This is my second time taking a train for this journey, my first one away from Aber. Usually I take a coach to and from home, but due to the coronavirus crisis National Express keep having to reduce their service and Aber isn't exactly a hot spot for travel. The coach journey is something I have always loved rather than endured, rolling through the welsh mountains and valleys, past waterfalls and forests. That portion of the journey between Aberystywth and Birmingham fills me with so much... I'm not quite sure what the word for it is but it certainly makes me feel something. Awe, perhaps? The train though, I didn't have high expectations for it as I know its far more direct than the roads the coach takes. My first train journey to Aber I couldn't see the welsh parts as they whizzed past the windows as the sun had gone down by then, much like my journey back to Aber after Christmas will be. This morning however, it has only just risen and I can see the landscape in all its glory.
Crystal clear rivers snaking under the tracks and out again. Almost wild sheep dotted about. There's a farmhouse stood alone with a for sale sign where I get lost in the "what ifs" and "one days". Red kites sweeping across the sky, a favourite bird of prey of mine and something I've never seen outside of Wales. Rushing past tin shed after tin shed I am reminded of Pete Davis and his work with the Welsh landscape. My ears pop, we must be going up, although from my seat it feels more like a constant shake of up down up down up down as the tracks race beneath us. The water is evaporating off the tree tops in the distance. Mist meandering through the curves of the land and slowly dancing upwards until it melts into the clouds above. The lush grass gives way to a carpet of deep red brown bracken. Even when the trees have lost their leaves, they stay green with moss and lichen. Occasionally there will be a glimpse and a flash of a solar or wind farm. I'm not Welsh, but I'm proud to live here. The colours of the train stations are white and the same reddish brown as the bracken, this sits odd in my vision compared to the usual weathered copper green and white of my home stations. This reminds me of my first few years in Wales, waterfalls compared to springs, jagged mountains compared to rolling hills, granite to chalk. Further away from the tracks and inching ever closer to England now I can see beautiful brown cows. Cows with their kind eyes and loving nature. Small streams and country lanes, the odd car bumbling along. Every now and then I'll spot a tree house or a swing set in the garden of a farmhouse and I'm brought back to the "what ifs" but this time looking back instead of forward. We are getting closer to England now and the countryside peels away to reveal towns and houses, then tarmac and skyscrapers. A different kind of landscape of concrete and steel. Hopefully I'll get to see the rolling hills of home soon.
It's experiences like this that feed the fire behind my work. I wasn't in the landscape in the same way I am when I talk about it here normally, but I had hours surrounded by nothing but the landscape and my thoughts, all from the relative comfort of a train seat. I do love it.
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