Cwm

“If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it's game over. It's control-alt-delete for civilization.”
Bill Nye
So make the most of it now!
The forecast is staying dry so, as I was due to visit Ebbw Vale for an Astronomy talk this evening I thought I’d head off to Ebbw Vale for a walk on the ridge above Cwm. My starting point is the Festival Shopping centre, closed now although it was once a bustling little centre. Deserted, like a ghost town on the hillside, although there’s plenty of life nearby after the Garden Festival (1992) and steelworks regeneration, I can join a track up onto the hillside above.
Relatively gentle incline so ‘easy’ going up a rough footpath but a bit boggy in places where streams cascade down the hillside. I seem to have been accompanied by bees for most of the climb, with plenty of birds including my first swallow of the season! I could also hear green woodpeckers but no sight of anything else ‘exotic’. When I reached one of the old stone quarries I stopped for a meditation. The view over the valley is tremendous, with the valley floor covered in rows of ‘workers houses’ strung out through Cwm to the old Marine Colliery site. The main road now bypasses the town, elevated above in part and running alongside the resurrected railway line. Another short steep climb and I thought I’d be at the top – but when I got there I saw Cefn Manmoel rising ahead! Deflated, I followed the fence line back up the valley towards Ebbw Vale – I still had to have my meal before heading off to the talk. It took me another hour or more to get back to the car, the route back wasn’t as straightforward. I just followed the ridge looking for a way down – mistake. Still, I passed an interesting old cross made of old metal, about ten feet tall? In remembrance of a dearly missed Dad. How they got it up there must be a story in itself. I managed to avoid dropping into the old quarries or slipping down the steep bracken covered slopes. Needless to say I had a fair bit of undergrowth and bracken in my socks and clothes when I got back.
Time to change and get a meal before heading to the town centre for a really entertaining and enjoyable talk about asteroids. Not for the squeamish, basically if the fireball and shock wave doesn’t get you, the impact and nuclear winter afterwards most certainly will. Time to get building my bunker in the garden… (as if I didn’t have enough to do)