A quick glance across the Burry early Friday evening showed clearly that all was not well over on Gower. Even from a distance of some fifteen miles I could see the flames and their surrounding glow, each growing in both ferocity and height with each passing minute. As it turned out we were heading over that way anyway, on a fish and chip run no less, so decided to detour across to Cefn Bryn to see what was happening. You can probably guess. After a couple of weeks of frankly miraculous dry weather it seems that someone thought it would be a fantastic idea to set a grass fire. Combine that with a stiff Easterly breeze and within an hour the flames had spread rapidly from below Arthur’s Seat to the vicinity of Oldwalls. By the time we passed there were two main fronts burning, the smoke and ash from which were being spread far and wide.

P1000394 - Gower Burns

Regular readers of this blog have probably seen my previous reports on incidents such as this and felt my anger towards those who would willingly cause such wanton destruction. On this occasion though, all I felt was sadness. Sadness that we live in a world where people would rather destroy than create. Sadness at a society who all too often seem to place so little value in our environment and natural heritage. Sadness for Gower which is once again scarred by acres of barren blackness. Sadness for Wales which seems almost unique in harbouring a small element whose very culture seems to deem this kind of behaviour acceptable. Sadness for us all that, at least for now, we are powerless to prevent hundreds more grass fires throughout the summer. Sadness that this is likely to be just the beginning.


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