‘A stone circle older than Stonehenge’: Welsh forest walks steeped in folklore

Celtic rainforests, druid sites and tales of an enchanted lake add wonder to these walks in nature

Take a walk through the woods and countryside of Wales and you enter a magical, liminal space – a threshold where history and legend, fact and fiction seem to merge and become one. Woodlands, caves, lakes and streams have long been at the heart of Welsh folklore. In some Welsh mythology they are believed to be gateways to the Annwn (the otherworld described most notably in the Middle Welsh text The Four Branches of the Mabinogi). These entrances were said to be protected by Y Tylwyth Teg, the fair folk. In Welsh folklore these fairies were the souls of druids who, as pagans, couldn’t be afforded passage to heaven but were too virtuous to be cast into hell. In other cases, nature provides power or protection.

I’d grown up listening to many of these tales. It wasn’t until I started a 300-mile walk through Wales, however, exploring, for a new book, how we as society can restore balance with nature, that I began to realise the importance of folklore. It reminds us of our long connections to the natural world – even as industrialisation and urbanisation distance us from it.