Will I ever really know the mountains behind Port Talbot? I've walked so many parts of them over the last few years but still they seem like undiscovered countries. In 2012 when I was researching the Afan Forest Park for Real Port Talbot Jonathan Price, one of the rangers, took me on an extensive land-rover tour of Forestry territory, past huge tree felling equipment, up to a skyline of wind turbines, to the site of a psalm engraved on slate and clamped to a rock at the head of the Afan Valley, all the time rising and falling across the mountains' faces.
Head of the Afan Valley Psalm
My latest mountain walk was with local family historian, Allen Blethyn, through the back door of Mynydd Margam, from the fairways of the Maesteg Golf Club.
The only way is up.
Just over 3.5 miles up from this point we came to Twmpath Diwlith, a Bronze Age round barrow, and the replica Bodvoc Stone (the original is housed in the Stones Museum next to Margam Abbey Church), a sixth or seventh century monument marking another Bronze Age burial site. And between the two the surprising, to me, iced over pond that is the source of the River Kenfig.
Source of the River Kenfig on Mynydd Margam
Surprised is perhaps not the best word. Enthralled. Delighted. Because to meet the source of anything feels like an honour. The stream running out of the pond is slight, little more than a ribbon of water running through a ditch, but deep enough for Allen's little dog, Poppy, to fall in when she tried to clamber across!
If it had been Summer time I might have joined her so I could say I'd stepped into the source, into the place where a river is born, and reborn.
If it had been Summer time I might have joined her so I could say I'd stepped into the source, into the place where a river is born, and reborn.
RSS Feed