Country diary: walking the wild expanse of Teifi Marshes

Aberteifi/Cardigan, Ceredigion: Ducks doze on the mud-banks, while Canada geese argumentatively cruise the creeks of the main channel Shimmering through a blend of August afternoon heat haze and the swirling movement of reeds in the strong westerly wind, the wild expanse of Teifi Marshes was sunlit and inviting. The flooding tide in the river and the open arc of the sky were uniformly blue, with white fair-weather clouds reflected in the still water of the more protected pools.Before this area was glaciated, the Afon Teifi appears to have looped south of the narrow gorge it now occupies at Cilgerran. The abandoned route has left a broad, low-lying valley whose sides - clearly cut by a wide, meandering stream - are thick with trees. In the 1880s, the dynamic of the landscape was changed further when the Whitland and Cardigan railway constructed a causeway of dark, blocky furnace waste across the marshland. This impeded the ingress of seawater and began the evolution of the predominantly freshwater environment visible today. Continue reading...