The Newport Wetlands National Nature Reserve (NNR) is, as you would expect full of birds! I mean really lots of em!! when I went there last week for the first time there were vast fleets of grebe and other ducks circling the ponds, finches and tits bobbing from branch to branch in the hedgerows and gargantuan gatherings of migratory birds having fun in the mud out where the salty surf was lapping the frayed rim of the vast Severn estuary.
There was even a few egrets (the supermodel of birds!) languidly stalking the edges of the reedbed for a quick snack. But you may be surprised to learn that it wasn’t these obvious attractions that really got under my skin and yes indeed touched my soul!
It was a startling autumn day, there was not a cloud in the sky it seemed the sun was so bright that someone had accidentally on purpose put the wrong wattage bulb in there! It was 100 when 60 watt would have done!
The place was churchyard still for the most part but for a few lazy breezes that awoke the reedbeds in to gentle almost coral shhhhhhhh! It felt to me the reeds had decided to sleep during the blinding brightness of the afternoon but had awoken momentarily to communicate every half hour in a whisper. Shhhhhhhhhhh they went again! It was the sound of nature haunting and soothing .. I felt a connection with the natural world, as if it was talking to me directly!! The sound of the M4 motorway I had driven down to get to the reserve doesn’t do the same thing for some reason!
It also made me think of another connection. The connection of generations of human beings across Millennia. Would past generations have heard that shivering, haunting sound? What would they have made of it?
Newport Wetlands NNR is young, very young! It was only formed out of the waste of ash pits form the nearby coal power station in 2000, Indeed it only became a teenager this year. But despite its youth, the human foot (unlike those of the narrow prints of birds that pepper the mudflats that are washed away in an instant) – has been striding across these levels and indeed leaving its print for thousands of years. Just to the east of the reserve at Goldcliff, Mesolithic (that’s 8000 years old!) footprints of children and adults were found. There was even a trail of four children and an adult walking together.
The Romans had a big part to play in how the Gwent Levels look. Research suggests that, initially, reclamation of the natural salt marsh for farmland began at a few "island" sites within the marshes, such as at nearby Nash and Redwick before a sea wall was built along the whole coast.
As I walked along the path that straddled this sea wall to the eastern edge of the reserve I fixed my binoculars on the middle distance. Two rows of jagged posts sticking up through the mud blurred in to view. My enquiries at the RSPB visitor centre revealed that they were fish traps. The rows of posts I found out were called ‘ranks’, that were used to attach ‘putchers’, baskets where Salmon would swim in to at high tide and trap themselves. The first reference to the fish traps was in 1663 but they were probably there long before.
So as you many have gathered by now what I’m trying to tell you is for me the Gwent Levels and Newport Wetlands NNR is not only about birds. In fact you don’t need to know anything about birds to love it here. The reason I loved it so much was....... just being there. This is a great place of solitude, a sanctuary right on the edge of an industrial heartland. For me a great place to feel inspired to contemplate the past and the present.To take some time out from your daily life and just be. I just took it in. The sun glinting off the rippling ponds the fluorescent colours of the sea and sky and of course there goes that sound again, ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......
Click here if you want to find out more and visit to feel the special vibe to Newport Wetlands