No folks, the title is not a spelling mistake and I will explain why in a minute. Remember the saying, you never know what is around the next corner? Well today I dropped my pensioner off at the Doctors and then took the dog for an amble down our new local cycle track, part of The Ebbw Fach Trail. Only just recently carefully tarmacked at great expense and completed, so imagine my surprise at seeing lots of heavy plant machinery!
Works signs everywhere and men in hi-viz jackets ... "What on earth was going on?" A notice re: A demolition site ??? Hey, this cycle track is only a few weeks old and now all the new, shiny black path is covered in mud and obviously suffering from the weight of such machines as these ...
<<< I was intrigued and asked a local man, who explained.
This part of the Ebbw river has two weirs, this one up river from where I took this photograph >>>
Not as you may imagine because the structure that has been there for a long while now was in a bad state of repair.
No ... the reason was to do with fish, salmon to be precise. Apparently these migratory fish have made it as far as Risca, further down the valley but can head upstream no further without a little help ... I shall rephrase that ... after nearly three months of work and at great expense. Is it all worth it for a few fish many will ask especially in these financially turbulent times. Having spoken to local folk who remember this river running from Ebbw Vale in the heyday of the mining and steel working industry, they have vivid memories of this now clear running and healthy water, turning different colours from yellow, to red and at times almost black. No fish could live in it and this now attractive water course seemed to be totally dead. Thanks to the fairly recent efforts of a large band of caring volunteers to do a huge clean up, the Ebbw started to come back to life and this is just another chapter in this rivers' long and often troubled history.
No ... the reason was to do with fish, salmon to be precise. Apparently these migratory fish have made it as far as Risca, further down the valley but can head upstream no further without a little help ... I shall rephrase that ... after nearly three months of work and at great expense. Is it all worth it for a few fish many will ask especially in these financially turbulent times. Having spoken to local folk who remember this river running from Ebbw Vale in the heyday of the mining and steel working industry, they have vivid memories of this now clear running and healthy water, turning different colours from yellow, to red and at times almost black. No fish could live in it and this now attractive water course seemed to be totally dead. Thanks to the fairly recent efforts of a large band of caring volunteers to do a huge clean up, the Ebbw started to come back to life and this is just another chapter in this rivers' long and often troubled history.
It is actually two rivers joined, The Ebbw Waur flows from Mynydd Lllangynidr and the Ebbw Fach from Mynydd Llangattwg, joining up together at Aberbeeg to form the river you see here. It then flows down to Usk and The Severn Estuary, from where our future salmon will be swimming their migratory way up and past us. Meanwhile certain safety precautions are needed as both weirs are redesigned to allow salmon to head up the valley
There is another saying "Using a hammer to crack a wall nut." ^^^ That's one helluva way to knock a fence post in! Lifebuoy rings have to be put in place (haven't seen any of those in past years) and no doubt they will end up being flotsam in the water after young pranksters have thrown them in, but as one of the guys told me, "Rules are rules."
I think this fence post top sums that officialdom up ...
I will be keeping an eye on how thing's progress on this part of the river.
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