By: Blonde One
Scotland does water very well; perhaps it’s because there’s so much of it!? I spent some lovely moments of time observing it and considering why it was so much more interesting than Devon water. I wondered if it was because it was so cold and sometimes frozen: it is not common to find so much iced-up water back home, thus creating a fascination. Or perhaps it was merely because I had time to stop and really look at it. Seeing the extraordinary in ordinary things is very rewarding and brings a whole new level of depth to the everyday things that we’re surrounded by. Norman MacCaig, a poet from Edinburgh, wrote a poem that sums it up. ‘An Ordinary Day’ describes how the ‘light glittered on the water’ and how the water was ‘shilly-shallying’.
These photos don’t really do justice to the real thing but they’re interesting nevertheless.
Beautiful. Very jealous! …
It was truly beautiful. I’ve promised myself that next time I’m on Dartmoor I’m going to stop and admire the water more.
May I recommend another part of the British Isles that does water very well: the Brecon National Park, though I’m sure you’re familiar given Blonde Two’s links with nearby Malvern. Yesterday we took a break from our 21-movie slog through the Borderlines Film Festival and exposed our grandson to a Grand Tour up the Elan Valley and linked this to a special favourite: the mountain road between Llanidloes and Machynllyth. By car of course, we’re far too decrepit for walking; it wasn’t raining but boy, was it blowing!
The Elan Valley is one of those rare wild places where the hand of man is not vile. The three massive reservoirs (8bn gal. of water) were built at a time when the Victorians didn’t feel it necessary to hide engineering from view. The stonework was finished decoratively and the pump-houses built to look like follies. Not a bad approach when you accept that the end-product was intended to last for two or three hundred years at least – or for infinity for all I know. After all, one wouldn’t want the residents of Cardiff to die of thirst within the foreseeable future.
Faggots and mash for the grandson at a wayside caff: plate scraped clean to just a few smears of gravy. As I drove I was fed Random jelly bonbons in a multitude of shapes; sort of blonde-ish don’t you think?
I spent a very fine three days walking around that very area with a non-Blonde friend in half term (two weeks ago). Just stunning and with friends in Ludlow, what could be more convenient. I intend to introduce B1 to the Elan Valley very soon!
Thought the Elan Valley dams and reservoirs were constructed to supply water to Birmingham? I remember the Welsh Nationalists blew up the pipeline next to the railway line near Hagley that we used to get to school everyday – much excitement.
True, Birmingham is the main beneficiary. However: “The River Elan is compensated with 68 million litres of water a day from Caban Coch (the submerged dam). This can be increased to 232 million litres per day so that South Wales can also benefit from this water as the River Elan flows into the River Wye from which water can be transferred in times of shortage.”
Amazingly this project, so obviously Victorian in scope, was only completed in 1952