 |
| view uphill towards Cock-a-Lofty today |
IN SUMMER 1933
May Morris (MM) and Mary Frances Lobb (MF) spent a month above Hay-on-Wye, camping on a
grassy spot beside a stream beneath woodland, on open ground known as Lower
Tack Common. I don’t know how they chose
the location, which was presumably familiar to walkers climbing Hay Bluff and
Lord Hereford’s Knob. Starting from
Kelmscott in Oxfordshire, they travelled to the Crown Hotel, Hay, and then
’went forth in a car driven by a young man with a brilliant red head, to hunt
our camping ground’, on a stony road uphill beyond Cusop. At New Forest Farm ‘Mr Gwllym, the son’ directed them further up
to a wooded glen with a gurgling stream, where ‘very shortly we found a still
likelier place (though thistly)
sheltered and graced with a lawn-like slope.’
The next day they shopped for supplies and
drove back to the spot where – in May’s detailed holiday diary – ‘MF and I are
soon busy destroying thistles with a sharp hoe we bought, so that when the boy
comes up again with the camp outfit, we are ready to pitch the tent,
perspiration dropping from every angle of us!’
‘The
nearest farm is a small high-perched cottage standing out against the dimmer
colours of “the Mountain”, as they call our nearest height (1500). The delicious name is Cockaloftie
(spelling?), kept by Miss Pryce. We went
to call on the lady in the evening, to ask if our mail might be delivered to
her house. The stream below was gay with
forgetmenots and musk, and two pretty Hereford cows were grazing on the steep
slope’.
The
mail duly arrived at Cock-a-Lofty, brought right to the tent every morning, the
postman even offering to wait for replies, and perhaps also indulging in
curiosity regarding the campers, for May was over 70, elderly and slight, while
MF was 55, robust, tall and customarily wearing countrywoman’s breeches. Miss Pryce’s dog (‘collie by nature’) also visited
daily, as did the cattle, annoyingly. ‘MF has to head them off. As it is they
have dirtied our lawn’.
 |
| View from close to camping ground today |
MF
undertook much of the practical work, digging trenches, damming a pool in the
stream, cooking on a primus stove. ‘We have a flat space, backed by a hollow
against steep incline covered with bracken.
A bank alongside and in front a ‘lawn’ of fine grass where our beech-shaded
parlour is, sloping down to the stream. This little corner has a
peculiar charm which never fails to touch me as I get the morning water; it
curls at the foot of a rounded hill’.
In
Hay they bought butter, bread, ginger-biscuits and two large jars, which MF
filled with 14lbs of jam made from whinberries –‘an immense success’ - stored
in their alfresco larder.
 |
| New Forest Farm |
At
New Forest Farm below Cock-a-Lofty, they
met Mr Gwllym senior, ‘a tall handsome elderly man with an engaging smile’, who
talked well and amusingly about a previous camping party that was drenched by
rain. MM and MF bought milk here,
together with cream cheese made by Miss Gwllym.
Some days later Miss Gwilliam (MM was spelling phonetically) showed them
the big oven, ‘which goes a great way back’, in which ‘she does all the
baking once a week in the old-time way, bread and cakes and pies etc. It is a handsome
old house which she keeps beautifully, unaided.
A fine staircase and there used to be a gate at the bottom of it.’
Below
New Forest was Mrs Lloyd at Llangwathan, who offered them cider, ‘in the cool
of a handsome old parlour, shining with cleanliness, with deep windows, great
beams with bacon-hooks and panelled walls.’
The Lloyds called at the camp a
day or so later, bearing cream and more cider, receiving coffee and
cakes in response. Later, MM and MF created a ‘Llangwathan
cocktail’ combining the farm’s cider with their own whisky. A fortnight later they were shown over the gabled farmhouse, a ‘veritable little old
Gothic building’ with fine internal doorways, oak-panelling and deep
window-seats. The staircase was part-stone, part polished oak, leading to roomy
attics and great beams with long cusped arches beneath the roof line. Outside they admired the pink pigs and ‘put
in a plea for one of the hams’, having previously tasted delicious home-cured
slices from the Gwlliams. Towards the
end of their stay Mrs Lloyd sold ten pigs at Hereford market.
For
a few days when MF was sick (blamed on a good lunch of goose, followed by
beer and walking in hot sun) MM spent her time on embroidery and painting watercolour views ‘when the evening
light was right for the fairy-like vision of the valley between cliff and
hill. Then an enormous yellow moon rose
over the ferns in a cloudless sun-set sky.’
On their final evening Miss Pryce came down from Cock-a-Lofty to pick
blackberries, saying ‘she wishes we lived somewhere up here’ so she might see
them more often.
 |
| Entrance to camping ground today |
