On another beautiful late November day when the sun shone, a group of twelve walkers joined Ian and his wife Julie who were leading a walk for the group beginning from Longwood Drive at Coryton.
They started off and made their way down to the banks of the River Taff below Tongwynlais before crossing a river bridge with a fantastic view up to Castell Coch, which is situated at the head of the Taff gorge and was built in the latter part of the 1800’s in the Gothic style, which gives it a fairy tale appearance. Then waiting for a train to pass and carefully crossing the railway line they emerged on the edge of Morganstown before road walking to Taff’s Well.
Entering woodland and climbing up towards Pentyrch they circumnavigated the village before making their way towards Garth Hill, more locally known as The Garth and climbed up to the trig point at 307 metres.
A stop for their morning break followed whilst enjoying the panoramic views which stretch to the Brecon Beacons, Pontypridd and Caerphilly in the north and the Ely Valley, the city of Cardiff and the Bristol Channel and the coastline of Somerset to the south.
The Garth provided the inspiration for Ffynnon Garw, a fictional hill or mountain featured in the book and later the film of ‘The Englishman who went up a hill, but came down a Mountain.’ On the ridgeway are a number of tumuli which date from the early and middle Bronze Age around 2000BC which are burial sites and the main one is underneath the trig point.
Descending northwards into the valley and crossing fields to Lan Farm, another steep climb at Gwaelod-y-garth brought them back up onto Garth Hill where they were rewarded with a stop for lunch whilst gazing southwards towards Cardiff Bay and Penarth as well as the surrounding hillsides.
Refreshed it was time to crack on, this time going steeply downhill and back through fields and woods to Taff’s Well or Ffynnon Taf.
Located north of the city of Cardiff the name is derived from the fact that the village is situated beside the River Taff and is also the site of a natural thermal spring, which emerges on the eastern bank of the river and is contained within a brick well in Taff’s Well Park. It is said that the waters had medicinal properties to cure rheumatism and it became a tourist destination for people taking the waters. The temperature of the well has been monitored over the years and averages at 21.6-degrees and the spring has never run dry.
They joined part of the long distance Taff Trail and walked past the weir built in the 19th century before pausing for a water break. Moving onward to Fforest Farm, they made their way through the only remaining part of the Glamorganshire Canal and these areas are classed as Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
The canal was begun in 1790 and it linked the Merthyr Tydfil Ironworks to Cardiff which is a distance of around twenty five and a half miles. The drop of around 165m from Merthyr to sea level at the Bristol Channel required the building of 50 locks, which when you think of it is two for every mile of canal and it finally closed in 1943, but now plays host to abundant plant, bird and wildlife.
Their last climb led them back to their start point by mid-afternoon after what had been a delightful walk during which they climbed a total of 1,750 feet.