Dan Ryan (Member no: 182)

Caerhayes

If you close your eyes you could be transported to almost any century in the last 1000 years

The modern world, with all its roads and machines, seems to have altered every landscape. I try to be progressive about these things, but at heart I’m probably nostalgic for all the things, living and non living, which we have lost in this mass editing of the world.

But every so often I, and you will too, pass through a place that remains virtually unchanged. A place where nostalgia can live for a brief moment of time travel.

Here’s such a place. In a large prominent coastal pasture at Caerhays the notable features of a large fenced copse, an old sheep shelter, and footpath all appear today roughly as they would have in the late 1880s when this map was being surveyed. If you close your eyes you could be transported to almost any century in the last 1000 years…

The only thing not on the map is the great standing stone that looms over the sea. Was the stone not there in 1888? If it wasn’t then it’s interesting that the thing that presents itself as the most obviously ‘old’ thing in the landscape might actually be the youngest.

Which (relatively) unchanged landscapes do you know?