Cardiff Bay, May 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is walking distance from my office, a short bus ride from home. Absolutely glorious. It’s weird now to remember what it used to look like, less than 20 years ago, before the barrage was built across the mouth of the bay to create this freshwater lake. Before that the bay was open to the Bristol Channel, which has the second greatest tidal range in the world - when the tide was out, all this was just mud flats, ringed with derelict docks and warehouses. Once upon a time, my forebears worked down here as sailors and labourers and engineers. They wouldn’t recognise it now. The regeneration of Cardiff Bay has been an amazing success, blending the new with the relics of the industrial past on which this city was built. I love it.

Pen y Fan, September 2014

Today it is pouring with rain, so I've decided to remember a much sunnier day back last September, when I walked up Pen y Fan and Corn Du, the two highest peaks in South Wales.

Here are the two peaks, viewed from the Brecon Beacons Mountain Centre at Libanus.

Mountain stream, just off the A470 a little south of Storey Arms - this is where you park up to begin the upward climb.

Destination sighted - Corn Du, with Pen-y-Fan hidden behind - this is zoomed in, it's a lot further than it looks!

Leaving the A470 far behind - and yet still so far to go

The Brecon Beacons are always glorious - so open and exposed

 

Onward and upward!

We've almost made it to Corn Du!

 

But we're skirting behind Corn Du for the present - heading for Pen-y-Fan, here pictured with Cribyn just beyond

The valley behind the mountains, with the Upper Neuadd Reservoir just in sight, the Blaen Taf Fechan feeding into it

The last push up to the top of Pen-y-Fan

 The cairn on top of Pen-y-Fan

 

On top of Pen-y-Fan, looking back to Corn Du

Views from the top of Pen-y-Fan

Looking across the saddle to Cribyn

Heading back down and across to Corn Du

On Corn Du, looking across to Pen-y-Fan and Cribyn

Looking down toward Cwm Llyn Llwch

The Blaen Taf Fechan and Upper Neuadd Reservoir as seen from Corn Du

Looking north-west toward Libanus

Glider over Cwm Llyn Llwch

Up close and personal - glider over Corn Du

And then the long path back down again

What a beautiful day!

A winter's walk - Fourteen Locks

I went for another winter's walk on Saturday, a four-mile cross country hike in the Newport area this time, setting out from the Fourteen Locks Visitor Centre at Rogerstone and taking in the Allt-yr-Ynn nature reserve, Wern-ddu wood and Ynysyfro reservoir en route. It was a beautiful day, bright and crisp and clear - cold enough that I ended up with a headache, but still a lovely walk...if a little muddy in places. I think I might have to invest in slightly sturdier walking boots!

This is the 'pound' at Fourteen Locks.

 

The 'Fourteen Locks' Centre gets its name from a series of locks known as the Cefn Flight, which is an absolutely ingenious piece of canal engineering, dropping 169 feet in just half a mile - it's one of the steepest series of locks in the UK, completed in 1799.

 

This waterway was a branch of the Monmouthshire Canal, built to transport supplies upstream to the mines and coal and iron back down-river to the port in Newport. The canal was made redundant as a means of trade when the railways came along, and fell out of use entirely in the 1930s, after which the stretch of water between Locks 8-21 (the 'Fourteen Locks') fell into disrepair - as we can see, industrial decay at its finest!

 

There is a Millennium project between Newport city Council and the Canals Trust to reclaim the waterway, however, and restoration work is ongoing, so maybe some day the locks will be fully functional again.

This is the old lock-keeper's cottage, built in 1792 (and restored about 40 years ago after a fire)

 

I was very taken with this sign along the bridleway - such dramatic imagery!

The walk along the towpath and bridleway is just lovely

Next, we joined up with the Sirhowy Valley Walk, taking us up into the hills.

 

Some lovely views north toward Mynydd Machen and Twmbarlwm.

 Next, we picked our way along a muddy little footpath through the Allt-yr-Ynn nature reserve, which was once the grounds of Allt-yr-Yn House, a large country home now reduced to a ruin hidden in the trees that we didn't even find. We did, however, manage to find Allt-yr-Yn Lido, once an outdoor swimming pool built in the 1930s on the spot where the spring and ornamental pools of Allt-yr-Yn House once stood. The pool closed in the 1960s and was subsequently demolished - this pretty wildlife pond is now all that's left.

We took a very boggy footpath across farmland onto the grounds of Tredegar Park golf course, skirting around the edge of Wern-ddu Wood and heading on past Ynysyfro reservoir.

 

And then we made it back to Fourteen Locks just in time for a nice hot cuppa before the Visitor Centre closed!