Stuart’s Photography

View the photos of The Lost LifeTrail(tm) Stations as part of my Merthyr Road project on Flickr.

It isn’t just the wealth of South Wales that has declined since the closure of the Glamorganshire Canal, the iron works, the coal mines, and most of our railways. There has also been a dramatic turn for the worst in the health of South Wales. The nation as a whole is facing an ever-increasing burden of folks who are overweight and who just aren’t doing enough physical activity to maintain their health as they get older. When coupled with the rising average age of the working population, the UK as a whole is facing extra demand on its state-funded health care services coinciding with less people footing the bill.

The Welsh Assembly Government is trying to plan ahead with the twenty year Climbing Higher national strategy for sport and active recreation. Under this initiative, a number of Welsh councils have been buying the LifeTrail(tm) outdoor activity solution from US company Playworld Systems and installing them in local parks. Comprising of ten separate Wellness Stations, the LifeTrail system is aimed at getting the aging population to perform simple but effective exercises that will contribute towards their overall health.

And there just happens to be a few of these hidden away along an old railway line in Pontypridd …

Thoughts On The Day

This might seem like an odd topic for my Merthyr Road project, which to date has focused on the more historical locations between Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil, but please indulge me. The LifeTrail(tm) stations have been placed along the route of the former Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Newport Railway, which opened in 1884 and was taken out of use in 1967. The Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Newport Railway connected the coal mines at Merthyr with the docks at Newport, running along the Taff Vale Railway to Pontypridd before crossing the River Taff just south of Ynysangharad Park, down the eastern side of the valley to Penhros Junction, and then east through Caerphilly, Machen and Basseleg and so down to the Newport Docks. To the best of my knowledge, some of the P.C. & N. Railway has been converted to form the Taff Trail route between Nantgarw and Glyntaff, whilst some of it has been lost under the A470 along with the Glamorganshire Canal. A third section, between the Treforest Ironworks Bridge over the Taff at Glyntaff and Ynysangharad Park, has recently been turned into a pleasant riverside walk, and it is here that the LifeTrail(tm) stations have appeared.

To be honest, I had no idea that the LifeTrail(tm) stations were there - I was actually heading out of Pontypridd for a walk down to Taffs Well to gather more photos for a second article about Cardiff Railway. The first station can be found at the south-western corner of Ynysangharad War Memorial Park, and I found a total of five more stations along the route of the old railway line to Treforest. It’s difficult to describe what they are; the best thing to do is to look at the photos of the individual stations. Without trying to do them down, they’re basically simple but effective exercise equipment purpose-built for placing outdoors in parks. Online articles I’ve read since I took the photos suggest that they are aimed at the older adult population (by which I mean the over 40’s!), and that’s also backed up by the promotional material available on the manufacturer’s website.

I walked along the set of exercise stations with an adult couple who were probably in their mid-forties (my apologies to you if I’ve gotten that wrong ), looking at each of the exercises on offer and talking about the concept. We all expressed surprise at where the stations have been placed, and wondered whether they would have been more accessible and easier to find if they’d been placed in a trail around Ynysangharad War Memorial Park instead. I’m sorry to say that, at Station #2, we couldn’t work out whether the contractors hadn’t finished installing this station yet, or whether someone had already stolen the pedals from the exercise bike built into this station! We also all noticed that these stations are labelled for Tredegar Park and are branded for Newport City Council, an unfortunate oversight on someone’s part that gave me the title of this article

My overall feelings on these installations are mixed. On the one hand, anything that gets the under-active to do more healthy exercise is a GoodThing(tm). The UK in general, and Wales in particular, is heading towards a health crisis caused in part by folks doing less physical activity, and that’s not going to be fun for anyone - not the folks who will be (or are) suffering, and not for my generation who will also be footing the tax bill for it. On the other, it’s a shame to see Welsh tax money being used to buy an off-the-shelf solution from the US. This could have been a good opportunity for Welsh business and the various Welsh teaching centres, including the Welsh Institute of Chiropractic at the University of Glamorgan (who I’m personally indebted to for excellent treatment following a car accident some years ago).

I’m wondering where the other four LifeTrail(tm) stations will be built. There are six stations at the moment in Pontypridd (one of which is purely informational), leaving four additional stations if RCT are going to take the standard complement of ten stations. Station #6 is at the end of the track; it wasn’t obvious to me where any additional stations could be built. I’ll have to go back out to the site once work has been completed to see where RCT has placed the other four units.

On the day I didn’t know any better, but after researching the LifeTrail(tm) stations, I’m disappointed to find that RCT’s stations don’t appear at first glance to include the panels for disabled people. Just to explain - each station has three sides to it, or three panels. Each panel hosts a single exercise for folks to do. According to Playworld System’s website, normally two of the panels would have exercises for the able-bodied, whilst the third panel would either be used for information / sponsor purposes, or for exercises for folks in wheelchairs. RCT appear to have opted for a different configuration, using all three panels for exercises for able-bodied folks. In this post-DDA world, that might prove to be a bold move on RCT’s part.

(As a footnote, it will be interesting to go down to Tredegar Park one weekend to see how their LifeTrail(tm) stations compare to those installed in Pontypridd).

Post Production

The main job since taking the photos has been to try and find out more about the LifeTrail stations. Talking to a few locals who regularly use the path between Treforest and Ynysangharad Park, they’re as much a surprise to them as they were to me on the day!

Unfortunately, this has been easier said than done. There’s plenty of information online from other councils in Wales about the Climbing Higher initiative, and how they are spending tax payers’ money - but there’s precious little information available online from Rhondda Cynon Taff Council itself. Unfortunately, the online search on the RCT website appears to have been having a bad day, as even searches for basic terms like ‘Ynysangharad’ produce no results, and searches for ‘Climbing Higher’ list PDFs that don’t mention the WAG initiative at all

At the time of writing, I’m assuming that RCT is still in the process of installing the LifeTrail(tm) stations. That’s based mainly on the state of the six stations that I came across during this shoot, and that there’s been no launch of the stations to match the work that Newport City Council did when their stations were setup in Tredegar Park.

I’ve found it a little weird writing an article about a modern-day attraction. This is the very first one, and it certainly won’t be the last! Regular readers of my blog might be forgiven for thinking that the route between Cardiff and Merthyr consists of nothing other than a post-industrial wilderness littered with abandoned canals, railways and industrial workings. As well as celebrating what used to be here, I believe that my Merthyr Road project should also be playing a positive role in documenting what has taken the place of the industrial landscape of the 1800’s and 1900’s. There’s so little about this part of the world online, so anything that I or anyone else can do to chip away at that problem can only be a good thing!

Sources / See Also

• Wales top of Britain’s sick list, a news report on the BBC News website.
• Unhealthy Wales gets cash boost for fitness, a news report on the News Wales website.
• LifeTrail walking off with Welsh contracts, a brief news report on LeisureOpportunities.com.
• Lifetrail initiative launched in Tredegar Park, a press release from Newport City Council.
• LifeTrail Wellness Stations for outdoor fitness activities, on the Playword Systems web site.
• Planning a site layout for LifeTrail’s outdoor fitness equipment, on the Playworld Systems web site.
• Playworld Systems Newsletter 02 on the Playworld Systems web site.
• Strategy to get Wales active ‘making progress’, a news article on the NHS Wales website.
• Increasing Physical Activity, a report on the progress of the Climbing Higher initiative on the Wales Audit Office website.
• Climbing Higher - the Welsh Assembly Government strategy for sport and active recreation.
• Climbing Higher - The Next Steps, a report on where £7.8 million will be spent by the Welsh Assembly Government.
• Treforest, University links and connections, a project on the Connect2 proposals website from Sustrans.
• Track Layout Diagrams of the Great Western Railway and B.R. (W.R.) - Section 46B, by R. A. Cooke, published by Lightmoor Press.
• Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Newport Railway article on Wikipedia.

View the photos from A Walk Along The Cardiff Railway as part of my Merthyr Road collection on Flickr.

In 1885, the Marquis of Bute finally succeeded in assuming ownership of the Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals. It was his intention to close both canals and re-use the land for a railway to compete with the Taff Vale Railway. However, he was unable to do so, and instead was forced to build his Cardiff Railway as a new route north to Treforest. The route ran from Heath Junction, through Coryton, across the Glamorganshire Canal at Middle Lock, and north from there through Taffs Well, Nantgarw, the modern-day Treforest Industrial Estate, and behind the Treforest Tin Plate Works at Rhydyfelin.

However, even the powerful Marquis had finally met his match. The Taff Vale Railway purchased strategically-placed land just south of Treforest, and so were able to prevent the Cardiff Railway from being connected to Treforest Junction. The Marquis was forced to consider merger talks, but when these broke down in 1909, it sealed Cardiff Railway’s fate. With no connection at Treforest, Cardiff Railway was a railway that went nowhere. Passenger services up to Rhydyfelin Halt began in 1911, but in 1931 they were cut back to go no further than Coryton.

The colliery opened at Nantgarw in the 1938 finally gave the railway the freight it was built to carry. However, with the war over, the Taff Vale Railway was able to divert even this traffic by laying a branch line to the colliery in 1952, and in 1953 the line north of Coryton finally closed for good.

Thoughts On The Day

I have something to confess. As a regular commuter between the valleys and Cardiff, I often wondered why the Coryton line didn’t connect up to the main route at Radyr Station. I often expressed the opinion that this would be A Good Thing(tm).

Now, thankfully, I know better.

The basis of this ignorance was the mistaken belief that the Coryton line must once have been connected to the main route at Radyr Station. I’d never heard of Cardiff Railway, and I had no idea at all that the Coryton line was the remainder of a railway that had made its own independent route up to Trefforest. I’d never heard of the Glamorganshire Canal, or the Local Nature Reserve at Forest Farm, and didn’t know that the Coryton line would have to take a destructive route through the Local Nature Reserve in order to reach Radyr.

Time has moved on and consigned the Cardiff Railway route to the history books. North of the M4, very little of the route survives at all. It was the last railway to be built in direct competition with the Taff Vale Railway. It had to jump through the most hoops in order to snake its way north, the most favourable land having already been taken up by the Glamorganshire Canal and the Taff Vale Railway.

In retrospect, the futility of the Cardiff Railway is best summed up by the viaduct over the Taff built immediately behind the Treforest Tin Works. Built in 1907, only a single token train ever crossed Rhydyfelin Viaduct, because north of the Tin Works the Taff Vale Railway did everything they could to prevent the Cardiff Railway ever connecting to it (a temporary connection was put in place in 1909, which allowed the single train to cross Rhydyfelin Viaduct, but this connection at Treforest Junction was removed in the same year after a merger between Taff Vale Railway and Cardiff Railway collapsed). Unused for 31 years, Rhydyfelin Viaduct was taken down in 1940 to be recycled for the war effort.

What’s left today is a pleasant walk, taking about half an hour, between Coryton Station and Longwood Drive. We parked on Longwood Drive itself, and made our way down the steps beside a surviving bridge to the cutting where the Cardiff Railway once ran. From there, we made our way south to Coryton, before returning via the same route.

View the photos from A Walk Along The Cardiff Railway as part of my Merthyr Road collection on Flickr.

Favourite Photo From The Shoot

This photo, taken on my first visit to Cardiff Railway and the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve, remains my favourite photo from this shoot. I’d love to successfully develop this style of shot as my “signature shot”.

I also love this shot of the steps leading down to the trackbed, as well as the shot of the initials cut into the tree.

Post Production

Combining photos taken on two separate visits to form a single set of photos can be tricky, given the variance in the British weather. The main problem is always the same - skies and contrast. My main tool for dealing with any tricky situation is conversion to black and white. It feels like a bit of a cop-out, but sometimes I think the results look better than the original colour images.

To try and improve the quality of the black and whites this time, I’ve boosted the brightness and contrast on all of these shots, and then adjusted highlights and shadows to try and even out the differences between the shots. Overall, I’m very happy with the results, and I’ll probably try the same technique again the next time I publish a black and white set.

See Also

As always with these articles, I’m indebted to the information that has already been published about Cardiff Railway. Here’s a list of the sources that I used to compile this article:

• History of the Cardiff Railway and the Coryton Branch Line, Cardiff Railway on the Urban 75 website.
• Cardiff Railway on the Cardiff Rail website.
• Guided Tour of Forest Farm, on the Friends of Forest Farm website.
• The Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals, Volume 2, by Stephen Rowson and Ian L. Wright.

Enjoy The View From The Garth as part of my Merthyr Road series on Flickr.

If there’s one part of the landscape that dominates views of both Taff Vale and Cardiff, it has to be the Garth. But what can you see from up on the Garth? That’s what I went up there to find out.

Thoughts On The Day

The day was a tale of two directions. To the south, towards the Vale of Glamorgan and Cardiff, conditions were very difficult for landscape photography, with the sun reflecting off the Bristol Channel beyond the South Wales coastline. The photos shot facing that way all suffered from limited contrast and colour; I ended up converting those to black and white to make the most of them.

To the east, towards Caerphilly and Taffs Well, the light was much better (well, in between the rain drops ). I was able to get nice, crisp shots of most of my subjects, and I was able to leave those photos in colour.

To get up the Garth, I recommend hiking up the road from Gwaelod-y-Garth. A couple of sections of the road are steep, and like me you might find using a walking stick helps with these bits, but for the main it’s not too hard on the legs or the knees! You can reach Gwaelod-y-Garth easily from Taffs Well railway station car park by using the footbridge to cross the River Taff. Don’t be tempted to try a short cut through the new housing estate on the site of the former Pentyrch Iron Works; I couldn’t find a way through from there to the old village behind it, and had to double back

And, as to what you can see once you get up there …

Favourite Photo From The Shoot

This photo of the General Electric plant at Nantgarw is my favourite photo from this shoot. Being up on the Garth provided the perfect elevation to show how GE’s factory dominates the entire hill side and the communities that it surrounds.

I also like the photo of the War Memorial (simply because it’s a great demonstration how just how much reach the Sigma 80-400 mm lens has) and my shot of the Millennium Stadium in the heart of Cardiff (because it shows just how central the stadium is).

Post Production

Whilst I was up on the Garth, I also took 14 shots of Taff Vale to stitch together into a single panoramic image of Taff Vale. At Jon Pearse’s recommendation, I bought a copy of Calico to do the stitching, and I’m very happy with the result. The beautiful thing about Calico is that it does all the work for you, and (unlike some competing tools) it doesn’t complain when you want to stitch 14 images together

Now, getting the final panoramic shot uploaded to Flickr … that was far harder than generating the shot in the first place!

Found On Flickr

This old postcard provides a great view of the Walnut Tree Viaduct with the Garth beyond it. With a lot more care and thought into how the heritage of the South Wales valleys could be protected and developed, this could have been the view that greeted visitors leaving the M4 bound for the Brecon Beacons.

I think it’s a shame that it isn’t so.

I took advantage of the recent May bank holiday weekend to head on up to the top of the Garth, and shoot some photos of what I could see. Whilst I was up there, I took these 14 panned shots of Taff Vale.

There’ll be a full article on The View from the Garth in the next few days, but I wanted to share these 14 photos separately. How many things in these photos do you recognise? Please head on over to Flickr, and feel free to add as many notes as possible for as many things as possible.

View the Unofficial Taff Vale Eastern Ridge Walk as part of my Merthyr Road project on Flickr.

High above Taff Vale, Eglwysilan Road runs south from Pontypridd to Nantgarw. On a sunny day, the route makes for an excellent - if exposed - walk down Taff Vale to the Taff Gap. Along the way are the summits of Cefn Eglwysilan and Mynydd Meio with their radio transmitter towers, and the ancient settlement of Eglwysilan itself, a former seat of power in the valleys. There are also excellent views west into the Taff Vale (provided you get up there early enough before the sun shifts to the west!) and also east into the Rhymney Valley and down to Caerphilly.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no official Taff Vale Ridgeway Walk at all, so (with my tongue firmly in my cheek) I’m dedicating this article to the unofficial Taff Vale Eastern Ridge Walk

Thoughts On The Day

It’s May Bank Holiday weekend overe here in the UK, and what better way to enjoy the sunny weather than a hike up Cefn Eglwysilan and a gentle stroll down the eastern side of Taff Vale to Nantgarw? It took me about an hour to hike up from Pontypridd, and then another four hours or so to wander down to Nantgarw, taking plenty of photos along the way.

According to Sheet 171 from the cassini.com Old Maps series, Eglwysilan Road has been there at least since the late 1700’s, and it seems likely that the route has existed in one form or another for centuries before then. Eglwysilan Road used to run up from Nantgarw to Cilfynydd, but at some point in the last seven years the route north from Pontypridd has been deliberately blocked with boulders. Even before the boulders were added, the route was only passable in something like a Land Rover.

The walk started at Ynysangharad Common, Pontypridd, where the road heads up towards Pontypridd Golf Club. Once I’d cleared the houses, the first real view I had was of the Hanson Aggregates quarry at Craig-Yr-Hesg, and a look back down towards the communities of Trawlln and Graigwen. I ignored the turn-off to the right for the Golf Club, and continued up the steepening track. Although it’s a single track road, it’s quite heavily used by cars, vans, walkers and the occaisonal jogger or two.

At last (for my suffering right knee at any rate!) I broke clear of the trees and reached the cattle grid that officially marks the northern end of Eglwysilan Road. Even if you go no further, the hike up to this level affords lovely views towards Abercynon, the blocked off greenway route, and back down towards Pontypridd. If the steep walk is too hard on you, why not drive up to the cattle grid and enjoy both the views and a much gentler walk up at this level?

From here, Eglwysilan Road runs south along the ridge line, and that was my eventual planned route. But first I hiked up the last slopes towards the summit, taking in another view of Abercynon, and also a fantasic view of the head of Taff Vale with the Rhondda Valley behind it. My objective was the three radio masts up on the summit of Twyn Hywel. At 382 metres at sea level, it stands at the same height as its twin 800 metres or so to the south, Cefn Eglwysilan. On 8th January 1974, at 2:39pm, the Receive (Rx) tower collapsed at this site.

There’s a trig point on Cefn Eglwysilan, and from here I enjoyed another great view of Pontypridd, and also a first look at the University of Glamorgan. I was also able to snag a nice shot of one of the surviving sheds from the old Treforest Tin and Iron Works. (I’ve published some of my shots from inside the old tin works in an earlier article; there will be more articles about the tin works later in this series). I found the walking up here fairly easy going, with no real problems for an able-bodied person. There hasn’t been much rain at all so far this year, which has led to the ground being unusually dry. I suspect that in previous years the ground would have been quite boggy in many places!

From the trig point on Cefn Eglwysilan, I made my way back down to Eglwysilan Road, which afforded a great view down the valley towards the Taff Gap. Unfortunately, I was shooting into the sun to get the shot, but hopefully it provides some idea of just how narrow and cramped Taff Vale really is. There were many sheep grazing up on the hill, and although most of them ran off as I made my way south along the road, I managed to capture this curious lamb and also this grazing sheep with the Treforest Tin and Iron Works in the background. I also bagged this fantastic shot of the University of Glamorgan’s main campus buildings. Sheep were everywhere, mostly out in the blazing sun, although some had the sense to hide away in the shade.

Eglwysilan Road crosses a few streams along the way, and in one of those I spotted something odd. I couldn’t make out what it was on the day, but looking at the photograph now, it was either a child’s stuffed toy (which is what Kristi believes it probably is), or a poor unfortunate animal (which is my guess).

Just north of the ancient village of Eglwysilan, I came across my inspiration for the title of this article. A small sign, nailed onto a wooden fence post, declared that the Rhymney Valley Ridgeway Walk went that way, back over the hill and down into the Rhymney Valley. Grumble grumble. The Rhymney Valley has an official ridgeway walk that runs along the Taff Vale side of the Mynydd Eglwysilans, but the Taff Vale does not? I’m sorry to say that I’m not surprised. It’s something of a re-occuring theme throughout the Taff Vale and Taff Valley

Blink and you’d miss it, but Eglwysilan was a seat of major power in South Wales for centuries. The ancient parish ran from Taffs Well, Castle Coch and Thornhill in the south, Pontypridd in the west, Cilfynydd in the north, and Caerphilly in the east - totaling some 12,000 acres. William Edwards, builder of the famous bridge that gave Newbridge (now Pontypridd) its name, and one of the contributors to the maintenance of the church building at Eglwysilan, is buried in the graveyard of the Church of St Ilan alongside his wife. The graveyard is also home to two ancient yew trees. Both trees were reported in 2006 to be leaning dangerously, and may need propping in order to preserve them for future generations.

The church building has been dated back to at least 1200 AD, and it may stand on (or near) the site of a monk’s cell. Associated with the church is a story about a 17th century priest who encouraged the newly-deceased to be buried with their valuables - which, along with his two daughters, he duly robbed. During the English Civil War, it is said that Parliamentarian troops used the church as a stable for their horses.

Eglwysilan Road heads south out of the tiny village, running along the western slope of Mynydd Meio. From the road I had clear views of Upper Boat and the car park at Tesco. Looking up the hill to the east, there were distinctive trees like this one, and this one, as well as a cargo container standing in a field minding its own business. It must have been one hell of a flood for it to get beached all the way up here

Immediately after the cargo container, I took the steep path up to the top of Mynydd Meio. There’s a trig point up here, affording a great view north back to the masts on Twyn Hywel. There are also radio masts on top of Mynydd Meio maintained by Surf Telecoms, but they lie inside fenced-off farm land, and I was forced to make my way back down to Eglwysilan Road by following the fence. The masts could be seen from the road as I continued on the way south. The BBC website contains a video of the folk story The Banshee of Mynydd Meio, by Huw Davies. Mynydd Meio is also a popular place for handgliding, and is included in Caerphilly’s plans as part of the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. (See also Caerphilly’s Countryside and Nature conservation plan).

After heading past yet more sheep, the hill to the east opened up to give a first view of Caerphilly, and a lovely view of the modern-day settlement at Nantgarw. Here, the hill started to descend down to Nantgarw, heading past the site of a former colliery (whose name I don’t yet know), which I’m guessing is what this curious red post is connected to. There were picturesque blossoms to admire, and then the end of the road - Nantgarw, and a bridge over the Taff Trail.

From Nantgarw, it was an easy walk down the Taff Trail to Taffs Well Railway Station at the old Walnut Tree Junction, where anyone else who’d like to try this walk can hop on a train back up to the starting point at Pontypridd.

All in all, I had a very relaxing walk in great weather (I have the sunburn to prove it!), and I’d strongly recommend that this is one walk that you should get out and do for yourself at some point (maybe the upcoming Bank Holiday at the end of May? ). I wouldn’t recommend this walk in windy or wet conditions. The top of the Mynydd Eglwysilans are exposed, and in poor visibility I’m sure they’re quite dangerous.

Favourite Photo From The Shoot

I took something like 175 photos on the day, which I whittled down to the 55 that have been published on Flickr. Here are my favourite photos from those 55.

This shot of the style, taken south of the village of Eglwysilan, is the photo I’m happiest about colour-wise. Although I like the composition and the way that the detail in the wood has been picked up by my Nikon D200, it’s the colour of this photo that I’m really drawn to. Of the 55 photos I uploaded, this is one of only 3 where I didn’t edit the colour at all. I tried it with the desaturated style that I’m currently favouring, but it looks so good unedited that I just didn’t want to change it at all.

Btw, I’ve no idea where the footpath over the style goes … I decided to leave that for another adventure

With the almost total lack of rain we’ve had recently, hill fires have been a big problem this year. On the way up from Pontypridd, my eye was drawn to this fence post which has survived just such a fire. I love the way that the fire damage has brought out the pattern in the wood grain, and I think it contrasts nicely with the green shoots beyond.

One of the things I really enjoyed about this walk was the sense of openness once I’d made it up above Pontypridd. With its narrow terraced housing all crammed around the A470 (and, before it, the Glamorganshire Canal), Pontypridd can feel as constrained as it feels spacious up on the hills. This photo (along with the photo that opens this article) does a great job of capturing that feeling.

Despite the vingetting from the 18-135mm camera lens, I’m drawn to how empty this simple shot is. All there is is the vast sky above Mynydd Meio and the radio masts at Twyn Hywel in the distance to the north. What could be more relaxing than that?

The 18-135mm lens makes up for is contribution to the previous shot in this shot of Pontypridd. There’s an enormous amount of detail in this photo, and that’s largely thanks to the amazing sharpness that this lens can produce. Nikon forums on the web are already calling the 18-135mm lens a classic, and when you view this photo at original size, you’ll see why.

Post Production

It’s working out that, for every hour I spend out there taking photographs for the Merthyr Road project, I spend another hour writing the blog article, and another hour creating the write-ups for the photographs published on Flickr. Not too bad when it’s a short set of photos, but for all-day trips like Trevithick’s Tramroad and now Eglwysilan Road, it can take all week to get an article published.

So, this week, I’m trying something different. Instead of hiding my photos on Flickr until the write-ups are done, I’ve published them straight away. I’ll work on the write-ups during the week, and when they’re complete I’ll let you know with a blog posting. I’ll also update this blog posting as I go along with the list of sources used for this article and the photos.

Speaking of sources, that’s another area where I’m trying something different. I’m currently evaluating DEVONthink Pro from Devon Technologies, along with its sister product DEVONagent. I like the idea of having an offline archive of the web pages used as sources for these articles, especially one that’s searchable and easily classified. On top of that, the Pro Office version includes OCR technology, which might allow me to make a searchable archive out of my rapidly growing collection of books about the South Wales Valleys.

Found On Flickr

Unfortunately, when I searched for Eglwysilan on Flickr, nearly all the photos that turned up were mine from this shoot! (All the photos for Twyn Hywel and Mynydd Meio were mine, too).

I’m wondering if I need to do workshops in the local area to explain what Flickr is and how to upload photos to it?

Sources

There’s a surprising amount of information available about Eglwysilan, considering the modern-day settlement is little more than a church, a pub, and a couple of houses. From it, a lot can be learned about the communities of Taff Vale below.

A full list of sources will be provided as I make progress on adding write-ups to the photographs.

Hanson Aggregates:

• Slaters Commercial Directory, Pontypridd, Glamorgan, 1880, on GENUKI.
• Pupil teachers from the Rhondda Training Centre on a geological expedition to Craig Yr Hesg Quarry, circa 1900, from the Rhondda Cynon Taff Photographic Archive.
• Company Information: Hanson Aggregates South Wales Ltd on manta.com.
• Hanson UK website.
• Viscocel Bitumen Modifier Pellets, a press release by Excel from 2003.
• About Pontypridd, on the Côr Meibion Pontypridd ~ Pontypridd Male Choir website.
• Teenager injured in quarry fall on the BBC News website.
• Boy rescued after 3am quarry fall on the BBC News website.
• Madeleine Gray at SCARAB Research Centre at UWCN.
• Pont yr Hesg, on the Cistercian Way.

Is This Your Car?

• Pontypridd Page on Harry The Trout’s Home Site.

When it came to working tin in South Wales, Treforrest was the undisputed King. But if Treforrest was King, further south down in the Vale of Glamorgan above Cardiff, the works at Melingriffith were certainly the Crown Prince. Built in 1749, the Melingriffith Tinplate Works sat on or near the site of an old corn mill that had existed as far back as the twelfth century. It was once the largest tin works in the UK, until the construction of the Treforrest Tin Works. The works closed in 1957, and today the only obvious traces that the works ever existed at all are the Melingriffith Feeder that runs down from the River Taff, and the restored Water Pump standing opposite Oak Cottage. The works themselves appear to have been completely cleared, and the site today is a modern housing estate.

Its mills were powered by water taken from the River Taff by the Melingriffith Feeder - a water course that doubled as a canal carrying iron from Pentrych Works until around 1815, when the Pentrych tramroad was completed. The tramroad crossed the River Taff over Iron Bridge. The Feeder lock was permanently closed in 1871 when it was bridged over, but traces of it remain if you don’t mind walking out into the (mostly) dry bed of the Feeder to look.

The Melingriffith Feeder makes its way to the old Glamorganshire Canal, where they run in parallel down to the Tin Works and out the other side at Melingriffith Lock. Where they come together to the north of the Tin Works, any overflow from the Canal was designed to flow into the Feeder. This is now the southern end of the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve at Forest Farm, and all the water from the Canal now runs into the Feeder before disappearing into a water course that runs underneath the housing estate that has replaced the Tin Works.

At the southern end of the housing estate, the Feeder re-emerges from underground where the Melingriffith Water Pump stands. The Pump was originally designed to pump water from the Feeder into the Canal at Melingriffith Lock. Rowson & Wright’s “The Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals Volume II” has an entire chapter devoted to the many disputes between the Tin Works and the Canal over the supply of water. As I understand it, the Tin Works ran entirely on water throughout its history - water that the Canal itself also needed, as Melingriffith was the last point where the Canal could gather additional water needed for the section down to Sea Lock. Today, the Canal has been totally obliterated (Ty Mawr Road has replaced the Canal here down into Whitchurch), and the Feeder just empties back into the Taff beside the Valley Lines railway bridge just south of Radyr Station.

Melingriffith is a great example of the huge contrast that exists between Cardiff and the Taff Vale in the regeneration of the former industrial sites. Most of the route of the Canal through Cardiff was industrialised, but today you wouldn’t know it. The Canal has gone, and the industry has been replaced by the housing estates of Melingriffith, Gabalfa, and Talybont, plus the regeneration of Cardiff Bay. In the Taff Vale, the Canal has mostly disappeared under the A470 trunk road, but where it hasn’t, the land has mostly just been left unused until you reach Rhydycar at Merthyr Tydfil and the site of the local Welsh Assembly Government office.

It’s a story that mirrors the growth of Cardiff against the decline of Merthyr.

Thoughts On The Day

I’d travelled through the Melingriffith housing estate a couple of years ago cycling the Taff Trail, but back then I’d never heard of the Tin Works, or the Feeder, or really of the Canal itself. I’d stopped at the Water Pump, and read the excellent tourist sign that goes with it, but without any background knowledge, I didn’t really understand what I was looking at. I didn’t know that Oak Cottage on the other side of the road was the old lockkeeper’s cottage from Melingriffith Lock, or that the road itself is where Melingriffith Lock once stood. I didn’t know that the Water Pump stands in the Melingriffith Feeder, whose route can be traced back up to the River Taff at Radyr Weir. And I didn’t know that the Feeder was also used as a canal - with its own lock on the River Taff itself - years before the Glamorganshire Canal was constructed.

If you want to explore this area for yourself, I recommend parking at the southern end of the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve. There’s a small car park there. Head north into the Reserve, cross the Canal overflow bridge, and follow both the Feeder and Canal until the Feeder starts to veer off to the left. Follow the Feeder all the way up to the River Taff. Here you can see the sluice gate mechanism that once regulated the flow of water into the Feeder, and the remains of the lock. Turn south, past Radyr Weir and its picnic area, and follow the Taff Trail down until it threads its way through the Melingriffith housing estate to Oak Cottage and the Water Pump. If you wish, there’s a muddy footpath down the Feeder’s east bankside that you can follow down to the River Taff and beyond, but that’s really a walk for another day. At the Water Pump, turn north, and follow the road (which lies on top of the old canal bed) back up to the car park. The whole walk will take an hour or two, and should be suitable for most people.

The Feeder is just one of the delights to explore in this area. There’s the Canal itself, which can be followed up to Longwood Drive (and further north up to Tongwynlais, as covered in another article). From Longwood Drive, there’s the disused Cardiff Railway route down to Coryton, which also makes for a great walk. And all of these walks are set in the Local Nature Reserve, which includes two purpose-built hides for watching the local wildlife without disturbing it.

Favourite Photo From The Shoot

From the two visits I made to Melingriffith, I came away with 305 photos, according to Aperture. Even allowing for the fact I now bracket every shot (so, divide that number by 3), that’s still a lot of photos. It was a tough challenge cutting it down to the 26 photos I finally uploaded to Flickr. Picking just one photo as a favourite was harder still.

In the end, this photo showing the Glamorganshire Canal flowing down into the Melingriffith Feeder is my favourite photo from this shoot. It’s a photo that’s a bit different, for a start. I’m willing to wager there aren’t too many other shots of this scene currently around I love the colours too. I think it’s a great advert for what my new Nikon 18-135mm lens can do (more on that lens in a dedicated article later in the year).

Post Production

The photos for this shoot come from two separate visits to the area. Because you have the Canal, the Cardiff Railway, the River Taff and the Taff Trail all in the same area, some of the shots are going to be included in other shoots in the future. Rather than lump all these shots into a single folder, I decided to spend a lot of Mother’s Day tagging my photos in Aperture, with a view to building a set of Smart Albums based on the tags.

Aperture is a great tool, but if there’s one thing that Apple has overlooked, it’s the very simple operation of being able to add one keyword to a group of selected photos. I can use the excellent Lift & Stamp tool to copy keywords from one photo to others, but I can’t drag and drop a keyword onto a group of selected photos. When you try, the keyword gets applied to just one photo in the selection (the photo that you drop the keyword onto). It would be such a time-saver to be able to do this simple task - it would save me up to an hour a week.

Found On Flickr

A search for the term ‘melingriffith’ turned up two great shots of the Water Pump, but no shots of the Feeder at all, and no old photographs showing the Tin Works during their existence.

• Melingriffith Tinplate Works, by locus_imagination
• castlecoch3, by Mr Karanka

Maybe my search foo just isn’t good enough. I’m really surprised that there aren’t more photos up on Flickr covering the same subjects as my articles. These places are part of the Welsh heritage, as well as being historically important both to Wales and the UK.

View these photos as part of my Merthyr Road set on Flickr. Or, if you prefer, view a map with everyone’s photos taken in the same area.

Although many folks around here know about the remains of the old Glamorganshire Canal preserved at Forest Farm, I doubt that many folks know that there’s still a small stretch of the canal still in existence by Tongwynlais, cut in half by the M4 motorway as it heads west from Junction 32 and the Coryton Roundabout. The route down from Tongywnlais along the Taff Trail and then back to Tongwynlais via the Coryton Roundabout makes for an enjoyable - if very muddy! - circular walk that can be done in an hour or two.

Aim Of The Shoot

Page 144 of the award-winning The Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals - Volume 2 by Stephen Rowson & Ian I. Wright (ISBN 1-903-59912-1) has a photograph of a steam train crossing a bridge at Middle Lock. The note accompanying the photograph states that the remains of the bridge still exists beside a section of the canal cut off by the M4 to the north and the Forest Farm Industrial Estate access road to the south.

I was out to find and photograph this section of the canal.

Thoughts On The Day

Either last year or the year before, Kristi and I cycled the Taff Trail from Taffs Well down to Cardiff and back. At no time did we realise that there were any remains of the old canal nearby; we certainly didn’t know that at one point our path took us to within 100 yards of a surviving stretch.

You can actually see the stretch on this Google map. The Taff Trail comes south down Iron Bridge Road, under the A470, and then turns north-west (right as you look at things) following Iron Bridge Road around a local playing field. However, after emerging from under the A470, if you turn south-east (left as you look) instead, the path beside the picnic area leads straight to a section of the canal, I’d say no more than 200 yards from where you emerge from under the A470. This section runs maybe 3-400 yards in length before disappearing underneath one of the slip roads for Junction 32 of the M4. At that point, you’re forced to turn west, and follow the embankment down to the River Taff and back to the Taff Trail. (When you get to the Taff Trail, it’s well worth turning right and heading north up the Taff Trail a short distance to the Iron Bridge. Alas, there’s no plaque that I could find to provide any details about the bridge, but it does afford a good view of Castle Coch in sunny weather).

The section of the canal to the north of the M4 seems to be completely invisible on the satellite view on Google Maps. But what is still visible is the clear outline of a railway embankment running north west beside the canal. If I have my bearings right, this is part of the old Cardiff Railway which once ran up to the coking plant at Nantgarw - and is just to the north of the bridge and canal section that I was out to track down on this shoot. The old railway line is (at first) impossible to trace on Google Maps as you move south of the M4. The trick is to go to the other end - Coryton Station in Cardiff (where the line ends in this day and age), and then follow the route of the old railway west by north west back up to Long Wood Drive. (The old railway line makes for a nice walk too; I’ll be covering it in a shoot later in the year when we have blue skies once more). Between Long Wood Drive and the M4 lies the remains of the railway bridge that once crossed the Glamorganshire Canal at Middle Lock - the railway bridge from the photograph in the book.

How to find it? As you head south on the Taff Trail from Iron Bridge, you pass under the M4. The Taff Trail continues straight ahead (almost due south) along the bank of the River Taff. There’s another path immediately heading off to the left. Take the path to the left, and follow it along until it ends at another path (which runs west-east along the north side of Longwood Drive - not that you can tell when you’re actually on the walk!) Turn left, heading pretty much due east back towards Coryton Roundabout. The path takes you straight to the section of the canal mentioned in the book, right before it climbs up to the Esso petrol station and the Asda supermarket. The remains of the bridge can be seen to the north of the path, and to the left of the surviving stretch of the canal.

To be honest, there isn’t much to see. This stretch of canal is much more overgrown than the section by Iron Bridge Road, although it doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as silted up. The retaining wall that the bridge must have sprung from can be clearly seen, but nothing else remains at all. Still, I got a bit of a thrill from seeing such a well-hidden remnant of the past - especially as about 100 yards to the south lies the northern end of the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve, which is much more frequently visited (probably because it’s nowhere near as overgrown). I’ve already made one (very short) trip to the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve; I need to make another visit before I have enough photos to publish as a complete shoot.

To complete the walk, leave the canal by the path that leads up the steps, and follow the path around the north side of the Esso petrol station. This path takes you over a footbridge onto Coryton Roundabout (which is fun to explore), and out the other side over another footbridge back to the A4054 and into Tongwynlais. Although all the paths in this section of the walk are modern and tarmac, I managed to lose my footing at one point - a combination of muddy boots and water running down the slope of the path. Once you’re off the roundabout and back in Tongwynlais, you should be fine.

Overall, the walk’s easy going, with no major inclines to worry infrequent walkers. There’s one set of steps immediately after leaving the canal, and the paths are muddy at this time of year. You get to see two surviving sections of what was once one of the most important canals in the whole United Kingdom, and the early heart of the industrialised South Wales Valleys before the trains took over, plus the remains of a bridge that used to carry one of those railways up into the valleys.

That’s not bad for a Sunday stroll.

Favourite Photo From The Shoot

Although the photograph of the Iron Bridge has quickly become the most viewed photograph from this shoot, I personally prefer this photo. Although it was hardly difficult, I’m still pleased that I managed to find some remains of the bridge that I set out to find on this walk. Further up the valley, there are many places where there isn’t a single trace of the canal or the bridges that used to cross it. Don’t get me wrong - the A470 makes a huge difference to folks like me who live up in the valleys - but there hasn’t been any noticable effort (apart from the Nantgarw Pottery) to preserve at least some memory of the industrial heritage of the 1800’s. Maybe even these few remains will be gone within my lifetime; it’s nice to have a record of what’s there today in case they’re gone tomorrow.

Three Lessons From The Shoot

Although I originally wanted to pick out specific photography techniques from each shoot, the truth is that I don’t pay all that much attention to technique when I’m out and about. I mind the basics - shutter speed vs focal length for sharpness and aperture for depth of field - and then forget about them. The section has never lived up to its “Three Techniques” name, so from now on “Three Lessons” it is.

Instead, I’ll be posting regular mid-week articles on individual photography techniques, which will include technical skills (starting with weening off automatic mode), ideas about composition, and the workflow I follow for getting my photos from the camera through Aperture and up onto Flickr. A separate article will allow me to really get into a single aspect of photography, which will help me learn a lot more about photography.

But that’s to come. For today, the three lessons from this shoot are:

• When I set out on this walk, I didn’t know exactly where the remains of the canal were to be found. To lighten the load, I left the majority of my kit behind, and set out with the D200 and just a single lens. Although there were plenty of moments where I found myself missing one of my other lenses, I definitely enjoyed myself much more because I wasn’t carting a tonne of glass around on my back. For days like these, you can’t beat having a jack-of-all-trades lens. My wife loves her Tamron 28-300 for just this reason. Unfortunately, I don’t like the results from that lens when paired with the D200. I wonder if supplies of Nikon’s 18-200 VR lens have improved recently …?
• If you’re going out and you’re likely to be photographing water, don’t leave your polariser behind. *Cough* I did, and I’m still kicking myself for doing so. On the bright side, it means that I’ll have to go back later in the year (preferably when all the mud has dried out …).
• If the sign says go one way, try going the other. As I mentioned in the introduction to this article, I’ve been down part of this path before, but I had absolutely no idea how close I was to the old canal.

Post Production

I need to rethink the way I’m organising my photos in Aperture. I’ve decided that I hate keywording all of my photos. Even with creating a metadata preset before doing the import, it still takes hours to go through each individual photo and apply the right keywords for that individual frame. I don’t have that sort of time, so I’ve stopped keywording photos in Aperture, but I still manually tag photos on Flickr.

Instead, my photos go into a Merthyr Road project in Aperture. This project is divided up into several folders based on geography - Taffs Well to Treforest for example - and each folder contains an album for each major subject, such as the Glamorganshire Canal or the Cardiff Railway.

The only problem is, of course, that I’ve ended up with several Glamorganshire Canal albums and several Cardiff Railway albums. As the number of shoots racks up, I’d like to be able to look at all my Glamorganshire Canal photos in one place so that I can see how my coverage is doing and what gaps I need to think about plugging in future. I can’t do that with the way I’m organising my photos in Aperture today.

Aperture supports Smart Albums - albums that can automatically pull in photos based on their keywords. I think I need to restructure my Merthyr Road project to make the most of this feature.

Found On Flickr

There aren’t many photos of the Glamorganshire Canal on Flickr at all, and the few that I’ve found really belong with my upcoming shoot of the Local Nature Reserve section of the canal.

But I did manage to find a couple of shots that seemed appropriate to today’s shoot, especially welshlady’s shot of Castle Coch taken from the Iron Bridge, which looks nicer than my attempt at the same shot today.

• Juvenile Heron, by gtj-45.
• Closer look … (at Castle Coch) by welshlady.