Or Rock faces
It has always been thus. Shapes of mountains, rocks, natural formations etc are often named after things we are familiar with because it makes them more comprehensible to us. But there is familiar and familiar. On this holiday we could see the stars because the nights were so dark. Most of the constellations look like saucepans to me, not archers, crabs and bulls. But I’m more familiar with saucepans than archers, crabs and bulls.
This rock in the Preseli Hills looks like an Easter Island dog to me. It is now known as Bloodhound Rock. Maybe it always has been.
If I ever wake up in the ancient woodlands of Tycanol after a few spliffs I’d have to pinch myself for a reality check.
As it was, completely straight, I found myself staring at this face embedded in the rock with some disbelief. And with a mental note to avoid reefer in the area.
Tycanol is ancient. It looks it and feels it. Absolutely different from anywhere I have ever been before. A twisted, convoluted, lichen-covered slice in time which I could have spent far longer photographing than I did. It has a real ‘lost world’ quality. One for our next visit.
Probably like many people, I see stuff like this all of the time without really meaning to, like visual double-entendres, although that implies something too deliberate. These are more like tricks of the light. These ‘eyes’ were in Ceilbwr Bay. Somebody had dropped crockery from the top of the cliff and the remnants had come to rest like this.
What’s this? It is a face in the rock in many ways, just a bit more literal. Max’s eyes are slitted against the sun (see the shadow) and are a welcome relief from the menace above.
Max is buried up to the neck in the sand at Aberporth, one of the beaches on the Pembrokeshire coast. The photo was taken about 11 years ago. A few seconds later he started panicking and had to be dug out. It was me who buried him.
I’ve been coming to Pembrokeshire for nearly 30 years. From Bloodhound Rock I could see the cottage we had rented when Max was just 6 months old, 22 years ago. Coincidentally it is very close to the cottage we were renting on this holiday.
Back then we were sharing the cottage with a 3 month old and her parents. Hannah used to scream and scream all night. Possibly with good reason. The first night we were there all hell broke loose on the Preseli Hills. They were filming a re-creation of the Falklands War on Carnalw. The whole of that Saturday night/Sunday morning was filled with the sound of gunfire and bomb blasts which lit up the night. Presumably funded by Margaret Thatcher to restore the knee-jerk jingoism they stoked through that crappy non-conflict which saved the tory government’s bacon in 1982. I have a great deal of resentment loathing toward that government in particular and this just about topped it off.
Oh yeah, the owner of the cottage bred Rottweiler dogs (aka ‘devil dogs’ in 1987) next door so we had five of them baying all night. Absolutely fucking brilliant!
(Max slept through the whole thing, as he did through the hurricane that struck London a few weeks later in early October 1987).
Here’s another face staring up at the pillar of light, or is it a lava lamp?
Another weird and wonderful bit of forestry managed woodland bang in the middle of the hills.
I’ll spit out the madeleine now because there lie demons. But one thing about this holiday, like the tricks of the rock faces, were the tricks of memory. I could see so many layers on the places that I was familiar with and I found the double vision quite emotional at times. My life is very different now.
So I’ll lay those particular memories to rest on the bench in Ceilwbr Bay. Or is it a coffin?
And so they went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn
(Inscription)
Nuff said…
by skinnyvoice
no comments