Along the track from Blaendoithie, shreds of peeling bark, translucent amber in sunlight, hang from the birch trunks. The stream, too, is amber-tinted, its headwaters draining wide peat moorlands. It froths and rolls between close alders, exulting in the wild spaciousness of this landscape. I arrive in the farmyard at Ty'n Cornel.
Once owned by the Youth Hostel Association, Ty'n Cornel now belongs to the Elenydd Wilderness Hostels Trust, a beautiful and remote location ensuring its popularity. As I ambled on along the track, a man hailed me from the terrace in front of the former farmhouse. "Want a cup of tea?" was a blissful invitation on a humid day. I climbed up to join him. "Richard," he introduced himself, holding out a hand. He turned out to be warden of the place.
We sat at a picnic table and talked for an hour or more: about this unique surrounding landscape of the Elenydd, the most extensive tract of wild country south of the Scottish border; about what we both deemed to be the drift of the YHA away from its original philosophy of providing simple facilities in rural locations for the young-at-heart to an accountant-directed facility for the modern outdoor-poseurs' charivari. We talked of old George DeRoe, long-time eccentric warden at the Trust's other hostel of Dolgoch (also once owned by the YHA) above Abergwesyn, behind which he'd built a cabin and over a 20-year period obtained squatters' rights, even moving in a piano. I like this story. When George died earlier this year, the Guardian gave him an obituary.
I carried on down the Doethie valley, extraordinarily lovely, no road threading across. There is a narrow path I remember as green. Now it's ripped and scored by studded tyres of mountain-bikes – a slough, a mire. So many conflicting demands on this fragile land of ours, so little respect!
