Country diary: South Wales’s summer of fires will linger long in the memory | Eben Muse

My friend John and I are climbing Tylorstown Tip – a summit also known as Old Smokey, named after the hot ash it was partly made with. We want to see how much of south Wales has burned.

The tip towers over the surrounding hills, a perfect crow’s nest from which to witness the blackening of the region. From the summit, with its sitka spruce and flowering heather, the expanse of St Gwynno’s forest spreads out before us, all 6,533 acres of it. Browned, dead plantation forestry gives way to grassland burned to cinder. A veil of smoke lies above the forest for miles.

Sticking our heads up like a couple of lanky prairie dogs, we try to tot up the summer’s burns – many we can see, many more we’ve heard tell of, just out of sight. There’s Treherbert, Wattsville, Cwm, Maerdy, Ynyshir, Ferndale, Llwyn Onn, Blaenavon, Dowlais, on and on. Coal areas, for ever shaped by fire and ash.

The fires in south-east Wales this summer have been so numerous and devastating, their impact has weighed heavy on people’s psyche. With such little rain from late June to August, sparks that would normally fizzle and die without consequence have raged over large areas in a flash.

Here in the valleys, where forestry, absentee landownership, industrial waste and dense terraced housing all sit close, the wildfires have felt like they’re right in your face. You could be forgiven for thinking it was all of Wales aflame, living in the smoke for weeks, tasting the smog on your lips.

Meanwhile, up north, desperate residents of the blazing Rhinogydd had to wait days for helicopter support, as it was busy in England and Scotland. In some places a kind of madness has taken hold, with children photographed and put through trial by social media for loitering in woodlands during summer holidays.

At long last, recent days have seen rain – real rain. Many burns still smoulder in deep peat, but soon it’ll be time to worry about floods instead, as denuded slopes flush ever more water into catchments that cannot contain it. Whatever happens next, it’s a summer that will linger in the memory.