How Graig Ddu Found Me

Synchronicity fascinates me. Like a ball of tangled thread, there appears to be no beginning and no end, as events enfold and unfold within each other.

The story that follows sets the scene as a perfect example of synchronicity – of how Graig Ddu and I stumbled across one another.

It started with a chance meeting between friends in Safeway’s car park in Abergavenny. I was unaware of this until I had call from a total stranger asking me if I would house sit for his 3 sheepdogs and a horse for 2 weeks. Whereabouts? Capel y Ffin. Where? Capel Y Ffin, I discovered, is a tiny hamlet at the top of the Llanthony Valley in the heart of the Black Mountains, at the foot of Gospel Pass.

With my life upside down and nowhere I could call home at the time, I agreed to meet him.

I wound my way up the Llanthony Valley, unbeknown to me, passing the track into forest that, unbeknown to me, led to Graig Ddu, here I would soon be living.

It’s strange how country lanes always seem so much longer the first time you drive them. Weaving up and up the road, beneath the over-arching trees creating light and dark patches across the road, past the Half Moon Inn and then into a single- track lane with passing places. On and on steadily climbing until I reach Capel Y Ffin – one farm, a church, a chapel and a phone box. Turn left before the chapel and wind up past the old monastery on the left. Past Talsarn, the hill farm, and over the ford. Up again, even steeper now. Reach the mountain gate. Haul on the handbrake, leap out of the car and open the gate as fast as possible, scramble back into the car, do a hill start to challenge them all, and repeat the process to close the gate. On up the strip of tarmac, running straight across the hill now. It’s October, windows down and I can smell the damp air, the sheep and the mountains. Finally, the roof of a tiny cottage with a stable attached, comes into view.

Blaen Y Cwm (Blan Ee Coom) where I would spend the next 2 weeks, had electricity supplied by a generator. Flick the first light switch on and the generator fires up, turn the last switch off and it shuts down. It was this or candles for the next 2 weeks. Living like this would set the scene for the necessary change of mind-set I was going to need to live at Graig Ddu – whose existence I was unaware of so far. Without being in this place, I wouldn’t have known if I could take the next step and live without electricity all together.

I was all alone, just me and the mountains. No-one I knew, knew where I was.The weather was wild, wet and windy. It was sublime. I walked the dogs and rode the horse across the hills and made my first pot here.

I mentioned in passing to the stranger that I was looking for somewhere to live and he replied that he may know of something, but I would be extremely lucky to get it. But some things are just meant to be.

So, without knowing the friends, who met the stranger who lived at Blaen Y Cwm, who knew the woman who was looking for a tenant for Graig Ddu……….

Synchronicity at its magical best.