Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future

Product Information

A soft rain is falling but it doesn’t dampen the beauty of the cobbled track as it cuts through a shady pine forest. It still does, although there are places where you would be hard pressed to see it, places where it wobbles, turns a corner or generally behaves in a most un-Roman manner. The trees are wreathed in thick moss, and I spot fly agaric, the red and white spotted mushroom beloved by storybook illustrators, pushing up from the green forest floor. With the pacing and economy of a novelist, Bullough conjures up a history of Wales both intimate and epic, encompassing the lives of the saints, Welsh language, coal mining and cultural myths, alongside the vivid present day.

His new, non-fiction book tells of his south-to-north walk along the line of Sarn Helen, a Roman road which spans the country and gives the book its title.km) ride to Swansea, which should give you plenty of time to enjoy a celebratory meal by Swansea Bay and arrange any onward travel. Tom Bullough grew up on a hill farm in Radnorshire, Wales, and lives in the Brecon Beacons with his children. The third aspect of the book is the future of the country as the spectre of climate change looms ever nearer.

At the time, it simply summarised the state of things as they appeared; I expected only that it should be heard by whoever was present in court, and hoped only that its moral case should receive some official recognition. Interspersed with his travelogue is a series of in-depth interviews with scientists from Welsh universities, whose predictions for the country’s future are by turns dispassionate and chilling. From coastal castles to the steep pitches of Snowdonia National Park, mountain passes to the UK’s first trail centre at Coed-y-Brenin, traversing the ‘desert of Wales’ through the Cambrian Mountains and spectacular Elan Valley and lastly crossing the rough and wild Brecon Beacons National Park into the valleys of South Wales, there are few long-distance routes that rival the variety of landscapes that you’ll find on Sarn Helen. It’s still so quiet on the trail that I feel something akin to culture shock when I stop at the busy Mountain Centre for a cup of coffee.

As I detail in my 2021 defence statement (following a second arrest), there was evidence that this type of direct action had affected UK government policy and, to me, this made it a moral imperative. The tone swings between devastating anger and sadness on the one hand, and a rapturous appreciation of all that is being lost on the other. The reader is welcomed on his journey through a language of wonder and adventure, ‘now we arrive in a dell… now we meet a stream of pools…now we scramble over a moss-swaddled wall’.