The way to Neath Abbey Quarry is a perfect stranger to me this morning. It’s been three years since my last visit, and the maze of the path has shifted; old tree trunks have turned to mulch and the brook carves a different channel. My companion and I shoulder big bouldering pads, poorly proportioned for tight manoeuvres, yet we bump, turn and pivot our way through. Thanks to the late sunrise, we’re gifted a lingering coda of the dawn chorus, coming from a holly thicket heavy with berries. A goldcrest fizzes around ahead of us, seeking bugs startled by our approach.
Like every old quarry, this place has been host to much change. Once it was just a plain old hill, then a source of building blocks for monks and their abbey. Much later, it was extracted again for the terraced towns of the south Wales coalfield. Once that need had faded, climbers found the place, hacking paths through the tangle and stringing ropes up its face.
Then, during a winter downpour some 20 years ago, down too poured the cliff. A rust-brown torrent shattered all beneath it to rubble and wood pulp, leaving great boulders far from the new cliff face, the landscape reshaped again.
In geological terms, this place has been moving apace, but today we can take our time. The sky is blue, the crag serene. On each boulder, our feet are guided by dinky chips formed from iron nodules or strange fossils. Sharp edges in the rock’s patina grind down our fingertips and tear at our calluses. A rough scuffle to the top-out yields fist bumps and views of the expanse of Baglan Bay. Slightly alarmingly, you can still find rusty old bolts on broken blocks, once fixed to ropes.
Among the surrounding scree, young mosses, lichens and leaf litter are filling gaps between rocks, blunting the jagged stones. A few war-torn oaks are pushing upward at curious angles, half-buried and mangled, and their scions are recolonising, their roots holding the fractured foundation together. How tall will they grow before some new upheaval throws their world upside down? Tired, we head home. When I next return, the quarry will be altered again in ways I can’t begin to predict.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
