Country diary 1975: A fuzz of green evergreens now runs along the crag top
MACHYNLLETH: A picture postcard lately sent me by a kind Guardian reader shows a beautiful green glen overtopped by spectacular white cliffs near Llangollen. The World's End, as the place is called, looked so attractive that I went there on my next free day. But I was too late. The postcard proved to be a few years out of date and now a forest of totally incongruous conifers has been planted all along the crag top. How easy it would have been to leave a margin of a few acres to preserve the effect of greensward coming cleanly to the pallid cliff edge. Instead we have a fuzz of young evergreens quite spoiling this beautiful feature.
Our foresters often claim that planting is now done much more sensitively than it was. But when I see beautiful cliff scenery contaminated by dense conifer forest I really wonder whether the foresters themselves understand the message of their own propaganda. Fortunately at Llangollen the afforested area is comparatively small so far. The rest of the great crags stretch magnificently for several miles to form one of the scenic splendours of Wales. Burned by the afternoon sun, they support extremely little vegetation. Here and there a very few native trees have managed to root themselves in fissures and have grown up as if clinging to the rock. And they, provided by nature, are all the trees needed by this sort of scenery.
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