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Resolutions

4/1/2014

4 Comments

 
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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. 
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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:
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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:
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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. 
4 Comments
Jeff Harris link
4/1/2014 06:22:57 am

The Radar station erected in early 1941 was known locally by Brombil and Groes residents as Radar Location .There was also a nissen hut built there, where a section of Military Police resided. Of course down the hill towards the east in Cwm Brombil itself, were a dozen or more huts housing troops who manned the searchlights.About 1943 the army moved out of here and the place was taken over by the RAF.In 1946 the huts were the home of families who were in dire need of accommodation .

Reply
Lynne Rees link
13/1/2014 05:32:04 am

Thanks so much for adding this information, Jeff. I saw the base that would have supported the old Nissan hut when I was last there. I didn't know that the other troop huts were used in the same was as the abandoned army huts at Longlands Lane though. Great to have more and more history brought to life. Thanks again.

Reply
Andrew Vollans link
13/1/2014 02:53:50 am

The station was chosen to calibrate a blind bombing system code named Oboe because of the bombing range in clear view on Margam moors. Oboe meant bombing could be done from above the clouds. It shortened the war and saved possibly 1000's of aircrew lives.

Reply
Lynne Rees link
13/1/2014 05:34:07 am

Thank you, Andrew. So good to have such precise, insightful information and understand the roles our town played during the course of history.

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    Lynne Rees

    Picture
    Lynne Rees was born and grew up in Port Talbot and blogs as 'the hungry writer' at www.lynnerees.com. Her book, Real Port Talbot, an upbeat and offbeat account of the town and surrounding area, from Bryn to Sandfields, from Margam to Baglan Bay, and everything in between, is published by Seren Books.

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