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Hafodyrynys, Monmouthshire, Wales
Having found the house in which she'd been born, we walked up an alleyway just a few doors down and made our way to the mountain. I wanted to walk up it and look back down on her garden, imagining my great-grandfather, looking down on his family and my Grandmother looking and waving at her mother as she played. And having walked to the top I did just that, taking in the view of the beautiful countryside, taking in the shape of the landscape which had in the way it shaped the paths of my ancestors served in part to bring about my own 'coming into being'.
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Cefn-y-Crib, Monmouthshire, Wales
When I visited Hafodyrynys with my Dad and my girlfriend Monika, we found ourselves - whilst clambering over what my grandmother called the 'Mountain' - in the company of a farmer, who, with his two sheepdogs, took us on a short tour of his land overlooking the village. He was a man who having been brought up in the area knew that part of the world intimately, and who, as he traced the blue horizon with his hand, reeled off a list of villages resting amongst the hills and fields rolled out below.
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