The Sycharth cows were staring right back at me.  I paused on top of the stile.  The public footpath cut straight through their field, and they were watching.

I learned to be wary of cows in Northamptonshire.  I doubted that Powys's bovine population would differ too much.  Frozen with indecision, I did what instinct told me to do.  I took a picture for Zazzle.

Well, what would you have done?!

Let's reverse here a moment and go back to that summer's night in Northamptonshire, England.  I was driving along with a friend, when we saw a sign to the village of Harrington.  That's my surname.  I saw my whole heritage stretched out in surreal brilliance. 

Harrington Post Office.  Harrington Road.  All of these things named after me!  Well.  Sort of. Give or take the Earls of Rutland, who shared my surname too.

Parked up in Harrington, we discovered another hidden gem.  It was the ruins of a Medieval hospital out in a field.  Tourist signs showed us the way and we meandered on over to take a look. It was mostly foundations and the odd half a brick, but handy display boards told us what it would have looked like back in the day.

Out on the ridge, about half a mile away, was a herd of cattle.  We acknowledged it as features on a landscape, bearing no more mind than we did the distant bushes and trees.  There were much more interesting things to see close up.

After a few minutes, there was no ignoring the fact that we were being watched.  At first glance, the cows on the ridge had merely been looking in our general direction.  They'd noticeably come closer now.  Still a fair distance away, but certainly not quite as far.   It was a little like watching the Dr Who episode, 'Blink'.  They didn't move when we were looking.  They were much nearer when we turned back again.

But that stage was soon over.  Now we watched as these cows ambled towards us.  I think I laughed.  After all, there were no bulls there.  They were just cows.  Gentle, grass-eating mammals, prone to turning up in children's stories wearing straw hats.  Cows couldn't hurt you.

The cows crept closer.  My friend and I were laughing, but it still all felt suddenly a little threatening.  I kept sweeping their numbers with my gaze searching for the bull.  Wariness and distrust hung in the air. 

"Shall we go?"  My friend asked mildly.  He wasn't particularly worried either, but we had been there long enough to see the ruins.  We were done anyway and we appeared to be upsetting the cows.  I agreed and we began to wander back towards the gate.

At some unspoken, unmooed signal, the cows began to charge.   My friend and I went from a slow dawdle to instantly fleeing.  The gate was about 50-70 yards away and neither of us were dressed for this.  We were both wearing flip-flops!   And he was wearing red.

I screamed at him to take his red t-shirt off.  He was now attempting to race across a field in flip-flops, undressing with a herd of cattle stampeding after him.  And he was STILL beating me, which speaks volumes about my fitness levels. 

Naturally he reached the gate first and vaulted it, yelling at me to get a move on.  I wasn't too far behind and scrambled over seconds before the cows reached us.  (It wasn't that we were much faster.  They just had further to run.)  They filled the yard just behind the gate, bellowing and rushing desperately towards us. 

You know how, in cartoons, an angry bull has that mushroom cloud of hot air snorted from its nose?  Well that's true!  They actually do that, and paw the floor with their hooves too, at least cows do.  I saw it happen that evening in Harrington, Northampton. 

But that was then and this was now.  I had no-one with me and the footpath cut straight through them.  Just like that English footpath had.  On the far side of the cows was Sycharth.  I'd come a long way to see it.  I waited.  The Welsh cows waited.  I watched.  They watched.  I took a photograph.  They posed.  This was going nowhere.

I climbed down from the stile and walked through them to Sycharth.  They let me go.  Y gwir yn erbyn y byd.

It's a picture that I'm so proud of taking.  It adorns the home page of this very website, as well as representing all of Wales in my Zazzle store.  But what's the story behind it?

It was a beautiful day.  All of 2012 will be remembered for the rain, but not that day.  Not that moment.

It was September 16th, Owain Glyndŵr's Day (Dydd Owain Glyndŵr), and this was the place where he'd lived.  I'd had a little trouble finding Sycharth, but now I was here and it was great.

Owain Glyndŵr was a Welsh hero, who lived during the turn of the 15th century.  For a time there, he'd succeeded in freeing Wales from the yoke of the English.  It existed as a separate nation, governed from a Welsh parliament.  Glyndŵr was the country's prince and ruler.  He was naturally loathed and hunted incessantly on the orders of the English monarch, as England wanted to resume their Occupation as soon as possible.

September 16th was the anniversary of the crowning of Owain Glyndŵr, as Prince of Wales and ruler of all Wales.  Over the hills in Corwen, the celebrations were visibly in the streets.  Bunting looped from lamp-posts and every business hailing the memory of Y Mab Darogan.  They'd never forgotten Glyndŵr there.

But here in Sycharth, the place where Glyndŵr had actually lived, I was completely alone.  There was little to see of his presence.  Henry V had burned that down centuries ago.  But you could make out the mound upon which the house had stood.  You could explore the drained moat and still soggy mill pond. 

I sat beneath the boughs of an enormous oak tree, which grew where once Glyndŵr's ramparts stood.  The roots were big enough for me to nestle between, curling up comfortably as I read my book.  A history of the man himself, of course.  I wanted to read how it had been, not as it was now.

A distant trio of tractors disturbed me from my quiet reverie.  I watched them for a while, then decided to wander some more.  I found my feet and turned, just as the sun came out from behind a grey cloud.  That's when I saw the view, which I photographed.  That was the tree taken too high for the roots to be captured, and too close to discern that wide, wide trunk.  A single low-lying branch served to frame the scenery, which the sun illuminated so beautifully.

In truth, it's just one of several taken at the time.  I knew immediately that the photograph would be good.  How could it not be with a background like that?!  What I didn't have trust in was my ability to take the best shot immediately. 

I did and you're seeing it.  An autumnal scene in Powys, taken from the spot where Owain Glyndŵr stood and dreamed his dreams of a free Wales.