my father insisted we drive through Cwmystwyth on the way to Aber where I was due to consult dusty manuscripts in the Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru as we approached it he told me 'Cwmystwyth is the bleakest place in Wales' I jokingly asked him if it was bleaker than his own home town, and he replied simply that it made his native mining valley look like an English country garden then the hills opened out and the sun disappeared there was no sound and, temporarily, we did not speak we entered the cwm to see empty houses derelict for decades old workings perched on scree slopes abandoned when they and the workers became uneconomic the remains of extractive industry digging smelting manufacturing chemicals enter the water and ground to make contaminated land useful to no-one the Romans mined here first then there was continuous industry for two thousand years until the depression then abandonment leave the place to its own devices a remote valley that can never be recovered my father tells me later he last visited this place forty years ago and nobody has bothered to tidy it up or sweep it away just a scar with no purpose untouched and unloved neither of us wish to pursue the metaphors that it suggests to us I cannot describe my father's expression no solutions have been offered in his lifetime he sees stagnation of his culture and drives quickly to avoid the meaning of the place but I think instead better this bleakness than a shiny tourist hell full of illustrated exhibitions and jaunty recreations telling the history of our fine nation four pounds entrance fee suitable for young children no overtones of death