Welsh Journals

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TO the motorist from South Wales the road to London is familiar,- but it is not every wayfarer who realises that he is, in fact, traversing a cross section of Britain showing in essentials the successive scenic and human reactions to the changing country rock beneath. Let us follow the traveller on his road from Gwent to Kent- He ciosses, first, the coil measures-a plateau of coal-bearing sandstones deeply incised from north to south by river valleys-Rhondda, Cynon, Taff, Rhymney, among others. Above the valleys are the peculiar flat-topped residual hills, whereon small Welsh mountain sheep graze on short, wiry mountain grass.* In the valleys and hollows the natural flora consists mainly of stunted oak, silver birches, alders in the swampy parts, reeds and feathery ferns-all fresh and green through the generous rainfall. The handiwork of man appears in the quivering pit sheaves and the rows of miners' houses jumbled cheek by jowl along the deep cut valleys. A coalfield landscape is un- mistakable. Beyond Pontypool, set on the eastern edge of the South Wales coalfield, the road drops into the soft featured landscape of Old Red Sandstone. Rich red loam for the plough," like Devon- shire, fat cattle deep in lush grass, and cider orchards, pass in Monmouthshire before our eyes. At Usk, an inlier of Silurian rock crosses our path, but affords no obstacle. The soft shales have weathered into low rounded hills with copses of alder, birch, and hazel set amongst grazing land. Ross brings us again upon the red sand- stone, and the town itself stands well upon a bluff of this rock, overlooking the placid Wye meandering towards the mountain limestone gorge of Symonds Yat to the south-west. Here, too, are quaint houses of red-brown stone, tiled with the same good material. The bluff of Dean Forest-outlier of the coal measures held in a cup of Carboniferous Lime- stone-lies between Ross and Gloucester, but the London road only skirts it to the north and east and then drops down into the flood plains of the Severn, where Kenper Marls lie upon Liasic deposits. Gloucester stands east of the Severn. Its ancient builders took care to put the stream between them and the marauding Welshmen! Over the river, and we are in geographical Eng- land. On the soft plains grow tall elms and beeches, which have produced in their turn timber and timbered-brick houses. Ancient dwellings in the countryside always reflect the soil from which they sprang. Gwairton. FROM GWENT TO KENT by Frederic Evans We go eastwards through the city and soon the flat lands cease when we reach the western scarp of the Cotswolds. Here Oolitic Limestone beds tilt up from the east, forming a serried range of hills at their western edge. Birdlip Hill is avoided on the London route, but there are stiff climbs nevertheless, and the engine smells hot when at last the top of the escarpment is reached. Rolling downs crossed by straight white country roads, flanked to windward by long copses of beech, stone houses and walls, weathered from the original yellow limestone into an unforgettable grey, sheep lands and corn lands, greet the traveller's eye. With their stone mullioned windows, stone tiles and grey solidity, these Cotswold houses are a joy for ever. Northleach, where the long distance buses from South Wales break their journey and change their drivers, shows us as we pass that we are still in the typical stone country of the Cotswolds.. The name of Shipton (Sheeptown), which occurs more than once, tells us, if the rolling downs and their sheep-folds have not told us, that Cotswold wool is as important as Cotswold corn. And if we are still unseeing in this matter, Whitney, with its flannel and blanket factories, comes into view to stir even the most phlegmatic mind into some realisation of the dominance in this region of our gentle friend, the sheep. Next, Oxford and its dreaming spires. Here we are upon the alluvium of the Thames basin, and the cornlands show evidence of themselves in the thatched roofs of quaint cottages. The clays of the river plains appear in the walls of houses, taking their place as bricks alongside grey Cots- wold stone. Then we pass a sugar beet factory. Eastward ho! and another scarp appears ahead of us-more rounded and less abrupt per- haps than the Cotswolds-this time the Chilterns, chalk hills in which flints abound. Flint built walls are seen in houses and churches, strength- ened by coigns of brick and stone. The Chilterns are the home of beech woods, many now, alas, metamorphosed into myriads ot kitchen chairs and other furniture made at Stokenchurch and High Wycombe. The chair- making of Wycombe is an industry sprung from the soil of the Chiltems and its beeches as surely as the Rhondda collieries from the deep-lying wealth of Rhondda coal. Then we enter the down grade run into the London Basin, with its clays and gravels of oligocene and eocene age. At Beaconsfield, brick-earths again hold the field, and the older- and newer-houses boast red brick walls and terra cotta tiles. We pass on through alternat- ing occurrences of clays and gravels. Indeed