Author: Alison

Travels through Farynshire: Over Pippleford

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The next stop was the village of Over Pippleford, nestled on one of the bends of the River Pipple as it meanders slowly to the sea.

Over Pippleford’s limestone cottages are white washed with roses and violets entwining up through trellises, their front gardens filled with summer flowers, their roofs thick with thatch. The green in the middle of the village has a small, well cared-for cenotaph surrounded by faded paper poppies and a couple of wooden benches. A post office, greengrocer’s and butcher’s face the green. Another street leads to a field with a cricket square neatly shaved in the middle and a white shed serving as the pavilion. Most importantly, there is a pub: the Forest River that sits right on the bend of the Pipple.

Score one for the Forest River: it serves no green ales. There are some refreshing lagers and cool mountain wines, but I went for the homemade lemonade, and Felix tried the local waterweed fizz. He sipped it cautiously and pronounced it “gritty but not unpleasant.”

Most of our fellow passengers from the coach were in the Forest River. We shared a table with an older couple who were making their way back to Sylnmouth from a trip to Tlws.

“We go every year, every year,” said Mr Bill Ness. “Spectacular, it is. Great for kayaking, and we tried jet skiing this year too.”

“Then in winter we go to Mytten Fawr,” said Mrs Sandy Ness. “For the skiing.”

“Have you ever seen a wolvern?” I asked.

“Wolvern won’t come near the resorts up there,” said Bill. “I doubt there’s any in the Bloon Peaks at all – too many people, far too many people. You need to go further into the mountains if you want to even catch a glimpse.”

Felix and I glanced at each other, thinking about the loping shadow in the mist during the crazy journey back down Gwyrddlas.

“’Course, there’s plenty what have seen ‘em,” continued Bill. “You hear stories from all the instructors up there. The mountains must be riddled with wolvern if you believe all the folk that say they’ve seen one!”

“How about seafolk?” I asked.

“Near Sylnmouth? Hardly likely, hardly likely. If there are any left these days – they’re rarer than wolvern, I reckon – they’ll be in the less populated parts of the coast, away from Sylnmouth and Riversouth. Are you headed that way?”

“In a roundabout way,” said Felix, before I could enthusiastically leap in and tell the Nesses that Felix was from Tor Calon. I wasn’t sure why he did not want people to know, but I kept quiet anyway.

Bill picked up on Felix’s evasiveness, though. “You’re not from Farynshire, right, Mabel?”

“No, Bristol. We’re studying in Rookpot.”

Bill looked expectantly at Felix. “My family lives on the coast.”

“Near Sylnmouth?”

“Further up; nearer Tropsog.”

Bill looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but sipped on his beer instead.

“Was this your first visit to Gnivil Forest?” Sandy asked me, after an awkward pause.

“Yes. It’s beautiful.”

“I always think it’s like another world,” said Sandy. “So peaceful and still compared to anywhere out here.”

“That’s the foresteens,” said Bill.

“Are there some in there, then?” I asked, perhaps too eagerly.

“Of course. All over. You didn’t see any?”

I shook my head.

“Mabel’s very interested in the Peoples,” said Felix.

“Everyone is,” smiled Sandy.

“I’ll tell you something, though,” said Bill seriously, looking me straight in the eye. “You might yet see a foresteen. They don’t just live in the forests. Most folk don’t realise that it’s the foresteens what are the most widespread of all the Peoples. Most folk think it’s the wolvern, but they mostly keep to the mountains. Foresteens can be found all over, all over.” He might have winked at this point, but I was distracted by the arrival of our lunch.

As befits its name, the Forest River boasts a menu full of fish, freshly caught from the clear-flowing Pipple. I was quite excited at the prospect of such a fresh meal, much to the amusement of my three dinner companions from the coast. Felix and Sandy did not even choose a fish dish. Bill went for a deeply filled fish pie.

I had never had perch before, mainly because it wasn’t something my local chippy offered covered in batter. The fish melted in my mouth, along with new potatoes, green beans and garden peas glazed with thick yellow butter. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was, but we hadn’t eaten anything at the Lake of Doom, so my last meal had been Bea Proke’s hearty breakfast in Hen Ffydd.

Felix had ordered a duck salad, and made quick work of that too. I felt like I could just order another perch, or maybe carp this time, but there was a dessert menu, so we went for that instead.

There was a pleasant burbling of contented conversation in the pub of happy travellers enjoying their meals and surroundings. The Pipple babbled along outside, shallow and slow moving in the summer months, the mountain waters in no rush as they made their way to the sea.

“Where does the river come out on the coast?” I asked.

“It merges with a few others further down, and they join together to make the Maw Cauldron. You should check it out if you’re heading in that direction, though it looks most impressive in winter when the waves are up and it’s properly churning.”

“Does the Darkflint come out there?” I asked.

“It’s got its own mouth further up the coast, near Riversouth. I assume you’re going to Riversouth?”

I nodded.

“Have either of you been there before?”

I shook my head.

“A couple of times,” said Felix.

Bill nodded, and again did not press Felix any further. “It’s a beautiful city,” he said to me instead. “Very different, very different, from your Rookpot.”

“Is the Meyrick in residence?” asked Felix

“I believe so. It’s usually widely announced if she leaves the city, and I don’t recall hearing anything.”

“Will that make a difference?” I asked.

“There’s usually more going on if the Meyrick is in the Palace.”

But we weren’t heading to the coast yet. We left the Nesses and the rest of the coach party, all heading down to Tropsog, and we caught one of the twice daily buses from Over Pippleford north to join the County Road.

By Mabel Govitt 

Travels through Farynshire: Gnivil Forest

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As soon as we decided we were going to do this trip, we knew we had to see the Forests. Farynshire has two, very different, Forests. The first we came to, situated between the mountains and the coast, was Gnivil Forest.

It crept up on us. The coach pulled up onto a low ridge that gave us lovely views over the meadows and copses we had just travelled through. But that was nothing compared to the view of what we were about to travel down in to. Gnivil Forest lies entirely in one valley between two limestone ridges. A layer of thin mist draped over the lush canopy, as though the trees were producing their own microclimate. It looks like an exotic rainforest, but this is ancient British woodland, and all its trees are native. Although managed and looked after, Gnivil is not a hub of tourism like the Lake of Doom: there are no garish attractions or parks here. Most ancient woodland is managed in cycles and does not have room for very old trees. But in Gnivil there is no coppicing: the ancient trees are protected and allowed to dominate the spaces.

What everyone immediately notices about Gnivil is that it is living spelled backwards. This has irked etymologists over the years. Farynshire has three official languages: English, Welsh and its indigenous Musril. English might be the most widespread, but it is still the newest, and some hold the view that the name for Farynshire’s most ancient woodland should not derive from the upstart invader. Considerable (some might say obsessive) effort has gone into trying to tie Gnivil to some forgotten Musril word – the hope being that its connection to English is just an unfortunate coincidence. There are tomes written on this subject; explanations for the name are in every guidebook for the county; there is probably a department in Rookpot Museum devoted solely to discovering the “true origins” of the name. One of my professors, Doctor Rhyll Jones, is passionate about this subject, and has written papers and subjected his students to many lectures on how Gnivil’s etymological roots are as Farynshiren as its tree roots. But however it happened, the forest ended up with the most appropriate name it could have.

There are no roads in the forest, so the coach dropped us off at the edge of the tree line. There are no signs announcing when or where you enter Gnivil: the road just peters out into a wide pebbly carpark. A few cars, four-by-fours and an ice-cream van were parked there. This was the only concession made to humans.

Spring is supposed to be the best time to visit Gnivil, when the trees are full of blossom and new leaves, and carpets of bluebells, wood anemones and primroses cover the woodland floor. But I can tell you that it is glorious in summer too. The warm sunshine makes the greens breathe with life, and there are still flowers in the clearings, and lining the wide corridors between the ancient misshapen trees. In Felix’s The Living Forests there was an excellent flora and fauna section, and we managed to identify wild garlic, violets, a bunch of what were probably celandines or buttercups, and a few fading primroses. There is also plenty of fauna: butterflies – smaller, more delicate than those in the mountain vineyard – and bees made the most of the flowers. Great tits, bullfinches and chaffinches flitted busily around their half-grown chicks. We saw a couple of woodpeckers who regarded us suspiciously from a head-high branch as we walked beneath them.

We hurried through all this, though, because there is one place that you have to go to if you’re in Gnivil Forest.

There are no sign posts in the forest, so you have to rely on maps and the well-worn trails. And few of the trails are worn as well as the one that leads to the Wise Grove. After a mile of walking through the peaceful forest, and across a few wildflower meadows, you come to the edge of a shallow bowl crater. A few saplings gather on the grassy banks, overlooking the group of seven trees in the middle of the depression.

Even I, who cannot tell an oak from a pine, could see that each one was a different type. Luckily Felix’s book had a whole chapter on the Grove. The most imposing one is the ash, because it is the tallest. The yew, with its peeling reddish trunk, is the wildest, and takes up the most space. The oak’s twisted branches are clad in new green leaves. The elegant apple tree rustles on one side of the yew. The stunted thicket of hazel huddles close to the ash. Felix informed me that the other short one was an elder, and the least impressive, darkest and most ordinary looking of the group is an alder – but it would produce catkins at some point, which made it more interesting to me.

To the surprise of many historians, Druidism has never been widespread in Farynshire. It has certainly been there, but not as extensively as some might have guessed given the pervasiveness of the Welsh language and Welsh names. One theory about the Wise Grove was that it was the centre of their limited influence. The official guides and respected academic publications could find no other credible explanation for the careful plantation and arrangement of seven different types of tree. And these official explanations, of course, went out of their way to avoid the word foresteen.

The literature mentions tree spirits, and would often recollect the many myths from various cultures about world trees, living trees, the believed powers of trees etc. but it was all just backstory and scene-setting, it was never addressed as anything remotely serious. And it was only in this context that Farynshire’s “living trees” were sometimes mentioned.

There are, of course, any number of books on foresteens, like there are on all the Peoples, but they are always shelved in the folklore or mythology section in book stores, even in The Lilac Beech. These books write that the seven trees in the Wise Grove are slumbering foresteens.

Now, I’m not saying I believe this theory, but there is definitely something … different about the Grove. The whole forest is serene and peaceful, and when we went we could feel that the trees, the birds, the butterflies, the bees were all enjoying summer with a smile. But I got the feeling as we walked down the banks of the Grove that the seven trees were not smiling. It was not sinister or even unsettling, just sombre and a bit subdued. It felt like a place for Serious Business. It was a place of respect. Everything was hushed here. It was a contemplative place. Neither of us spoke a word until we had climbed back up the banks through the on looking saplings. We didn’t take any photos.

I would love to say that I saw faces in the trunks of those trees, but I did not. I don’t know if foresteens even have faces. I looked at each one, right into its knotholes, and they all have their own characters, for sure, but they still looked like … trees. According to folklore, if one of them awakens and looks at you, they can see into your very soul, which does suggest they at least have eyes …

The birds did not seem at all bothered: they landed in the branches, or scurried through the leaf litter. I think there are blue tits nesting in the oak, which showed no signs of caring.

We looked back down at the Grove from the top of the bank. The leaves were thick and bright and gilded by the summer sun in gold. There was a slight haze over the hollow making the trees look slightly out of focus.

I recalled the over the top tourism at the Lake of Doom: a blatant attempt to cash in on a local legend about one of the Peoples. The thought of something similar happening to the Wise Grove made me feel sick to my stomach. Viewing platforms sunk into the raised earthen banks, open-sided vans selling plastic figurines of each of the trees. But this would never happen. Gnivil Forest was a Natural Park and protected. And the idea of interfering with the Grove seemed like blasphemy.

We left quietly. The Grove instils respect and reverence in all who visit it. We were back at the car park before we had a proper conversation.

By Mabel Govitt 

Travels through Farynshire: Lake Quietus

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Our train was in no rush as it ambled slowly through the foothills on its way to Lake of Doom, Farynshire’s largest lake.

OK, its real name is Lake Quietus. For most of its history everyone thought that that referred to its still and peaceful waters. But the true meaning of the word is the fulfilment of a debt. And once the story of the debt became widely known the lake became associated with Doom.

Legend has it that the lake was once home to a community of Lakefolk (basically, seafolk that live in a lake). This was unusual as seafolk are usually seen on the coast. I don’t think any of them live in rivers or lakes any more. But this community did. The local human Baron kidnapped a mermaid princess after seeing her bathing in the shallows and losing his heart to her. The Lakefolk demanded her return. The Baron refused, and this led to a violent conflict between the two Peoples. The Lakefolk tried to rescue the princess, but most of them perished. Finally a noble human knight took it upon himself to rescue the mermaid princess, and because this is a fairytale legend, he succeeded. The King of the Lakefolk was so grateful that he gave his daughter (the poor princess who had already been forced into one marriage, but I’m sure she really loved the knight …) to the knight along with the entire lake, as he had decided to relocate his people back to the ocean. The knight and the princess went on to rule their now mostly empty kingdom fairly, prosperously and peacefully, and had many fishesque children – which the locals are said to be descended from. I’m not sure what the moral of tale is supposed to be, but that is why the lake is called Quietus – for the debt paid to the knight for his heroics.

Lake Quietus does not sound nearly as interesting as Lake of Doom, though, and there are so many weird and fascinating places in Farynshire that a catchy name is an essential marketing tool. So the legend has been reconfigured slightly to emphasise the attacks, kidnapping, violence and wholesale exodus and has assumed the nickname Doom.

And the locals really capitalise on their famous legend.

It’s basically a giant waterpark, and a very popular tourist destination in the summer months (who doesn’t want to be able to say that they spent their summer holidays at the Lake of Doom?). After the peaceful paradise of the mountains, it was a bit of a shock to arrive at a place full of shrieking children, stressed parents, and glassy-eyed holiday reps.

The Lake sits between two round hills. It is dominated by Trident Castle, the large waterpark that has taken over the area. A tangle of flumes loop, curl and plunge up, around and down into the cold water. Pedalos, rubber rings and large foam structures bump into each other on the surface, crowded with people. At the deep end of the lake is the diving centre with three piers and a few motorboats berthed outside. Quietus’ depths contain archaeological evidence of a long abandoned community; some believe it is the Lakefolk community of legend, others that it is a human village that had been flooded centuries ago.

We headed to this end first because I wanted to see the Education Centre, a modern glass building that holds history in displays and glass tanks. Visitors are welcomed by the Legend of the Lake of Doom depicted on large display boards in curly writing and evocative artwork. Seafolk imagery dominates the entrance: watercolours of mermaids playing in the Lake, nineteenth century portraits of seafolken hang next to modern digital photographs of murky underwater scenes. Heavy wooden bookcases sit beside glass display cases. The bookcases are tightly packed with leatherbound volumes of stories, histories and mythologies of the Lakefolk specifically, but also broader texts on seafolk in general. The glass cases display artefacts recovered from the Lake.

I was in my element: I love museums. Rookpot has plenty: as well as the infamous Rookpot Museum in Dameg Square, there is also the Museum of the Walls, Cotton Production Through the Ages, Bookbinders and their Ilk, and a Museum dedicated to the Evolution of the Cobbles. All of them utilise small squares of card to provide details on each artefact. The Education Centre does the same thing, but each card gives two possible versions of each artefact’s providence.

A smokey blue clasp caught my eye. It had been worn smooth by centuries spent underwater, but it was still recognisable as a fish with a hollow eye where I imagined a jewel had once been set. The card beside it read:

This exquisite brooch was recovered in 1976 by one if the diving teams sponsored by Rookpot Museum. It was part of a small collection retrieved from one of the Weed Caves at the north end of the Lake.
Its origin has yet to be fully determined. Its design has been found in other waterside settlements in the mountains, especially on Tlws in the Bloon Peaks. It could also be evidence of the Lakefolk that are believed to have lived in the Lake, as per the local legends.

I doubt I’m the only one to imagine a mermaid princess wearing the clasp in her long golden hair (I have no idea if mermaids have golden hair in real life; quite a few of them in the nineteenth century pictures certainly did). It was a much more exotic and romantic notion than a cold human huddled in the mountains clutching the clasp as their only solace in a bleak, endless winter. When we reached the end of the exhibition I pretty much believed in the legend of the mermaid princess and her human knight. I bought a fridge magnet, a teatowel, and a book, History of the Legend, from the little shop.

Felix had not bought into the legend. He had followed me around the exhibition making scoffing noises and rolling his eyes. I suppose it must have seemed very strange to find such an entrenched seafolk legend in the foothills of the mountains to someone from Tor Calon on the coast where seafolk were occasionally still seen.

“Have you ever seen one?” I asked, not for the first time.

“Maybe. Not up close. We get dolphins and porpoises as well, and from a distance it’s hard to tell the difference.”

“Between a dolphin and a mermaid?”

“Well, yeah. It’s the tails.”

I had tried many times over the two years of knowing Felix to break through this evasiveness, and, like on this occasion, had failed each time. We were going to end up in Tor Calon at some point (if I had any say in the matter), so maybe I would find out more then.

The village of Quietus lies above the Lake and is home to people who work in the waterpark and the Education Centre. It has been designed to look weathered – as though it has been there for centuries – but after the squat rubble houses and narrow alleyways of Hen Ffydd the wide tarmac roads and faux-Tudor buildings look far too modern. It does have lovely views over the Lake. I looked closely at the locals to see if I could discern any Lakefolken ancestry in their faces – unusual eye colour, slightly leathery skin, the hint of gills on their necks … but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and eventually Felix got embarrassed and told me to stop staring.

We left the Lake of Doom on a coach that was heading for the coast, though we would get off before we reached the sea. I had never seen such blatant and crass commercialisation cashing in on Farynshire’s unique history before, and I wasn’t sad to leave it behind.

By Mabel Govitt 

Travels through Farynshire: Mountain wine

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There was no trace of a hangover the next day – probably thanks to the sausages.

Bea Proke makes the best cooked breakfast: yet more sausages, bacon, fried and scrambled eggs, black pudding, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms (I had an entire plate of these), beans, toast, homemade marmalade and two pots of tea.

“Most of my guests are here to go walking and you need a big breakfast to prepare you for the Peaks,” said Bea Proke, as she brought two more racks of toast to our table.

This was our only full day in the mountains: we were catching the train out to the Lake of Doom early the next morning. This limited our trekking options. The Myttens were out – we would need to hire an off-road vehicle to get to them. We could make it to either Tlws or Gwyrddlas’, but not both. The vineyards Felix wanted to visit were on Gwyrddlas’ verdant slopes, which proved the deciding factor, because although I would have loved to see Tlws’ lakes and waterfalls, especially on a hot summer’s day, there was not much else to do on that mountain, unless you were into water sports – which I’m not. Felix had also used Walking and Wine in the Bloon Peaks to show me that wolvern sightings were uncommon but possible in Gwyrddlas’ forests.

The narrow, hedge-bound country lanes meandered through fields in the valley, and they were full of summer flowers and new life: everything that was alive was enjoying the bright summer day. I’ve never really been one for nature, but even I felt that we had stepped into some sort of Garden of Eden where everything was colourful and bountiful and happy and living in harmony with every other living thing. There were probably fieldmice in the wheatfields. We saw hares chasing each other through wildflower meadows, and by the clear streams a stork and a flash of bright blue – that I initially declared to be a hummingbird, but on reflection was probably more likely to be a kingfisher. We saw the occasional farmhouse in the distance, but there were no other signs of human life.

Of course, the whole area is managed by the farmers and the Natural Park authorities. Farynshire has seven Natural Parks: designated protected wild areas. Three are in the mountains, including the whole of the Bloon Peaks region, two on the coast, and the last two are the forests of Oes and Gnivil.

From the valley floor you really get a sense of the size and character of the individual Peaks. Skinny Peak towered behind us as a crude spire, whilst ahead Gwyrddlas’ slopes were dark green, leading to its rounded summit.

As the lanes started to gently curve upwards, wooden signposts informed us that there were a few vineyards in the area. Felix had chosen Huan Gwenynen, as one of his ap Hullin relatives knew the owner, and he had found it in the fold-out map in Walking and Wine.

Like the meadows below, the slopes of Gwyrddlas are well managed. The oaks, beeches and birches give way to pine forests further up, and interspersed with the trees are the vineyards – mostly on the Peak’s eastern flanks that get the most sun. The western side has fewer roads and darker forests.

Huan Gwenynen was at the end of a rough path made into a tunnel by the overarching branches of tangled hawthorn, which beams of sunlight broke through to criss cross our path. The path led up to a ridge, and below the ridge lay the vineyard.

A white-walled cottage sits at the entrance to the vineyard. It is built in the same squat, rubblesque style we had seen in the streets of Hen Ffydd; a reminder that although today everything was peaceful and serene, we were in the mountains and it was a harsh environment in winter.

From the courtyard outside the cottage we could see a stable block, some long, low barns, and a modern conservatory at the rear of the cottage that looked out over the valley. A grubby grey sheep waddled out to greet us. As it got closer it looked more like a dog, but I was never entirely convinced. It snuffled around Felix who ruffled the dreadlocks on its head.

“Barney!”

The sheepdog turned its head in the direction of the cottage. A bald man with a walking stick limped out to greet us. The sleeves of his checked shirt were rolled up to his elbows, his faded jeans were stained with dried mud, heavy workboots thumped in the gravel.

“Lost, are you?”

“Mr Cled? I’m Felix ap Hullin. This is my friend, Mabel. You were expecting us?”

“Of course I was, of course I was. This time of year we get all sorts lost on the mountains.” He shook each of our hands. “I’m Arawn Cled. This is Barney. So – one of the Tor Calon ap Hullins, eh? You’re a long way from home!”

Felix shrugged. “Mabel’s from over the mountains.”

Arawn did not try very hard to look interested in this information. “Did you come up from Tor Calon?”

“We came from Rookpot. We’re at university there.”

“Ah, doing the Grand Tour, are you? Well, you’ve picked a lovely summer for it. Will you be heading to Tor Calon along the way?”

“Maybe. We are planning on going to the coast.”

“If you see Henry, tell him we’ve got some new varieties he’s interested in. He sent a gentleman called Reuben up here a couple of years ago. Relative of yours?”

“My cousin.”

“He took back quite a few crates. I’ve laid out some samples so you can take back your personal recommendations.”

Arawn and Barney led us passed the cottage to the veranda overlooking the vineyards. The vines covered the slopes in regimented lines of stunted trunks and long, delicate trailing tendrils. The veranda was where Arawn brought his guests to show off his lush green empire. A long wooden table with a sturdy white table cloth took up the middle of the veranda, and was surrounded by chairs and a battered sofa, which Barney immediately curled up on and went to sleep.

“I’ll get Ruth to bring out some wine for when we get back. Follow me down.”

A wrought iron staircase – not unlike the one in the centre of The Lilac Beech – wound down one side of the veranda to the dusty track that ran above the vineyards. We crossed the track to walk amongst the sweet-smelling vines. The path between the vines is bare earth, but Arawn pointed out wildflowers like poppies, cow’s parsley, clover, and the occasional primrose (I wrote them down so I wouldn’t forget) that added drops of colour in the shaded roots of the vines. The vines themselves were carefully tied in ways to keep them secure and ensure productivity (Arawn did explain a lot of the technicalities, but I failed to retain most of it). Flowers bloomed on some of the vines, and bees worked furiously whilst butterflies floated on the warm air.

As we walked along, Arawn used his walking stick to flick a stone or move a tendril carefully to one side so he could peer underneath. Occasionally he whipped out what looked like a nail clipper to cut a shoot or a twig he did not like the look of.

“People are often surprised to find vineyards on a mountain in northern England, but it just so happens that Gwyrddlas provides us with an almost perfect location with regards to the right growing conditions. Just look at all of the natural woodland and other flora on her slopes. She seems to absorb the sun into her – it can feel almost Mediterranean up here at times. What can be tricky is the harvesting.”

“When do you do that?” asked Felix.

“We try to leave it as late as possible, so usually late September. But, as you can imagine, weather affects everything we do here, and the harvest more than anything else. We’ve had the snows come in August, and we’ve had summers stretch into October. The weather determines the character of the wine, and some years are better than others. The worst years are when we get wet summers – small grapes and a low yield.”

“How do you harvest?” asked Felix. “I didn’t see any machines.”

Arawn swung his stick around to take in their surroundings. “How would we get machines up the mountain and over the ridge? The closest we can get is the track below the restaurant, and the biggest vehicle that can get up that is our old truck. So we couldn’t use machine pickers even if we wanted to. But I wouldn’t use ‘em anyway. We use people from the local villages, and they have a discerning eye. They make sure we only get the best grapes.”

“How long has the vineyard been here?” I asked.

“Over sixty years. My great uncle planted the first vines here. He was born and bred in the valleys and saw the potential on the mountain slopes. Your grandad, Henry, came to see him when they was both young men.” Arawn bent awkwardly to scoop up a handful of dry soil. “It’s all in here, see? This mountain is ancient, with roots stretching to the centre of the earth, and all that age and wisdom in its soil feeds our vines, and gives our wine a timeless richness. You can taste the mountain in the wine. Would you like to try some?”

Ruth was Arawn’s wife: middle-aged, very fit, with a long silver plait hanging over her shoulder. She had laid out a few bottles of wine on the long table on the veranda, as well as bowls of salad, loaves of local bread, cheeses, pickles, a massive pork pie, and assorted fruit tartlets. Barney lifted his head curiously from his place on the old sofa, sniffing in the direction of the pork pie.

Living and studying in Rookpot, I thought I was used to stunning views, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more magnificent vista than I did that afternoon drinking wine in Huan Gewnynen.

Ruth had brought five bottles for us to try, and she assured us that a ’88 had gone into the summer fruits trifle waiting in the fridge.

Arawn’s version of wine tasting was to … just drink a glass of the chosen wine. There was not much swishing, gurgling, or commenting on what kinds of fruit and wood we could taste. What he did insist on, though, was a particular wine for a particular kind of food. The clear sparkling white went with the cheese, followed by a more mellow pinkish variety with the pork pie. He gave us a list of everything we had sampled that Felix could take back to his granddad and cousin.

As the sun moved around behind us, it occurred to me (through something of a wine-induced fog, admittedly) that we had no plans as to how we were going to get back down the mountain. Despite the seven glasses of wine (and not counting the fruit salad ’88), I had enough awareness to know I did not want to try and get back to Hen Ffydd in the dark. A chill was creeping into the warm evening, accompanied by wisps of mist.

Arawn offered to take us back in his track, but Ruth insisted, as the most sober one out of all of us, that she would do that.

The truck had once been blue, but was now mostly rust with one green door and a red roof. It had an open flatbed to carry supplies and wine. I’m not sure I could have made that trip back with my nerves intact without a good amount of wine inside me. Ruth clearly knew the mountain like the back of her hand – but that was of little reassurance to me when she suddenly swerved down sudden drops, twisted away from trees in the middle of the road, and skidded over mudflats. It felt like we were going to die with every turn of the steering wheel.

I spent most of the journey with my eyes squeezed shut, clutching Felix. But there was one point when the truck slowed right down and Felix nudged my attention to something outside. The mist was thick now and obscured the track completely (so Ruth was essentially careening down the mountainside blind). I did not understand what I was supposed to be looking at until I saw a shape move in the mist. It was a shadow, tall and dark, taller than Felix, with arms, a large head, and a loping gait. And then it was gone.

“Don’t often see them this low down,” said Ruth, pressing down on the accelerator again. “Not at this time of year.”

“What?” I asked, needing conformation.

“Wolvern, I reckon. Must have wondered what we were.”

I craned my neck around, trying to see through the mist and darkness. How may were out there? Would we hear howling? But there was nothing more. Just that one fleeting glimpse. But I have seen a wolvern.

Ruth dropped us right outside The Last Rest. She gave us each a bottle of Pink Huan and said she hoped to see us soon. There was no mist in Hen Ffydd – thousands of stars lit a clear sky.

I think it was quite early when my head hit the pillow, but the wine had made me sleepy, and gave me strange dreams about giant shadows swimming in fog.

We left Hen Ffydd the next day, after one of Brea Proke’s magnificent cooked breakfasts. Felix bought some blood sausages from the butcher’s on the way to the station.

As the train chugged southwards the only thing missing from the postcard-perfect scene of the five Peaks was a plume of smoke trailing behind us.

By Mabel Govitt 

Travels through Farynshire: Hen Ffydd

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Hen Ffydd is the last station on the line, and the only station in the mountains. It sits at the base of Skinny Peak.

The hills become steeper and more forbidding the closer you get to the Daggerrock Range. First you pass through the gentle ambling Wessen Downs, and these lead to the Bloon Peaks, which just about prepare you for the inhospitable Daggerrock Mountains themselves.

There are five Peaks, all different from each other. Skinny is the most heavily populated because of Hen Ffydd, and tapers to a point that is usually shrouded in cloud. Next to it is short Gwyrddlas, whose slopes are covered in forests. Just behind Gwyrddlas are Mytten (Musril for mountain) Fach and Mytten Fawr, both imposing dark jagged heaps. Mytten Fach looks as though the very top was snapped off by an impossible giant. The last Peak is Tlws, known for its waterfalls, deep still lakes and rushing mountain streams.

Summer is a good time to see them for their individual beauty, with the added bonus that the weather is at its most reliable. In winter, of course, they are covered in snow and those crazy people who enjoy hurling themselves down cold, icy precipices on small bits of wood. In July only Mytten Fawr was capped in snow. Tlws’ waterfalls were sparkling ribbons in the bright sunshine.

Despite being the main urban area in the mountains Hen Ffydd is tiny. Maybe it was just the shock of coming straight from Rookpot, but I think both of us were expecting … more.

The station only has one line, one platform, and one wooden hut with a low roof, shutters, hanging baskets overrun with dead geraniums, and no visible opening hours. This is where the track ends; this is as far as you can go into the mountains by train. From here you hike or take your chances on what pass for roads in the jagged peaks, either by car or on one of the occasional death buses that make the trip during the summer months. On the other side of the mountains is the rest of England, but this was not the way to get to it. There were always proposals put in front of Rookpot Council on the feasibility of building a viable, reliable and safe transport system through the mountains, but the expense, planning permissions, logistics, and actual reality of attempting such a mammoth project means that nothing ever happens.

You can see all four of the other Bloon Peaks from a Here Marks the Spot on the platform, and get a good sense of their individual characters. Turn around and you face the gently rising green flanks of Skinny Peak, the Peak with the most villages on it. Hen Ffydd itself is all uphill from the station: no flat bits to be seen. The main street, for want of a better word, is wide enough for two cars to scrape by, and it is laid with almost-black cobbles that glitter when hit by direct sunlight. The buildings are square, squat and stolid; a lot of them look as though they have been hewn from massive boulders. The different coloured roof tiles, shutters and doors must be a welcome warmth in the winter when everything is cold and grey. In summer they complement the splashes of colour of the flowers and butterflies in the meadows between the Peaks. The shutters are thrown open and geraniums and posies shine brightly in the window boxes. Old signs hang over the door of any building offering any kind of trade: the village shop has one with a painted basket, the butcher’s next door has ominous looking cleaver, the souvenir shop a jester’s head, the baker’s a loaf etc etc.

At the crossroads at the end of the street was the oldest-looking building: a heap of rockery and aged crooked timbers, with a faded dark shape on its creaking sign that could once have been a four-legged winged dragon – and the only reason I could even guess at that was because the red writing over the door announced that the building is called The Dragon.

“That’s the pub,” announced Felix, from the guide book. “The only pub in the village,” he added, in a poor attempt at a Welsh accent.

“And where’s our B&B?”

“It’s called The Last Rest, and it’s down – up – Cheesepig Run.”

“You are making that up!”

“Nope. It was named after a pig escaped from the abattoir’s van with a large amount of cheese.”

“The pig stole some cheese?”

“Sounds like it. Do pigs eat cheese?”

“Let’s find the place first, then we can ask.”

Finding places in Hen Ffydd is not difficult. There are about five streets a car could get down before they became narrow alleyways which then lead to open mountainside. Cheesepig Run was one of the wider avenues, and it seemed to mainly consist of B&Bs.

The Last Rest had green-blue tiles, shutters and front door, all newly painted, and fragrant bluebells in the window boxes. It was, appropriately I suppose, the last B&B on the street that ended abruptly in a large heap of loose scree.

“The Last Rest sounds like a funeral home,” sad Felix.

“I assume that’s not what they were going for.” I knocked on the door.

An old woman who was smaller than me answered. Her snowy hair was arranged in a tight, neat topknot on the crown of her head. Dark grey eyes were sunken in folds of deep wrinkles. She beamed up at us and grabbed at Felix’s backpack, hoisting it over her shoulders as though it was full of feathers. If she did run a funeral home, it was a very cheerful one.

“You’re from Rookpot, yes? Just got in? Found us OK?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Felix, clearly not sure whether he should try and reclaim his backpack.

“Trains OK? They should be OK at this time of year. Winter really messes with ‘em. They can’t cope with our snows. My name’s Bea, Bea Proke. We spoke on the phone, didn’t we? You’re Felix. So you must be Mabel. I had an Aunt Mabel.”

I get that a lot.

We signed in, paid our deposit, and Bea Proke insisted on showing us to our rooms up a flight of stairs that turned sharply at ninety degrees halfway up. Felix insisted on taking his backpack back. Bea continued chattering throughout all of this, and it was a bit of a relief when she closed the door and left me alone in my room.

It was nice enough: small, floral, clean, with a wash basin but no ensuite. The window overlooked the lower slopes of Hen Ffydd and the countryside beyond. I could see the railway line, and wished a steam train would puff into view to complete the scene.

Felix and I met in the lounge on the ground floor that is next to the cramped dining room, and has doors out to the small back garden. The lounge is crowded with threadbare armchairs and small sofas. Watercolours depicting various mountain scenes cover the faded pink wallpaper. The one bookcase is crammed with guides, maps and books other travellers have left here over the years.

“Did you ask about the pig?”

Felix was studying his Walking and Wine in the Bloon Peaks, and did not look up. “You have to work up to these things.”

I sat next to him on a sofa. “Found something for tomorrow?”

“There’s a trek across the valley to Gwyrddlas – that’s where the vineyards are. We can get wine and honey, have lunch, see what’s there. Shouldn’t be too taxing.”

“Sounds good. Are there any gourmet delights in Hen Ffydd we can try tonight?”

“No Michelin stars that they boast about, but there is a place that claims it has the best beer and sausages in the whole of Farynshire.”

“More pigs.”

By Mabel Govitt 

Travels through Farynshire: On a train

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We took over an entire table in the carriage, and Felix flicked through Walking and Wine in the Bloon Peaks that he had bought in the Beech.

“We have to go to a vineyard,” he said. “And they grow citrus fruits in some places, so there are lemon and orange groves.”

“I’m surprised they get enough sun for that.”

Felix shrugged. “They must do: I don’t think any of it is grown in greenhouses. And I have to get some honey. They sell honey from the mountains in Rookpot, and I’d love to talk to the beekeepers about it. A lot of the cakes in Lacey’s have mountain honey in them.”

“Does it say anything about the best place to try and see wolvern?” I asked.

Felix looked up wolvern in the index at the back of the book. “I think we need to go further in to the mountains,” he said, after glancing at the relevant pages. “Or maybe ask in one of the local pubs if anyone has seen one. I doubt we’ll see any, though – it’s not like they’re just running through the forests.”

“We’d should still try.”

And thus the duel quests of our Tour were established. Felix’s mission was to explore the many and varied local culinary delights Farynshire had to offer, and mine was the county’s rich culture and history.

I hadn’t really thought about the Peoples themselves when planning this trip, but we were going to the mountains, the forests and the coast – we might see wolvern, foresteens and seafolk. Felix said he had never seen a seafolken – and he had grown up right by the sea.

The only individuals I had met who said they had seen any of the Peoples were guest speakers and presenters on my course. The Peoples are elusive to the point of becoming semi-mythical. Everyone knows that they are out there, or had been at some point, but few have ever seen a live one. There are academics at the university who have built their careers around studying one or more of the Peoples, and all of them had given talks on our Local History module. But, from what other Professors hinted at, these academics and their chosen areas of interest were not highly thought of in academia: they were seen as chasing myths and legends, rumours and fairytales. But I, as an outsider, find the Peoples fascinating, and was convinced we would see packs of wolvern, groves of foresteens, and … shoals (?) of seafolk.

The train bounced gently along through the lush green countryside. The sky was a clear blue dome, the thick grass rippled in waves in the soft breeze, the meadows were full of wild flowers vibrant with celebratory colour. We rushed passed a couple of fields filled with new red and violet poppies. Small woods dotted the fields, and clear slow moving streams sparkled in the distance. Occasionally we could see the distant blue wall of the  mountains when the train came to a bend. This was a direct train to Hen Ffydd so there was no stopping at the tiny villages we blared through – a good thing too, otherwise we might have been tempted to get out and wander around.

The plan was to spend a couple of days in the mountains, not going any further than the Bloon Peaks. We would stay in a B&B in Hen Fffydd, the last station on the line. The train would pull in during late afternoon.

By Mabel Govitt

Travels through Farynshire: EassenBren

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I realise we are already three posts into our Grand Tour and we haven’t left Rookpot.  I promise we will!  But we have to quickly stop off at EassenBren first.

If Dameg Square is the administrative and cultural centre of the city (and the county), EassenBren is its artistic heart.

It sits on a slope.  Rookpot’s theatre, Ye Reven, overlooks the Square from its elevated position.  It has been inspired by the temples of Ancient Greece, but each classical pillar is a bright block of colour: rich purple, blood red, sky blue, sun yellow, lime green.  Branching out on either side of it down the slope are two rows of very different buildings.

On one side is a terrace of five-storey, pastel coloured Georgian houses, with baskets on chains hanging outside the front doors that pedestrians have to duck to avoid.  The baskets are full of geraniums, peonies and sometimes herbs.  These face the artists’ workshops: protected by a long roof covered in slate tiles.  The smells of oils, paints and clays waft around the Square.

In the middle of the Square is EassenBren’s fountain.  Dameg’s fountain was designed by an architect who really liked black oblongs.  EassenBren’s is a perpetual work in progress.  It is an evergrowing collection of earthen artworks produced by the craftsmen in the covered workshops.  Every artist creates a small figurine, usually a grotesque caricature of themselves, which is placed in the fountain.  There are also some larger pieces loitering near or in the water.  A carpet of coins from all over the world and from different eras glitter under the water.

Felix headed straight for The Lilac Beech.

This is the lavender building in the middle of the Georgian terrace.  A faded wooden sign, adorned with what looks like a peeling painting of a bunch of grapes but is more probably a peeling painting of a tree, hangs over the door.  The large cross-latticed windows display piles of pristine books, and posters advertising upcoming events.  As Felix pushed the door open the bell above us tinkled and we were hit by the smell of new books.

The ground floor of the shop is open plan with displays scattered throughout.  Every wall is lined with books, floor to ceiling, except at the far end where there is a large fireplace, occupied by a huge earthen pot filled with rose and lily petals in the summer.  It is surrounded by squashy armchairs, wingback chairs, and a few beanbags.  The children’s area is on the far side of the shop from the fireplace, strewn with cardboard books and toys on colourful fluffy rugs.  Rising up from the middle of the shop is a wrought iron staircase wound tight like a corkscrew.  The door to the courtyard at the back of the shop was open to let the warm summer sun in.  The pale purple leaves of the rare and ancient tree that gives the shop its name shine with summer glory.

It was tempting to sit by the cool fireplace, browse a few books, and maybe have a cup of sweet tea, but we had a train to catch.

Felix bought Walking and Wine in the Bloon Peaks to guide us through the mountains, The Living Forests for Gnivil and Oes, and Meyricks, Musril and Mermaids for when we reached the coast.

There was no need for us to rush.  Our train would not depart for another twenty minutes.

I think the best way – certainly the most dramatic way – to leave Rookpot is via The Drop.

On maps, The Drop is Newton Hill, the steepest street in the city.  There are handrails on either pavement to help pedestrians stay upright.  There are frequent petitions to the Council for a chairlift to be installed, but this is not considered a good use of public money, and would negatively impact upon the medieval aesthetics; and besides, exercise is good for people.  I do feel for anyone who has to work on The Drop, though, especially the baristas at Lacey’s, the coffee shop that sits at the top, looking straight down the hill.

We decided we had time to get an iced bun from Lacey’s.  The important thing about the buns is not the flavour – often not discernible beyond sweet and bordering on sickening – but the colour.  You can request any colour of icing.  Felix chose turquoise; I always had forest green.

Walking down The Drop with dignity takes practice.  I will strongly advise now, though no one will heed my heartfelt warning, not to attempt this whilst drunk, no matter how much money is involved in the dare. Doing it sober is enough of a challenge. Those of a nervous disposition use the rail; the more experienced manage to keep upright by themselves; children run and quite often do not end up in a crying heap at the bottom.  Perhaps a wiser investment than a chairlift would be crash mats at the foot of The Drop.

We landed safely enough and made our way to the grand Victorian train station, finishing off the iced buns as we boarded the train.

When Felix had said, right at the start of planning the trip, that we were going to take the long way round to his family home on the coast, he wasn’t kidding.  The first place we were going to from Rookpot was the Daggerrock Mountains – in the exact opposite direction from the coast.

by Mabel Govitt 

Travels through Farynshire: Dameg Square

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The most famous city in Farynshire, possibly the only place anyone over the mountains has heard of, is Rookpot.

It sprawls over a steep tor that is cut in two by a deep dark gorge, along the bottom of which flow the cold waters of the Darkflint River.

When people think of Rookpot it’s the gorge that they immediately picture.  Then it’s the Squares surrounded by cobbled streets and Cuts.  This medieval heart of the city is great to explore: there’s always a new boutique, gallery or bookstore to discover in the warren of narrow alleys that no car could ever get through.  That’s the other thing everyone notices: all the bikes, scooters, and lately segues and blades – because these are the only modes of transport that can go everywhere in the city.  Buses have to skirt the outside of the medieval centre and use the the wider, more modern roads.  Trains come in at the city’s only station, at the base of the tor.  We had decided that this is how we would leave Rookpot.

If students are lucky they will get accommodation on Wessentor – which is the half of the city with the Squares, history and night life.  Felix and I had been in halls at the bottom of Wessentor in our first year, which is where we had met.  In our second year we had had to move, and the only affordable place we could find was on Eassentor.  Eassentor is not a bad place to live or anything, but it’s just so ordinary compared to what’s over the gorge.  There are streets of terraced houses on Wessentor’s lower slopes, as well as some discreet luxury apartments near the centre, and the very expensive villas close to the summit of the tor.  But most Rookpotians lived in the more ordinary suburbia on Eassentor, which was encroaching slowly and inevitably off the tor and into the countryside below.

Neither of us wanted to leave Rookpot from Eassentor.  So, with our backpacks making us look like tourists in our own city, we made our way across one of the many bridges that span the gorge, and went to Dameg Square.

Dameg Square is the centre of Rookpot in every sense.  It is halfway up the tor and the gorge cuts through its ancient cobbles and the neat rectangle of grass right in the middle.

I have spent a lot of time in this Square.  The Museum and the Library stand next to each other, and face the ancient Cathedral (the foundations of which were laid in the thirteenth century) and the Council Chambers.  The green in the centre of the Square is home to a solitary oak tree that seemed to be dead for all of the time I had been at university; it is bent almost double, long branches dangling down into the gorge.

The Square is always busy, night or day.  We bought slushes from Rhewogydd.  Rhewogydd has been providing ice slushes to the Council workers, families, tourists, and students hustling through Dameg Square for at least twenty five years, and his pink van near the edge of the gorge is a sure sign of summer.  His ever-growing menu is bound in a novel-sized tome.  I recommend the cherry and rum for pure velvet indulgence, but if you want refreshing coolness on a sweltering hot day – and you don’t fancy jumping into the fountain – you have to go with mint and cucumber.

We sat on the wide white Museum steps to drink our slushes and people-watched.  It was a hot day in June so the bustle was a little fatigued, except in the fountain where children and students splashed.  The office workers, shirt sleeves rolled up to their elbows, ties loose and untidy, made the most of their brief escape.

A story time event had just finished in the Library, and the parents with prams were milling about outside, the adults chattering loudly, their small children chasing each other around in the safety of the Square.  When I had first arrived in Rookpot as a fresher I had been horrified at the sight of small children – or drunk students, or Council workers staring at their phones – shrieking and playing excitedly close to a chasm plunging hundreds of feet to a fierce river below.  But I had gone completely native, and was now confident that no child would fall.

There was nothing – no barrier, fence, not even cones – to stop anyone from plummeting into the gorge, yet nobody ever seemed to.  Only seven people had ever died this way in the whole history of the city.  The gorge was narrow in Dameg Square, and brazen Rookpotians casually jumped across on their way to work, hardly breaking their stride.

The exhibition in the Museum was Coastal Treasures, advertised on the listless banners hanging over the steps.  I had been a week before, and it was an interesting exploration of the expeditions and research focused on the coves and beaches along Farynshire’s coast between Tropsog and Sylnmouth, and the shipwrecks and treasures that had been discovered beneath the waves.  Felix was inspired to go scuba diving when we reached the coast.  I was less keen, and hoped he would forget this notion by the time we reached the sea.  He was also inspired to buy a few guide books, which I was much more on board with.

Sipping on our slushes, we made our way along the edge of the gorge to the Cut that linked Dameg Square with EassenBren.  Rookpot was riddled with these Cuts: long, winding, red-bricked alleys lit by old iron lanterns even on a sunny summer day.  This was the most famous and well-used Cut as it linked the two most important Squares.

By Mabel Govitt 

Travels through Farynshire: The first post

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So this is the first post on this website.  Big responsibility.

I should explain what’s going on.

My name is Mabel Govitt, and I’ve just graduated from Rookpot University.  Last summer me and my friend decided to explore this extraordinary county.  Adam Court (something to do with the Tourist Board, I think) asked us to write about our experiences in a series of blog posts.  This is the first of those.

So, just before my final Musril in Context exam at the end of my final year, Felix came up with a plan.

“Mabel.  Why don’t you come with me this summer?  Stay at my house, meet the family.”

There is always a slightly odd emphasis on family whenever Felix speaks of the extended ap Hullin clan that seem to occupy an entire village on the coast.  Before I could scramble up an excuse, he went on:

“We can go the long way round – see a bit of Farynshire.  Go to the mountains, the big forests, Sylnmouth and Riversouth.”

This was a more attractive prospect.  I had spent two years at Rookpot University, and although I felt I had got to know the capital fairly well in that time, I had not explored the county of Farynshire at all.  I was studying its history, culture and languages, most of my lecturers had local interest or specialism, and I had visited exhibitions at the Museum, Library and various galleries on the city’s steep slopes.  But I had never ventured into the mountains that separated the county from the rest of England, or visited the dramatic coast where Felix was from, or the forests and countryside inbetween.

I didn’t want to spend the summer months waiting at home in Bristol to see if I had made it into the third year (spoiler alert: I did). I needed a distraction.

We used the time between studying for exams, panicking about exams, and taking exams to research our trip.

I had thought that Felix, born and raised in Tor Calon on the coast, would know a lot more about his county than I, a more recent student of its wonders, did.  But, as it turned out, I knew more about why Musril was spoken most widely in Riversouth, how Rookpot came to be the capital, and the difference between peers and magnates.  He had heard of all of these things, but they were just background noise to Farynshire natives.  This was one of the reasons Felix wanted to travel: I was always educating him on his own county, which he found interesting, but:

“You can’t learn it all from books and museums.  You have to go out there and live it.”

I agreed.  There were so many places in this small county that I wanted to see – and visiting Felix’s family could be interesting to.

By the time of my last exam (Museums, Masques and Festivities: Cultural Appreciation Throughout the Years) we had a rough itinerary.  We did not want it to be too detailed because the whole idea was to be spontaneous and adventurous.

The obvious starting point was Rookpot.

Please join us.  🙂

By Mabel Govitt