I Bought A Bog

Seventy-two years ago a book was published called I Bought A Mountain. Its Canadian author, Thomas Firbank, had spent the previous decade managing a 2400-acre sheep farm in the mountains of north Wales, having bought it for £5000 in 1931 (£257,000 in today’s money). In the book he describes in brisk prose the joys, tribulations, triumphs and disasters of this experience, an outsider struggling, and eventually succeeding, to gain the acceptance of the close-knit hill farming community of Snowdonia. This book has been loaned to me as required reading because two days ago I bought a Welsh bog.

Now I suppose simply to call it a bog is rather harsh. It has boggy bits but it definitely has some dry parts too. Across all its six acres maybe only an acre of it is really boggy, where your wellies sink in to near the top. Everywhere else you can stroll without fear of being sucked down to oblivion, although replaced with the fear of having an eye poked out by a sharp twig. Because twigs are a-plenty, attached as they are to the many trees which are peaceably living out their lives on this patch of land, trees of all creed and colour rubbing along together. Larch stands shoulder to shoulder with chestnut, alder and birch seem to be getting along well, a group of gnarly hawthorn backs onto an extended family of Christmas trees, while above them all on the steep slope up to the road a small forest of Sitka spruce sway imperiously.  A solitary young oak has a clearing to itself. 

No doubt all these trees were attracted to the area by the water supply, of which there is an abundance. There are at least four streams which emerge from under the road that forms the northern boundary of the plot and course down the steep slope to reach the flat narrow plain, thence onwards to the river Cleifion that acts as the southern boundary, itself a tributary of the Dovey. One of these streams, the eastern boundary, is a real gusher, bursting out of the side of the hill to form a small waterfall. The narrow western edge is marked by a dilapidated wire fence bordering a further stream.

As you might expect for a remote piece of Welsh wilderness, wildlife is all around. Buzzards are a common sight, shrieking and swooping. Herons fly close above the river on the look out for fish, of which trout and salmon are said to be plentiful during the summer months. At this time of year it’s easy to disturb pheasants which clatter off noisily. Red kites can occasionally be spotted high up, slowly wheeling. 

Having seen it only once and briefly, in October, I thought it best to visit again before signing on the dotted line so this week I took two Pilsdonians up with me to camp on it for a couple of nights. With just a little spade-digging we were able to re-divert a stream that was simply causing a mire back into a trench that had been dug previously, carrying it down to the river. A satisfying job that should help the land to dry, given time. One of us, let’s call him Pedro, managed to catch a pheasant by its tail and broke its neck, so we had a bit of meat that night, fried in a pan over the camp fire.  Certainly chewy but we didn’t have a couple of weeks to hang it. The next day I popped into the solicitor’s office and signed the contract.

Enough! I hear you grumble.  When are you going to tell us why you got it into your head to buy this bog, two hundred miles from where you live? Have you gone nuts?  What are you going to do with it? Since when did you know or care anything about pheasants?

I beg your patience. All these questions and more I shall endeavour to answer in subsequent postings on this very blogspot. 

And in late breaking news: Pilsdon’s sow, Annabel, gave birth last night to ten beautiful piglets, losing none of them in the process. (Our previous sow Isabelle had turned out to be barren so we sadly had to say goodbye last month and buy Annabel, also an Oxford Sandy and Black).