https://culturecolony.com/en/media/video/edge-cymru

The Edge of Cymru – A Journey
by Julie Brominicks
Seren Books £12.99

BORN in Shrewsbury and a student at Aberystwyth University, Julie Brominicks went on to spend years working on environmental projects before deciding to spend time traversing the coast and borderlands of her adopted country.

The Edge of Cymru is the result of that lengthy walk, and a fantastic travelogue it is too. Funny, moving, idiosyncratic and occasionally dark, it’s a wonderful portrait of contemporary Wales and for those reasons alone it makes for a pleasurable and insightful read.

With an eye for the commonplace and the not-so-commonplace, Brominicks seamlessly combines personal and sometimes autobiographical reflections with a relevant and detailed knowledge about everything from ecology to historical background.
 
Brominicks also brings to her writing a passionate, inquisitive and non-judgemental interest in the lives, outlook and circumstances of the people and communities that she encounters.
 
Unremittingly honest about her own shortcomings as a long distance walker and with a nice line in self-deprecatory humour, Brominicks admits to times when she felt wet, tired and completely fed up, often ending the day with a few pints. And like all good walking books we feel invited not only to explore her experiences but to pull on our boots and create our own.
 
Given the nature of the path taken, there’s an overwhelming bias against larger towns and cities, but maybe that’s one which could be easily rectified in future ventures.
 
What makes this of interest to readers of the Star is that throughout this enchanting account, Brominicks allows her own unashamedly left-wing, environmentalist and (yes) potentially pro-independence views to explore not only green and decentralist concerns but also the more complex relationships between class, identity and nationhood. As Marxist historian Gwyn Williams once noted: “The Welsh as a nation have lived by making and remaking themselves generation after generation, usually against the odds, usually within a British context.”

Sympathetic to, but at the same time occasionally troubled by Welsh nationalist arguments, the end of the work sees Brominicks come to some sort of resolution of this central question at a moment which might prove to be pivotal.

Socially engaged, ecologically informed and politically aware, this is an invaluable guide to understanding Wales past, present and future and you can only hope that this is not the last we’ll be hearing from her.