River Usk

And I remember it fondly.

The river that runs through the training area is called the River Usk, and the River Usk and I became really good friends in March.

So I came back, the course passed, 1995, and to be honest with you, I imagine that was my dizzy heights.

I, a number two dress, I wore a red sash, proud as could be, and just settling down.

picture the slow grinding labor of building up a road through a valley every mile of it fought for it every fort at the end of it and the next fort behind that a chain of small garrisons strung across an unwilling country The archaeology of this war survives, above all, in the marching camps and the forts, in the aerial photography that is revealed across Wales and the borderlands, many of them first spotted from the air by pioneers like J.K. St. Joseph, whose work we have meant before.

there was an early legionary base at clairo and powis a vexillation fortress in the borderlands and it may even have been at a site like this that the great mauling of the legion took place slowly fort by fort a military frontier was taking shape running from the developing base at Chester to the north, down the estuary to the River Usk in the south, the skeleton of the Roman grip on Wales and not dissimilar from a certain ditch that was dug by an Anglo-Saxon king many centuries later.

It was not glorious.

There was no speeches, no triumphs, no famous names on the British side after Caractacus was gone.

They fly high and fast, they're rarely seen, and finding where they raise their young is unusual anywhere.

So how did the first maternity roost in Wales turn up in a family home in the Usk Valley? And what can it tell us about a species we still know so little about? Music Hello and welcome to Bat Chat, the official podcast of the Bat Conservation Trust.

I'm Steve Rowe and this is Series 8.

I've spent the past year travelling the UK with a microphone, getting out into the field to bring you the stories behind bat conservation as they happen.

Perfect.

So we turned on the bat detectors and waited for the roost to begin emerging.

At first the bats were slow to emerge, with long gaps between each one that dropped out from the eaves, but soon they began pouring out of the farmhouse and off into the darkness of the Usk Valley.

These sounds are the echolocation calls of the bats as they emerge with the detector tuned to 27kHz.

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So you can hear the autumn song of the river Usk here, and also the peeping of a flock of long-tailed tits that are passing through, some foraging party.

I'm hoping we might hear some kingfishers, because I've been hearing them for the last half an hour along the river, but they've become

very

So, thank you so much.

But as I wander by this beautiful, soulful river, the River Usk, it's time to bid you farewell until next week in the next Plodcast adventure.

So, goodbye for now.

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That's the autumn song of the river Usk and on the far side I can see a dipper just foraging, its little white bib bobbing, it's just gone under the water and it's finding morsels, little insects in the water margins.

It's got an autumnal feel on the river at the moment obviously, the willow leaves are yellowing And there's a general sense of the year coming to a gentle end.

So as I look north, I can see the peak of Sugarloaf, which dominates this local landscape here, one of the Brecon beacons, the Bannaibra Kinyog.