Black Mountains: Lord Hereford's Knob / Twmpa

The views from up here are the reason to come. The Black Mountains fall away to the east in long forested ridges, the Wye Valley somewhere below the haze, Wales and England both visible depending on which way you turn. The golden grasses on the exposed ridge catch the afternoon light in a way that makes the descent easy to delay. The sunset silhouette over the distant ridge came with a layered sky — the kind of moody gradation that appears when there's enough moisture in the air to do something with the dying light.

Then it got dark, and the explosions started. Distant, irregular, somewhere to the north or east. Not thunder — the sky was clear. Not fireworks — wrong season, wrong pattern. They continued through the night at unpredictable intervals. I have no satisfactory explanation. Military range, possibly. There's one within plausible distance. You lie in a tent listening to unexplained detonations at 690 metres and you either sleep through it or you don't.

Morning was better. The ridge profile of Twmpa is distinctive from below — a long flat crest dropping to forested slopes, the Grwyne Fawr valley behind it. Stark and clean in early light. The horses were visible again on the upper slopes, grazing at the same unhurried pace as the evening before.

White horses on a moorland slope, forested valleys behind them, sound of something distant that you can't account for.