Resolutions

Cyclepath and footpath between Velindre and Cwmafan.

That's right. Walk. Or ride. After all, it is January. We're expected to make some kind of effort after the excesses of the holiday season! 

But there's more than just exercise involved in this suggestion. It's about making contact with our environment which just doesn't happen in the same way when we're enclosed in glass and steel. Our eyes are fixed on the road ahead. Speed and attitude discourage us against unscheduled stops, from unexpected forays into lanes glimpsed from the corners of our eyes. And it's about absorption too: the sounds, sights and textures of a river bank, or looking up at buildings we normally only glance at from street level. 

Writing Real Port Talbot changed me. Not just through the knowledge I gratefully gained from research and talking to people. But through walking along pavements, muddy tracks, shorelines, flyovers, steep mountainsides, lanes, through old brownfield sites, churchyards and high streets. Walking connected me, physically and emotionally, to the town and surrounding villages and landscapes in a way that books and words alone could never have. 

Woolly balls! Black cattle hair on a stock fence near Sker House.

So my resolution this year is to continue deepening that connection on my visits home to Port Talbot: walking, seeing and learning. 

And our town holds secrets that are often best appreciated on foot. Some are there in plain sight:

Spiral poem sculpture by Sebastien Boyesen set into the pavement blocks in Bethany Carpark at the back of Station Road. Words by local poet, Eira Northcott.

Others take more time and effort to uncover:

Ruin of the WWII Radar Station on the seaward side of Mynydd Margam.

Is it just me. Or can you smell the fresh rain in those curled ferns too? Feel the rough texture of the concrete wall under your fingertips? History is more than turning the page in a book. It lives and continues to expand under our feet.