Welsh Journals

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THE MOUNTAINEERING OF WALES, 1880-1925 IF THE coal-mining valleys of south Wales created a powerful and identifiable 'mindscape' which shaped popular perceptions of modern Wales, then so did the Welsh hills and mountains create and provide another, often contrasting, one-a mountainscape. The characteriza- tion of Wales as a 'Wild Wales' of mountains and heaths has been a central element in the construction of a potent set of images of Wales, images which became increasingly attractive and influential from the late eighteenth century as the influence of the Romantic movement and its emphasis on the spiritual and aesthetic value of Nature became widespread.2 This characterization is an understandable one given the rugged upland nature of so much of the Welsh terrain and even though the Welsh mountains are low by European standards, this was com- pensated for by the dramatic and rocky profile of Snowdonia's sharp peaks. The Welsh hills appear as a central feature in virtually all of the guidebooks, travellers' tours and visitors' accounts of Wales from Pennant's eloquent volumes of the late eighteenth century onwards. Landscape painters like Richard Wilson and Turner celebrated the 1 D. Smith, 'The Valleys: Landscape and Mindscape', in Prys Morgan (ed.), Glamorgan County History: Glamorgan Society, 1780-1980 (Cardiff, 1988), pp. 130-50. 2 For a stimulating discussion of these themes, see Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London, 1996) esp. ch. 8, 'Vertical Empires, Cerebral Chasms', pp. 447-5 17. There is also a growing literature on travellers' images of Wales; see, for example, Miriam Griffiths, 'Wider Empire for the Sight: Picturesque Scenery and the First Tourists', in W. Tydeman (ed.), The Welsh Connection (Llandysul, 1986); R. M. Jones, 'Wales and the English Imagination', in Gulliver: Britische Regionen, 31 (Bremen, 1992); 1. B. Rees (ed.), The Mountains of Wales: An Anthology in Verse and Prose (Cardiff, 1992).