A Moody dash-cam drive along The Shining Way in West Wales on Xmas Eve.
A Moody dash-cam drive along The Shining Way in West Wales on Xmas Eve.
Mission 6 of our Dash-cam journey through the West Wales countryside. With music by Steve Spon’s Nostramus.
Today’s brand new Nostramus track is called “Crystalwytch” an ambient Drum and Bass soundscape featuring Tony Gee on Trumpet, Ella Jo on Vocals and Steve Spon on FX guitar and Electric Piano.
I am producing this and other material for a forthcoming album project which will be highlighted on my Bandcamp channel. This new work is based on a short science fiction fantasy story involving Pagan Goddesses, Druids and the mysteriously named “Coveners” who ‘cloak’ their real identities as time traveling extra terrestrial providers and you could say – gardeners. The ‘Crystalwytch’ could be the visitors craft or it may be the name of one of the visitors, or even a place. Who knows, it was at story written many years in the future. It is impossible to report it here. Please consider supporting Steve at Nostramus Bandcamp.
With the current Lockdown and the darkest time of year – with snowy weather, it has not been possible to travel to the mountain journeys that I had planned. However on Christmas Eve 2020 I managed to take some footage that fitted a mood that appealed to me. I set the video to play with the song, and came up with “Crystalwytch”. This drive takes place just after sunset along a Ceredigion Ridgway approximately 1000 foot (300 Metres) above Sea Level. Known locally as the White, or Shining Way, the journey traverses the road from Pen Cae and finishes at Post Bach. Whilst the views may be rather “ordinary” compared to some earlier videos, the moody atmosphere and brooding cloudscapes appear auspicious. windswept, bedraggled Beech, Laburnum and Pine trees scatter the hedgerows, and the odd croft or farmstead are often decorated with Christmas lights. Also the road was slightly busier than usual. Although not set for kids, this particular movie is actually safe for kids to watch. Please check all my videos before allowing your kids to watch.
Big thanks to Tony Gee (Redfish) for his speedy and magnificent Trumpeteering and Ella Jo for her “Crystalwytch Prophesy Poem”, finally Spon played Electric Piano and guitar fx. Please check back later for further dash-cam journeys! we are going to journey further into the Cambrian Mountains as soon as we get a few good clear days…. Written and conceived by Steve Spon for Nostramus and Diamonseeds Media 2021
Mission 5 of our dashcam journey through the Wales countryside.
Mission 5 of our dashcam journey through the West Wales countryside.
This time we are heading from Penparcau in Aberystwyth to New Quay along the A487 west coast road, a distance of 22 Miles (35 Kilometres).
According to Bing Maps that journey would normally take 39 minutes as there are numerous hills to navigate along with a host of villages and small towns that have speed limits. Today for this video we have reduced the journey time to 9 minutes by speeding up the video 4 times, which means our journey speed varies from 80 MPH to well over 200 MPH at times depending on speed and safety considerations. The average speed turns out to be 163 MPH…phew!
At no point in the real time journey was the legal speed limit broken and road safety was at all times the primary consideration This road is known and used by many who travel to West Wales on summer vacations and it has some spectacular views of Cardigan Bay and the mountains of Cadair Idris and Snowdonia. On clear days the mountains of the Lleyn Peninsular can be seen marching out to Sea to the North West. Also to the south on a clear day the distant Mynydd Preseli mountains can be seen.
So please buckle up your seat belts, turn up your sound, put your feet up and enjoy the journey. Yet again there are brand new sounds from Steve Spon’s Nostramus, this time there are three movements, “Temporeral”, “Levelling Up” and “Disshevelance”. Big thanks once more to Ella Jo’s wonderfull contribution on “Levelling Up” Please bear in mind these videos are meant for adults rather than kids to enjoy. This has to be defined by Youtube these days, whhich have a much stricter set of protocol’s to navigate if the video involves entertaining kids. In this video please be aware there is some “Explicate Content” in the words. Big thanks to Shaman Murphy and Ella Jo for company on the trips Please check back later for further dashcam journeys! we are going to journey further into the Cambrian Mountains as soon as we get a few good clear days….
Please be aware there is some strobing as the Sun flashes through the trees !! I hope this can mitigate those in current lockdown who yearn for the wide open beauty of our glorious countryside. #Lockdown#LockDownEntertainment Special Thanks to Ella Jo Street for her wonderful vocal chords! Another dashcam journey with music by Nostramus with music Steve Spon is producing for a forthcoming album project which we will be highlighting on our Bandcamp channel. Please consider supporting Steve at Patreon (Link Below) The return journey from a dashcam videoed road trip across mid/west Wales. Last week we premiered our first leg of the journey into the Cambrian Mountains “Ysbyty Ystwyth” to “The Devils Bridges”. Now we present our return leg of the mission from the Hafon Arch which is known as the gateway to the Cambrian Mountains on the mountain road to Rhayader from Aberystwyth and the coast at Cardigan Bay. This video comes in two parts, today we present part one. With a new piece of sound sculpture by Nostramus titled “Cambrianne”. This journey starts at The Hafon Arch built by Thomas Johhnes in 1810 who owned the nearby “Hafon” estate. He built in commemoration of the 1810 Jubilee of the so called ‘mad’ King George III. Until recently the mountain road ran through the arch. This marked the entrance to the Cambrian mountains and the old packhorse road was one of the only passable tracks through the mountains to the Welsh coast. This is one of the finest scenic routes in Wales and it has some pretty stiff competition as Wales is a beautiful country.
Devils Bridge to Aberystwyth Part 1 Movie
Another dashcam journey with music by Nostramus with music I am producing for a forthcoming album project which I will be highlighting on my Bandcamp channel. Please consider supporting my Nostramus channel at at Bandcamp .
The return journey from a dashcam videoed road trip across mid/west Wales. Last week we premiered our first leg of the journey into the Cambrian Mountains “Ysbyty Ystwyth” to “The Devils Bridges”. Steve was accompanied by stained glass artist Jon Murphy on this group of journeys Special Thanks to Ella Jo Street for her wonderful vocal chords as Nostramus’s movement “Cambriannia” is reprised from part one! For part two of this journey and included in this video are two brand new tracks written and produced by Steve Spon for Nostramus the two tracks are “The Conduit” and “Cluster Five”. Steve is hoping to raise funding for a new Nostramus album which he is currently writing and producing as Nostramus during lockdown, so if you can me please consider supporting me at Bandcamp or contacting me directly through this Youtube channel or my new Dronescaping Ynys Prydain Youtube Channel. The links will follow shortly.
I have arranged this new music to complement the journey, finding it inspirational and easier to work with moving image’s. “The mixes are bespoke for the journeys but out of this I hope to distill and produce this music into fully fledged album productions which I hope to mix all in 5.1 3d sound” So watch this space!
Now we present our return leg of the mission from the Hafon Arch which is known as the gateway to the Cambrian Mountains on the mountain road to Rhayeder from Aberystwyth and the coast at Cardigan Bay. This video comes in two parts, today we present part Two. This journey starts at Pant Mawr roughly half way along the route to the coast. This road is better known as the A4120 today and the views are spectacular, on a really clear day the mountains of Mourne in Ireland can be made out across Cardigan Bay from certain parts of this road and also the mountains of the Lleynn Peninsular rise spectacularly over the Sea in the distance. The end of the journey is marked by the iconic sentinel summit of Pen Dinas with it’s Wellington Monument overlooking the Seaside Town of Aberystwyth the “Biarritz of Wales”, famous for housing the Library of Wales , the University and elements of the Welsh Government. It is also a traditional Victorian Holliday resort made famous a few years ago when a storm tossed up wave splashes higher than those buildings on the Sea front, seen across the worlds media. Constitution hill can be seen in the background of the last image with its famous funicular railway and camera obscura. This is one of the finest scenic routes in Wales and it has some pretty stiff competition as Wales is a beautiful country. Please check back later for further dashcam journeys! we are going to journey further into the Cambrian Mountains as soon as we get a few good clear days….
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‘Views From The Dashcam’
“This episode filmed on a late sunny October afternoon, highlighting the autumn colours as Spon and Jon take a drive to Devil’s Bridge for some shamanic shenanigans. This trip reveals the spectacular wooded Cambrian Mountain countryside in Ceredigion, Wales. Although this area is often cold an wet in the winter, palm tress can be spotted amidst the almost alpine scenery. Devils Bridge, Pontarfynach”
On a bright sunny autumn day back in early October my good friend Jon and I headed out to the mountains around Devils Bridge in Ceredigeon in West Wales. We were looking to travel from our base to the heights above Devils Bridge at the Hafon Arch 1300 foot 375 metres above Sea Level. By Himalayan standards it’s not that high but for this part of the world close to the Sea and at this latitude , that is pretty high. It is the point where the moorland starts. Beyond this area know as Cymystwyth/ Hafon is the “Wilderness” or “Green Desert” of Wales. This is an enormous swathe of unpopulated barren moorland that stretches for tens of miles and it is commonly known as the Cambrian mountains.
The Mountain walks and scenery above Hafon ArchOn the edge of the “Green Desert Of Wales”
There is a minor road an old pack horse route leading through to Rhayader on the other side and then some miles to the north is the main road , the A44 leading from Aberystwyth to Llangurig again on the other side of the mountain range.
We decided that day to visit the area above the Hafon Arch with it’s stunning views and pleasant mountain walkways (and mountain biking tracks) One could set off from here on your nike or by foot and get lost for days! This is nothing on the scale of the ‘wild west’ or Canadian outback but for the southern UK this is one of the remotest areas in England and Wales. Not as busy as Snowdonia but this are in many ways has plenty of scope for discovery and adventure.
Looking south east towards the Cambrian Mountains
It would be good to mention at this point that our mission would include some autumnal foraging and that part of the ‘shamanic’ mission was moderately successful and we had an enjoyable walk . Anyway back to Devils Bridge, one and a half miles downhill from the Arch, the chocolate shop was closed! Ah well
We lit the massive cheech and chong and we forgoes the munchies, the only food available was those white things dotted about in the fields everywhere round here but they were still alive. Or kind off, whether or not there is anything going on behind those wide eyes and non stop munching is hard to know. One thing for sure, there are more Sheep around here than people.
At the time of writing England is once more in lockdown. Earlier this year we invested in a modest 4k webcam for the car and I put in a 64 gig chip. It continuously records but wipes the earliest recordings with the latest. At any one point there are several hours or even days of motoring trips. This year I have driven a lot around beautiful Wales. It struck me that the video footage may be worth watching. So I downloaded everything after our first trip around Llyn Brianne and was gobsmacked at stuff I had missed because I had my eyes more on the dodgy mountain roads than admiring the scenery.
I had been building up a new PC music system and fitting up my Studio and was sifting through some of the work I had been doing under Lockdown and just prior to it, when I hit upon the idea of placing my sounds onto the video footage.
I run music production software called Cubase and this not only allows me to create and record music but it will also play back a video file in sync whilst piecing together the music for it
This I found truly inspiring. Not only was I able to relive those lovely journeys in the autumn colours but composing music became an almost magical shall I dare say a spiritual process?
Devils Bridge or to give it it’s correct Cymru name “Pontarfynach” without looking into it “Pont” I think means “Bridge” (ie pontoon) “arf” I am unclear of “y” I think means “The” and “nach” hmm I think this means “Small” Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong So The Small Bridge ?? (I have just read that it actually means the bridge over the river Mynach)
The word Mynach is Welsh for monk; one theory is that the river got its name from the fact that it was near land owned by a monastery. Wikipedia
Watch the video. Please turn up your volume first
Anyway the story oft told is that “
“According to legend, the original bridge was built after an old woman lost her cow and saw it grazing on the other side of the river. The Devil appeared and agreed to build a bridge in return for the soul of the first living thing to cross it. When the bridge was finished, the old woman threw a crust of bread over the river, which her dog crossed the bridge to retrieve, thus becoming the first living thing to cross it. The devil was left with only the soul of the dog.” Wikipedia
You wouldn’t know it from driving across the bridge that actually there are three bridges each built on top of the other one. It is said that the Romans built the first bridge nearly 2000 years ago which was rebuilt in Medieval times. What we know for sure was that the first bridge was built in Medieval times then built over on two separate occasions each time the newer bridge was built over the older bridge. The latest bridge an iron bridge was built in 1901 and then refurbished in 1971. The bridge spans a deep gorge with a waterfall running through it down to the Rheidol Valley (Cym Rheidol) 230 metres below. Many tourists visit this spot and apparently there is an Annual Welsh car rally that drives through it.
The Hafon Arms Hotel
As written on the Youtube video….
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“But why just admire the view when we can add music? Set up your audio speakers and playback loud on a good quality sound system for maximum effect and enjoy the ten minute journey accompanied by “Port Sian” a stunning new track written by Steve Spon for Nostramus. Share this exhilarating experience from your armchair as we take the high roads of Wales. We hope you enjoy the ride! Please click “Like” and “Subscribe” to our Channel below. Also please support us at our Patreon Channel, coming soon! “
Eighteenth century view of Devils Bridge. Wikepedia commons
