Pen Afan

Welsh Word of the Day: Nos Da: Good night!

So this will be my last post about Cardiff even though I arrived in Bangor this afternoon and it is going to center around the Valleys and specifically Coal towns,the Brecon Beacons (the mountain range in South Wales), and climbing up Pen Afan (Pronounced, Pen aVan). (Some of you may have noticed that I changed the background picture of my blog and I did it because it looks like Wales and the peak I climbed!)

This is really best explained through photographs (which is why instead of being in the classroom that day we went out to the mountains to do some experiential learning!

So, for a litte history lesson. The South Wales Valleys exist because of coal mining. These mountains have coal seams and as that is one of the Wales' industrial legacy (THE industrial legacy) these towns sprung up in valleys between the mountains. Now these aren't valleys like Bennington, VT these valleys are literally channels between mountains where villages climb on either side. Kind of difficult to explain but below I'll do my best. (Also a note the photos are out of order because Google Blogger isn't exactly the best photo posting site)

So this is one of the aforementioned valley settlements. It's hard to see but the houses are in the crevice between the mountains.

So this is Pen Afan, it's hard to tell how high up it is (ALMOST a real mountain) but this is one of the peaks that we hiked to the top of.

A view from the top of Pen Avan, you can almost see all of Wales! it was an unbelievable view! Unlike in New England, none of the mountains have any trees so you have no view obstructions! 

Okay so this is a lookout point before we got to Pen Afan, it's just a photo of the group plus our teacher.

This is a statue for the Village in the first photo it is a memorial to the coal miners who died in this town. It is made of Welsh steel and about 150 feet high!

This is a view from the lookout point where the group is photographed. Way off in the distance you can see the peak we climbed!

 Another photo of the view but in this one on the right you can see a BEAUTIFUL wind farm! This is one of the most stopped at lookout points in South Wales so it just goes to show that wind farms not only are beautiful but appealing to people as well!

This is a photo of a leveled Coal tip, now what a coal tip is, is the excess coal that no one wanted would go into a heap (also called slag heaps) and because of disasters (in the 60s after a large rainstorm a coal heap slipped and sludged all over a school killing 140 school children) they have started leveling some of them. The fascinating part is how unique they are to Wales and what a prominent part of the landscape they are. In Cardiff from the library in the center of town you can see a coal tip in the valley.

This is the Rhonda, which is a valley that is 12 miles long and had 63 coal mines. The whole valley looks like this with town after town after town. It's brilliant!

On the right side of the screen is a coal tip. It has been leveled but there it is all the same.