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Writer's pictureSpike Woods

On the back of the Graig. 1998.

I’m up on the back of the Graig, Cross Ash, near Abergavenny once again. The day has been monumental, high cumulous cloud and great patches of deep blue sky, with the sun viciously hot. The landscape enfolds before me like a rucked quilt, the axe edge of Skirrid and the curtain slopes of the Black Mountains  forming a mighty barrier to the patchwork of the tree-lined fields. The pitiful bleating of myriad sheep rises up the Graig slopes, but the shorn ewes and buxom lambs near me are silently grazing.


I am sitting under the jigsaw branches of an old hawthorn, on the wood-edge. I made my way gingerly down through the old wood from the high pasture, hoping not to disturb any deer that might be emerging from sanctuary. It is 8.45 pm, but no animal life stirs except the slow methodical cropping sheep and the occasional raven or buzzard.


It is now 9.00 pm and evening is noticeably drawing in. There is a strong breeze, almost cold, blowing up the hill from the West, bringing low cloud to mist the heights of the Black Mountains.


The vista is so enormous from the top of the Graig dome, one can see at least fifty miles in any direction. To the East the Malvern hills switchback across the distance; May Hill, visible from almost anywhere, heralds the River Severn; North over past Hay on Wye towards Presteigne and the rolling Marchlands. Evening settles like a fluttering parachute across the land. A blackbird clacks its alarm call up in the wood behind me, a jet rumbles into silence, the sheep in the valley still bleat furiously, leaves whisper with the tentacles of night wind. And still no sign of deer.

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