Cycling in the empty Welsh mountains during the 2020 Covid 19 total lockdown


Start picture: Crib Gogh up ahead

Never to be repeated.
Music: Bon Iver.

This is Rob (my son) on his bike on a beautiful summer day with absolutely nothing and nobody on the roads. Like in a dream and you're the only person left in the world.

Dream this too: Rob with a friend on a completely empty Snowdon Horseshoe lockdown walk on just as beautiful a day the same year.

And at once, I knew I was not magnificent, high above the highway aisle.

Holocene – Bon Iver's gorgeous song – seems apt for this empty land in the age of man. What the songwriter, Justin Vernon, said about it:

And we had a little smokey-smoke and took a walk down the road, and it was so quiet, and it was already quiet 'cause there's not a lot of people traveling, and it was really a kind of spooky night. The air's just hanging, and we went and walked over to this bridge over I-94, and there just wasn't a single car. There was nothing for miles and miles, and the air was hanging in such a way ... it just came out, like at once I knew I was not magnificent, you know ... it was one of those moments where you're not really sure if you're the creator of something or you've just been handed something to share.

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Page last modified: 08 March, 2024
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