A Walk Through Wales

Cardiff to Bangor, alone and on foot -- that is how Mr. Bailey experienced Wales in 1992. He avoided the main roads, walked through farms and over mountains. He stayed in hostels and B & Bs most of the way. He loves to walk. Just before the end of the book, after walking for several weeks, he writes, "... looking forward to going back home but knowing it would involve having to live with the urge to set off again." Mr. Bailey writes in a very flat style with very few superlatives. The flatness of his writing made me wonder if he actually enjoyed his trip, other than the actual act of walking itself. He seemed to enjoy climbing Snowdon and Pen-y-Fan, the two highest peaks in Wales. He seemed to like the scenery, the flora and the fauna. But, as an Oxford-educated Englishman, walking through a region not overly fond of the English (he stayed on the west side of Wales and along the Irish Sea) and just a few years away from devolution, I wonder if he enjoyed the people he met. None of the locals, other than historical figures, got more than passing mention in the book. He did take time to mention a good number of too-soft mattresses as well as several mediocre meals. It's curious to me, that even without enthusiastic writing, I found myself wanting to explore Wales, to walk in the land of King Arthur and to meet the people.

An excellent, if too brief, overview of not only a walking tour across Wales, but a straightforward look at the impact that English culture, media, language, and incomers are having upon the Cambrian heartlands. As my sympathies are with the Celts here and not the Saxons, perhaps I wish that Bailey had taken the side of the underdog more often. Read Ned Thomas' "The Welsh Extremist" from one of Bailey's key interviewees, a noted critic, for a pro-nationalist (obviously) counter-argument. Being pre-1997 with the arrival of devolution, this account may be a bit dated. However, Bailey--as an English writer now living in NYC--takes pains to present both the nationalists and the newcomers in as fair a light as he can, and his even-handedness provides readers with an honest examination of not only the natural beauties, very well-described especially in the mountain and moor scenes, but the human conflicts that still mark the Welsh landscape, home of the indigenous British. You truly feel the isolation when Bailey scales the hills and tells what he saw. This book may not sound, given its title, like a travelogue so much as one of those more innocuous sight-seeing, walk to the teahouse and back guides, but Bailey does make an effort, as his own list of sources shows, to update George Borrow's Victorian itinerary published as "Wild Wales" nearly a century and a half later. Jan Morris' "The Matter of Wales" deals with a lot of the same terrain in more panoramic and admittedly perhaps sentimental prose. Bailey, less loyal to any notion of patriotism, gives a more sober, pedestrian-level, accessible, introduction to many Welsh issues still vexed in our supposedly post-colonial era.

This is the ultimate arm chair traveling book. It is a great introduction to Wales: the landscape, culture and history. I have yet to visit Wales, but I dream of taking the exact route as A. Bailey. I highly recommend this book.