Incline off Graig Road

"What you seek is seeking you" 
Rumi

An interesting walk with K1 on the 'old' mountain road across to Upper Cwmbran. I'd long known the name of 'our' mountain, Mynydd Maen, to refer to stone, but not really understood why. I knew there were a few disused quarries up there but that didn't seem to warrant the name somehow as the name would have pre-dated the quarries. Today, walking the road and sunken lane I got a far better answer. Big chunks of rock and 'pudding stone' everywhere, forming the walls either side of the lane, a relic of an industrial past when quarrying and brickmaking used the steep inclines to get materials down to the canal for transport. The fields either side were strewn with the stone and I found a description of  "huge walls some six feet high by four feet (known as 42 inch linear flanked construction) by persons unknown" (https://www.ancientcwmbran.co.uk/welcome-mainPage) further down the hillside.
In school I was told Cwmbran's name derived from the name of the Crow, an easy symbolic connection for the 50's new town creators; but more and more I find pointers to a much older connection, with Bran the Blessed. - which I find more appealing.
Nearing Upper Cwmbran we met someone heading in the opposite direction, asking if we knew where the path (the sunken lane) joined the road. Directing him to the Pilgrim Way marker, where we'd just joined, we fell into conversation, and soon found a connection with mutual friends going back forty years. Not bad in a town of about 50,000, strange how life makes interesting connections.