A SUNNY SUNDAY

  No, your eyes do not deceive you, after all my grumbly, wafflings about having wet weather, as the title says it was a sunny day, hooray! It was just bliss to wake up to a mild morning with bright, cheerful skies and the jackdaws raucously rejoicing, it looked to be a fine day ahead for them to enjoy flying. However, sense told me that wellies were needed due to sponginess underfoot, which later proved to save my hooves from a deep soaking, but more about that later. The daft dog, was eager to explore, so I drove to one of my favourite valleys on the other side of the mountain and parked up, only needing a light fleece to protect me from the breeze. We headed off to find a favourite footpath.

  Being Wales it may seem odd to find a site called The British, but this is were a large ironworks was founded in 1825 by The British Iron Company. In 1852 a local Ebbw Vale company took it over until in 1889 it was closed for good. Industrialisation was beginning to decline and for the local hill farmers, the peace and quiet left behind must have been bliss. 112 years later and the old, naked, dark scars still remain. There are still some of the old buildings remaining, crumbling gracefully into decay; but nature has tried her best to grow a seasonally changing duvet over the vast, high piles of coal-black slag despite the noisy efforts from off road bikers to form new scars up & down the huge tips of industrial waste. I think a term for places like these is now coined as Sites of Industrial Archaeology!

Not, you might think of, as a wonderful place to walk, but, looking down, bathed in October sunshine, this is what meets the eye, but you can see the black tip on the right

I often wonder how the old farmers felt when an ironworks started belching out fire, smoke and smell as well as the noise of the furnaces and clang-bang of the metal workers.

But this was not where I was intending to explore. A lovely footpath takes one further up along the valley, through sheep farming land to were there used to be a reservoir, of which all that now remains is the old stonework and where sheep are free to safely graze.

It was a great sight to see these Welsh Mountain wanderers spread across the fields below and then to look up Cwm Sychan and see it all bathed in light under a brilliant blue sky.
                             
We followed the footpath with the commons land above us and the farm land below, the dog delighting in wonderful new scents, heading past the old reservoir walls to the brook.
Now normally this is a small, free flowing source of water with the beech trees dry enough for the sheep to shelter under, but after the past days of rain (there I go again) even the beech trees needed wellies. As mentioned earlier, I was glad I was wearing mine.

All the area around the trees was just a deep, soggy, rush-rich bog into which muggins here stepped into a wrong place and next thing I knew, was almost wishing that I'd been wearing waders, I had sunk up to my boot tops! Luckily for me my feet stayed dry.
Meanwhile, the mutt happily got soaked to the skin, splashing up to his chest, chasing floating bits of old beech twigs and leaves, which to me looked lovely in the water.


                                                            


But it was strange to see this area so flooded and the mosses almost totally covered over, but the sound of the fast flowing water gurgling through the thick, green rushes and over stones was a musical accompaniment to enjoy.


This part of the valley, just beyond the farm fence, is commons land, so the ewes are now all gathered into the in-bye fields for the tups to chat up with their manly good looks and seductive swaggering. It's always strange to see the mountain bare of sheep at this time of year. There are some 3000 acres of commons land, shared by a lot of the local farmers here abouts, and in the summer, roaming across them one can see a mix of Mountain Welsh, Texels, Welsh-tex crosses and a few of my favourites the  Badger Faces.
Just above this area, following the footpath back around through the gate, there are the sad, stone remains of the old farm house, where the current owner's parents lived. He told me that his mother was a keen gardener and all below the house, the land was terraced, catching the sun, so she grew vegetables and flowers in abundance, hard to believe now.

The old farm ruins.

Just behind me, looking back down the valley, it is also hard to believe that there was once a reservoir here. The broken retaining wall remains, it must have been a grand sight to see

Remains of the reservoir

Heading back this side of the old dam, I noticed something we've not seen before, someone just had to explore ... though next time we will take a torch, because out of the daylight ...

the tunnel was dark, dank and had it not been for the camera flash, some old remains were hidden within it's deep interior, that some might have found rather horrible, not me luckily

and no searching,  snivelling Gollum to ask me what I might have in my pockets ...

Deep, dank underground.

The only spooky thing to greet me in the dark, had glowing red eyes, it  was the dog returning to see if I had been devoured by human eating monsters of the deep!

All that was flooding the valley was sunlight.

On our return journey, heading homewards I noticed another old familiar .... a tired out  tup, resting in the clear, fresh mountain air

Well he's been a busy guy, he deserves a sun-snooze and we will be taking it easy now too.