Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future

Product Information

Sarn Helen is accomplished and stunning in every one of its many personalities: as history, as memoir, as eco-parable, as impassioned call to arms. The world of this book is one of awe and joy and one which we need to protect from human predation until our last collective breath -- Niall Griffiths Sarn Helen is a beautifully downbeat travelogue that's full of love, rage and humour. A brilliant, pivotal book by one of the most engaged and engaging writers around, it will change you -- Toby Litt A rapturous lamentation, and a winding tale with an unswerving message. One of the best books I’ve read on the climate emergency” These conversations are written as though the reader is present. Bullough has already used specificity to build our relationship and so we trust the experts too. It is scary and painful to read, but fuels the need to act. As Dr Claire Earlie says, ‘This is our home, and so it’s important to us’. Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe.

Bullough provides a massive wake up call to action. We need to live locally and sustainably, shout on the steps of the Senedd to be heard, join thousands (no, not just thousands but hundreds of thousands) in London, and raise our voices in solidarity. Sarn Helen: A Journey through Wales, Past, Present and Future by Tom Bullough is published by Granta. It is available from all good bookshops.I have always had an interest in Sarn Helen being Welsh and my parents lived a few miles from Caerhun so have a knowledge of the route as well. But this book was so much more than the history and passion for Wales, Tom has produced an honest clear insight into our climate crisis, showing the affect on Wales and the world. Sarn Helen – Helen’s Causeway – is the old Roman Road that runs from the south of Wales to the north. The problem was that, in 2009, our son Edwyn put in his appearance and all ambition was redefined – principally, as getting any sleep at all.

Wave a fond farewell to Snowdonia National Park as you exit to the south on stage three, heading deep into the Cambrian Mountains via the bustling town of Machynlleth, and along one of my all-time favourite gravel roads.What has changed, I think, is awareness – a question of degree. Age and experience come into it, no doubt, but the change I mean is a wider change, the (very slow) awakening of society at large to the single, central question: how do you make sense of yourself in the face of the Climate and Ecological Emergency (CEE)? After all, on our current course, we will leave to our children a world whose average temperature will have increased by 3°C or more: a world of conflict and starvation, mass displacement and mass extinction. What, then, is there left to discuss except how we change that course? The penultimate stage of the Sarn Helen route will take you across the wild and isolate Brecon Beacons National Park, over the Fforest Fawr, along ‘the road to hell’ and through forestry to Crynant in the Dulais Valley. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (1925). An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire: I – County of Montgomery. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. p.142. GGKEY:HRABCGX5SDD. Tom Bullough gives an impassioned plea in this book for all of us to sit up, take notice, and action. There are excellent chunks of scientific facts provided by academic experts who are interviewed for the book by Tom, and also an extremely affecting speech which he gave to the judges at his trial following arrest on a peaceful Extinction Rebellion protest in London.