Hooked on Wales

It was the words ‘Welsh Desert’ that had me hooked. They were in a booklet about rivers that I’d idly picked up at the local tourist information office.

I’ve lived in Wales for most of my life, yet I didn’t know it had a desert. I’m not completely crazy; I wasn’t imagining vast acres of dunes, palm trees, oases and the like and – as far as I know – the only camels are in the local mountain zoo. So, what sort of desert was this?

I learned the term ‘Desert of Wales’ was coined in the 1860s to describe a high moorland plateau, boggy rather than dry and the source of several rivers, but almost uninhabited and inaccessible. Looking at the map, the Welsh Desert appeared pretty inaccessible even today, but that made it all the more of a challenge.

We would go there, find the lake where the River Teifi has its source and then follow that river down to the sea in Cardigan Bay. The booklet I’d picked up promised waterfalls, gorges, castles, nature reserves and a lot more on the way.