In the time before Rome, when the land that would be Wales was divided by tribe and hill, the **Silures** held the south-east: from the low, wet vales of Usk and Taff up to the moor-crowned ridges of what we now call Rhondda and Rhigos.
Each summer, as the valleys grew warm and close, they climbed. Families and herds wound upward along old trackways — routes that later would become pilgrim roads. They drove cattle and sheep toward the high commons, **hafod** pastures, where air was clean and enemies few.
Their movement was more than seasonal; it was ritual. The ascent from **lowland to highland** marked the turning of the year. At certain crossing-places — the **pen-rhis**, the headland ridge — they paused. Springs and wells there were honored as *living mouths of the earth*. Offerings were left: carved wood, beads, bone pins, small bronze blades.
At night, beneath the ridge stars, they gathered around the **sacred well**, consuming the gifts of the land — honeyed mead, psylocibin fungi that grew after rain, liberty caps. The world softened, the ancestors drew close, and visions came: of hills moving like beasts, of rivers speaking, of light beneath the water.
When dawn came, they rose renewed, following the ridgeline west toward the **great lake — Llyn Fawr** — to cast offerings into its dark water. Bronze, amber, food, song: the price and promise of prosperity.
Then, when summer waned, they descended again to their lowland settlements, leaving behind the high camp — the smoke circles, the well, the quiet stones.
The Romans would later call them fierce, intractable, lovers of freedom. But to the Silures themselves, this yearly journey was not rebellion, but belonging — a covenant between people, hill, and spirit.
Their paths are still there, buried under heather and tarmac. And sometimes, on misted days, the wind over Penrhys still carries the breath of those who climbed before.
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