, as you see by the way they pruned their trees.