SEPTEMBER 2023 · GROUNDED
Pen-Y-Fan car park
Central Beacons, Brecon Beacons
Pen y Fan gets all the attention. It's on the list, it's where people go. On a September weekend the Storey Arms car park looks like a retail park. The path to the summit is a motorway, worn to rock and mud, and the ridge is busy from opening time.
I wasn't going up. I was looking at what was underfoot and at the margins — the ground beside the path, the trees at the forest edge, the vegetation that most people step past. September in the Beacons means the end of what's been growing since spring. Heather still in colour but going over. Grasses dried and seedheaded. Ferns beginning to brown at the edges.
Most people were looking up at the ridge.
Storey Arms — September 2023
There was a weathered tree stump in the heather — pale grey wood, soft at the surface, still holding its form. Purple heather growing tight around the base. A few metres away, mossy fallen logs in the shade of the conifers, the kind of quiet decomposition that takes decades. Dried grass stems, close up in the September light, have a particular structure — each node casting a small shadow along the stem.
Most people were looking up at the ridge. The summit was the object. I was looking at dried seedheads against a pale sky, at the texture of bark that had been rained on for years.
The car park was still full when I came back down.
Weathered tree stump surrounded by purple heather and ferns
Gravel path through moorland with conifers and low vegetation
Mossy fallen logs and branches in dense woodland
Dried seedheads and grasses on upland moorland
Dried grass and heather plants in close detail