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

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In the north the route is believed to follow the western bank of the river Conwy from Canovium, a fort at Caerhun, passing through Trefriw, then leading on to Betws-y-Coed, with a branch leading to Caer Llugwy near Capel Curig. The route then passed through Dolwyddelan, running through the Cwm Penamnen valley and past the higher parts of Cwm Penmachno. The route then leads on past Llan Ffestiniog to the Roman fort of Tomen y Mur, near Trawsfynydd before continuing south towards Dolgellau.

A wondrous and arresting journey teeming with wisdom, insights and humanity. Walking through Wales with Bullough is to see the nation – and the UK – with new eyes” A deeply engaging, and deeply engaged, travelogue by one of our finest and (old-fashioned word that I can find no modish synonym for) noblest writers” A couple of days later, I gave a short talk for Writers Rebel in Trafalgar Square, urging other writers to leave their desks and take direct action because, as Jay Griffiths explains in This Is Not a Drill, ‘words (and this is a heavy heresy for a writer) are not enough’.During his research for this book he hiked its full length as best he could (parts of the exact route are disputed by historians). The result is a state-of-the-nation portrait of Wales, encompassing its past, present and future. “The road,” he says, “was the perfect spine from which to flesh out a picture of the country.” A rapturous lamentation, and a winding tale with an unswerving message. One of the best books I’ve read on the climate emergency” I’m a great admirer of George Monbiot and I also understand how he’s managed to upset so many people with his hatred of sheep,” says Bullough. “I share his feelings in lots of ways, and I grew up on a bloody hill-farm. The smell of sheep is home. So I can really feel what people feel they are losing, which is their soul, their identity. You try and take that stuff away – what are we?” Their footsteps merge as Bullough finds awe and tranquility in the wild, ‘sometimes it will bring me such a sense of uplift that I find I have forgotten to breathe. Sometimes my mind will clear for minutes at a time, seeming to leave nothing but a blazing light’. Sarn Helen is not just the line of a road but a line through time connecting us to the past people of Wales.

Bullough speaks to a series of environmental scientists, mostly based in Welsh universities. Some are so sad that they seem about to weep in the middle of their Zoom calls. Others are frustrated by a continuing misapprehension among the public. While thinking about Wales in relation to global heating can sound funny – what could be nicer than turning up the thermostat on the country’s habitual chilly drizzle? – it turns out that the results will be nastier than anyone anticipates. As Prof Mary Gagen of Swansea University explains: “We can expect a lot of very, very wet summers and winters and the crop failures that accompany that will cause severe food shortages.” All of these things pertain today, except that the baby is almost my height and has an even more vocal sister. And yet, had I walked Sarn Helen then, rather than in 2020-2021, and decided to write about that, the resultant book would have been something quite different to Sarn Helen as it is now. Sarn Helen also includes alarming scientific detail. Over Zoom, Bullough speaks with a range of experts who provide information about the climate and ecological emergency and what it means for Wales: how best can we use the land so steeped in farming traditions; the upland, lowland and middle grounds; the defence of the coastline and future worries for coastal villages, transport and infrastructure; drought, storm surges, flooding. The statistics are absolutely terrifying.I love to write, and most of all I love the way that (on those occasions when it works) it can happen almost weightlessly, as if by itself. There is a sense that you, the writer, are aligned with the world in a manner surpassing any conventional understanding. For me, it brings to mind convergent evolution: the way that a pair of unrelated species, such as Smilodon fatalis and Thylacosmilus atrox (respectively, once, an American saber-tooth cat and an Argentinian saber-tooth marsupial), could somehow arrive at a similar form. If there is no mightier hand at work, and there is no Platonic ideal of your book already somehow latent in the cosmos, then it feels at least as if the world comprises some sort of underlying pattern – and as if, for now, you and it have become one seamless thing. What is not said is just as chilling: ‘a change comes over her voice, of weariness, resignation and anger’; ‘the expression…is desperate…there are obviously tears in her eyes’; how a baby in a cafe resumes howling at the mention of critical thresholds in nature, ‘beyond which things just can’t recover’.

Vital, and urgent with concern. You cannot leave this book without its message thundering in your head. It is not enough to walk old routes. This was. Now what? -- Cynan Jones Thrilling. I was bewitched by the experience of seeing as Tom Bullough does, with such insight, such deep learning, such humour and such urgency. This is the finest kind of travel writing: a book that makes you see what is really there, and fills you with the author's passion to defend it -- Horatio Clare This Collection features the route split into seven stages, which you can ride each day, combine or split further as you wish. You’ll find places to stay, get more supplies and enjoy a hot meal in most of the towns and villages on the route, but it’s important that you book ahead for accommodation, especially in the busier summer months. Sarn Helen is accomplished and stunning in every one of its many personalities: as history, as memoir, as eco-parable, as impassioned call to arms. The world of this book is one of awe and joy and one which we need to protect from human predation until our last collective breath -- Niall GriffithsBullough’s road trip ends unexpectedly, far away from Wales, in the cells of Charing Cross police station. He explains that in September 2020 he was arrested and charged for refusing to move on from Parliament Square during the Extinction Rebellion protest. As a middle-aged novelist with two children, who has never been in trouble with the law, he feels a kind of horror at what he has done. For years he thought that his words were enough – and his words, in this book at least, are indeed beautiful and always to the point. So why go looking for extra complication, he asks himself – before realising that complication is already here, encircling us while we, like the legionaries, march heedlessly on. 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.