A buffer between two worlds

Llangattock Escarpment, Powys It seems remarkable how quickly nature equalises archaeology; it wouldn't take a huge leap of imagination to see these industrial spoilheaps as neolithic cairns

Delicate light touches the tops of the Black Mountains, and papery ash leaves littering the narrow road outside Llangattock form swirling eddies in the vortex dragged by a passing car. It is good to be back in border country. I feel my body unclench, the autumn atmosphere a potent tonic.

The Llangattock Escarpment is a three-mile-long outcropping of the limestone which buffers the red sandstone of the agricultural Black Mountains from the coal measures of the (post-) industrial South Wales Valleys. The cultures corresponding to each are close physically but worlds apart politically. It is a striking study in geopolitics, in how culture grows from the ground, as affected as crops by the bedrock beneath; as if socialism and strikes thrive in certain soils.