Country diary: A hillside walk curtailed – for now

The view of the Melindwr valley from Nany yr Arian. Photograph: John Gilbey/The Guardian

The narrow path winds around a bulky outcrop of rock, studded here and there with lichen, moss and the early stalks of foxgloves. Below me the ground drops away sharply towards the valley floor, the steep slope covered now with a tangle of heather and new growth where gloomy pine plantations once stood.

The strong breeze rising across the hillside pulls at the leaves, exposing their pale undersides – bringing waves of flickering movement. Red kites weave across the crest of the hill, riding in angular splendour on the fresh wind. Their wings barely move except to change course, heads scanning the ground below for possible prey.

An emerging fern frond at Nant yr Arian. Photograph: John Gilbey/The Guardian

The blue glint of the sea is visible as a thin line in the heart of the western horizon, the deeply incised glaciated valleys of the Melindwr and Rheidol merging in the middle distance and giving a glimpse of the iron-age fort of Pendinas 10 miles away. The floor of the valley, eroded and flattened by the action of ice, is a matrix of sheep pasture, hedges and small copses that merge into the denser woods of the valley sides.

Hidden within these trees are the decayed remains of the lead mines, which for hundreds of years brought industry and occasional wealth to this area, but are now reduced to a few crumbling walls and mysterious chunks of rusty iron.

Hundreds of feet above the meadows, the northern slopes carry groups of trees newly in leaf, wedged between vast grey slabs of almost vertical rock. As I head farther north, the valley opens out towards the higher ground beyond Pendam. The woodland thins as the land rises, the pale moor grass of the lightly stocked rough grazing being invaded occasionally by broad tongues of bracken.

Patches of cloud begin to bubble up in the afternoon heat, sending pools of shadow across the landscape and deadening the colours of early summer. Another dozen miles or so would take me by footpath and minor road to the coast at Borth – but, with a lingering sense of fatigue, I realise that it will have to wait for another time.

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