Beacons and Valleys

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Walking

I’m just back from a very interesting weekend in Wales. I walked in the mountains and explored the valleys.

I went with my company’s walking club. I’ve never been away with them before so everyone was a stranger.

The club had hired a bunkhouse in the village of Talybont-on-Usk to the north of the Brecon Beacons National Park. I decided to take Monday off work in addition to the weekend to go and explore “The Valleys” of South Wales, an area which I do not know, but have a slight connection to.

The journey from London was a long one in driving rain, punctuated by a long detour past a blocked road on the way to Abergavenny following a local, driving fast along the narrow roads. But I arrived ten minutes before closing time!

The bunk house is lovely! I’d expected something quite different. There is a great kitchen, a big communal area and nice showers. It’s above the White Hart pub. They strictly don’t allow booze in the bunk house, but that’s not such a problem when you are above a pub!

It’s been a long while since I last did serious hillwalking and it was great to get out into the countryside again.

We spent both days walking in the Brecon Beacons “proper” (the National Park actually covers lots of other areas). The Beacons are a long ridge and we climbed one of the hills on the ridge: Fan-Y-Big.

We had a bit of rain, but generally, we were pretty lucky with the weather. We had good views.

Had lunch at Bwlch ar y Fan. “Bwlch” is the local word for “pass” or “col” or a “bealach” as I know them in Scotland.

Two of our party went on to climb Pen-y-Fan, the highest point in the beacons, but I was content to return with the rest. My walking poles save my knees and ankles from strain, but don’t make me Speedy Gonzalez!

Had a good meal in the pub that evening. I was fortunate to be in Wales during a Rugby weekend. Wales were playing France. They lost. Actually, all the teams I supported that day: Scotland, England and Wales; lost their respective matches! Scotland lost to the unfancied Italy and there would have been an Italian in our group, wouldn’t there! Still, the locals were very friendly and I had some nice chats with some old people who’d come up from “the Valleys”.

On the second day, we went on a shorter walk up Craig-Y-Fan. We met up with a Cardiff walking club so were a much bigger group. I was feeling the strain and lagged behind on the way down.

My group then all went home. Talybont is a two-pub town and Sunday nights are definitely quiet. I spent a pleasant evening reading my guide book then talking to some “bumpkins” in the White Hart.

There were two girls: 18 and 20 from Brecon, who by all accounts had been banned from all the pubs there. They’d been driven down to Talybont with this weird old guy who kept spinning tales of being ex-SAS. Very strange.

Talking to the barman, it turned out he had a twin brother who works for the same company as me in the same office! I vaguely knew the guy too. It is indeed a small world.

Exploring

Anyway, Monday brought sunshine and I took a beautiful road over a mountain pass towards Beaufort, at the head of the valleys.

“The Valleys” of South Wales are the former coal mining and iron smelting areas. My journey today would take me only around the centre of the area. I arrived at Beaufort, at the head of the Ebbw Fawr river valley. I went along the heads of the valleys to Merthyr at the head of the Taff. I then went down the Taff and up the Cynon Valley before taking the fast Heads of the Valleys Road back to Tredegar and down the Sirhowy Valley in search of Pontllanfraith and the house I lived in for the first 11 months of my life.

I’d heard a lot about the Valleys, most of it negative. There’s a lot of unemployment there and many social conditions that come with that too. As a tourist attraction, it’s a bit quirky, however I wanted to go and look for myself.

It was a sunny day when I went, and I had a day off work so maybe that colours my impressions. However, I quite liked the place. There is an aesthetic beauty about rows of tight terraced houses packed into narrow valleys. The valleys remind me of river valleys places in Scotland, but those don’t have packed towns inside them. I took a fair few photographs, and would have done more if I could have stopped the car more easily.

I stopped for a while in Merthyr Tydfil for lunch. The place had a down-at-heel feel to it. Howerver, there are a lot of small businesses. I bought lunch at an independent shop selling “French” baguettes.

I was most surprised to see evidence of Eastern Europeans. There are loads of them in London, where I live, but I hadn’t expected to see them in an area of reputedly high unemployment.

Then I drove down the Taff Valley to one of the most famous places in the area. The village of Aberfan is synonymous with the disaster that happened here in 1966. An unstable slag heap collapsed and slid down the slope, eventually landing on Pantglas Primary School. In total 144 people were killed, 116 of whom were children, most of them between the ages of seven and ten.

The site of the school is now a memorial garden, and all those who died are buried together in the cemetery.

I continued down the Taff Valley, and then looped up the Cynon Valley towards Aberdare. Something which struck me, driving round, is how little evidence is left of the coal mines. The only remaining pit is in the Rhondda Valley (which I did not have time to visit), and a pit in Blaenavon in the Avon Valley is now a museum where they let tourists go underground, but I didn’t get to either of those places. I’d definitely like to go back and see that. I guess when the mines closed, they were not interested in keeping the pit heads for future generations.

Apparently, the valleys used to be pretty isolated from each other. The fast “Heads of the Valleys” dual carriageway looks new. It seems incredible how people used to live.

Anyway, I zoomed back towards Tredegar and descended the Sirhowy Valley. It had a more rural feel than the others. I finally found the road in Pontllanfraith (read this great article!) where my Dad told me we lived. It was a bit of an anticlimax as it turned out we lived on the other side of the road to where he described. That’ll be another reason to go back...

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