Can Britain’s bedrock survive Brexit?

Tracking Back: In the latest in his series exploring ideas of place and passage, Will Gore contemplates the union at a Welsh cliff-edge

Sheer rock walls plunge into the Irish Sea at Cemaes Head, part of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path (Alamy)

One of the oddities of British life is that being Scottish or Welsh is not only more noteworthy than being English, it is also more legitimate as a source of pride and purpose.

That is partly because the English are in the majority: celebrating Englishness can all too easily be seen as a dismissal of those who are not in the ascendency.

What’s more, English nationalism (which admittedly is different to national pride) is more readily associated with ideas of white supremacy. The nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales are, by contrast, pitched as standing against central government by Westminster – concerned merely with throwing off the yoke of colonial oppression. That perception doesn’t always match reality, of course.

The record of hooliganism among England-supporting football fans doesn’t help much either.

Pride in being British rarely gets a look in, much as Boris Johnson likes to bang on about it. Little Englanders, Scotlanders and Welsh dismiss it as an artificial construct and look forward to the dismantling of the union. Meanwhile, some liberals object to any form of patriotism on the basis that our birth in any given geographical location is an accident of history and thus has no logical underpinning.

But logic doesn’t always win out over emotion: to assume otherwise is itself illogical.

As a native of southern England, but also the son of an Evans and the great grandson of a Macalister, I have always felt squarely British (and European too, but that’s a different matter). The thought that Brexit – or any other forces – might ultimately lead to the break-up of our country is genuinely distressing.

So intertwined are the history, culture and peoples of the UK’s constituent nations that the prospect feels almost impossible – to me anyhow, if not to many others.

Six summers ago, I walked a section of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path. My grandfather, who I never knew, had been born in Solva but I hadn’t been to Wales’s southwest corner since I was a boy.

On a clear day, we set off from the village of Moylgrove, aiming for St Dogmaels at the national trail’s northernmost point: all in all, an eight-mile hike around the Cemaes headland; where buzzards soar majestically above gorse, bracken and wildflowers, and where sheer rock walls plunge into the Irish Sea.

With the path broadly following the shoreline, every now and again we saw the cliffs ahead in all their glory, as the vast sheet of water zigged and zagged into the land, creating unreachable beaches way below us.

In places, the strata in the rock were dramatically clear; no longer in horizontal lines but crinkled and folded at right angles – like a stack of picture frame samples, each a different shade and texture.

These ancient formations, dating from some 450 million years ago and buckling at infinitesimally slow speeds in the interim, are now exposed in all their beauty – every layer distinct and intriguing but seen for what it is only when part of the greater, immutable whole.

To separate the strata would be to destroy the lot. And where would be the purpose or the pride in that?