A visit to Margam Country Park

The second week of the Severn Tunnel being closed was a good ten degrees cooler than the preceding one, so rather than do two round trips on the days I was due to take the Northerner to work, I decided to stay out all day with the dog and give her some really good walks. The first day we visited Margam Country Park, on the outskirts of Port Talbot.

Margam promised so many of my favourite things ... but didn't always deliver. For instance, I love old ruins, and Margam Abbey - which before the Reformation was the richest monastic house in Wales - has mightily impressive ones, only sadly they were fenced off. And yes, I know it's important to keep visitors safe, but I only really get a sense of a place when I can touch it. 

The Chapter House

The 12th century nave of the Cistercian Abbey still exists; it serves as the parish church and is dedicated to St Mary. Cwtch was very happy to be allowed inside ...

... and so was I, because it has stained glass I wanted to see. The 1904 East window, by James Powell of Whitefriars, is stunning, but the Morris & Co lights in the west wall, designed by Burne Jones, were all but impossible to see, owing to unfortunate arrangements of lighting, both engineered and natural.

The 16th and 17th century marble tombs of the Mansel family

The 12th century monastic fish pond

There was also a museum containing nearly thirty inscribed stones and crosses, some of considerable antiquity, which I would have loved to visit, but it would have meant leaving Cwtch in the car, and I didn't want to do that.  

The 19th century Gothic mansion known as Margam Castle, which is now used for events

The Drinker Moth caterpillar

There's a hill fort in the grounds too, and hill forts are also one of my favourite things, so before starting our walk, I decided to walk up to the top to take in the view. But it was a murky day - above, the view of the sea - and it was all overgrown with bracken, so you couldn't get to, or even see, the top. Around the back of the hill, there was an impression of ditches and banks, but it was all a bit disappointing.

The grounds also contained very many rhododendrons. (I dislike rhododendrons.)

We set off up a valley, following the route of St Illtyd's Way. 

After a time, our route took us over a stone stile and up a steep, rocky path to a conifer plantation ... 

... before the final leg back to the castle and ruins via the upper deer park. It was unseasonably cold and blustery: a complete contrast from the extreme heat of the previous week.

En route we encountered this wonderful, ancient ash tree, and I thought how easy it is to be dismissive when you're a casual visitor: if I lived nearby and visited often, I'd get to make friends with all the amazing trees that are undoubtedly to be found in the park.

The Bro Stone: an amazing viewpoint on a clear day!

Looking towards Port Talbot

The Yew Dragon, carved by Nansi Heming

'Shout' by Glynn Williams

We only got to spot any deer as we were driving out of Margam - they were safely in the lower park, away from Cwtch, who'd been kept on the lead in case we had encountered them. All in all, a bit of a curate's egg, really, Margam, though not helped on this day by the weather and the fact I lacked a dog-sitter. Maybe I'll be back one day, maybe I won't.

Pilgrims, Doppelgängers and the Battle of Royate Hill

It being half term, I decided to visit a couple of places in Bristol I'd never been to before. It's not hard to find such places in South Bristol,where I only really venture for poetry events or to walk the dog at Ashton Court or Arnos Vale cemetery, and Brislington Brook as it meanders through Nightingale Valley and St Anne's Woods on its way to the River Avon had been on my list of local places to visit for years. 

It was a lovely sunny morning and Cwtch was basking in the delight of being somewhere new. 

harlequin ladybird

Brislington brook rises on the northern slope of Maes Knoll, a few miles to the south. It never gets as big as its north Bristol cousins, the Rivers Frome and Trym, all of which eventually decant their waters into the River Avon, but its valley is a lovely spot.

A communication line of tree roots

Where Nightingale Valley assumes the name of St Anne's Woods, I paused on the railway bridge to look at the goods train beneath it. The railway was built in 1840 by Brunel and splits the valley in two. The line ends at Paddington. 

After negotiating Newbridge Road, we entered the woods again. There was earlier traffic here, of a different variety: namely, that of pilgrims, coming to visit the chapel and sacred well dedicated to Anne, the patron saint of sailors. 

Of the chapel, with its thirty-two model ships left as offerings, there's no sign, though it was once important enough to be the subject of a visit by King Henry VII. Ironically, its demise was instigated by his son during the Reformation. 

The well's still there, though, surrounded by railings, though there was only a drop of water in there when we visited, and signs that someone tried to use it as a barbecue pit during the long hot summer. A nearby tree had some faded clouties tied to it. 

On our way back towards the upper stretch of Nightingale Valley, I saw my father on the bridge over the railway. At first, he was looking down at the train beneath it; then he started pacing up and down as if he was waiting for someone - neither activity particularly odd, except that he died nearly eight years ago.

The thought occurred to me that maybe the person he was waiting for was me, so I held back until he disappeared down a side street. Getting close enough to see it wasn’t my father would have been weird; getting close enough to see it was, something else altogether.

a one-legged apple tree

the packhorse bridge

There are several impressive trees in these woods, but none so strange as this London plane, the hollow trunk of which has been bricked up, apparently to stop people lighting fires inside it. 

My second new place to visit was Royate Hill nature reserve in Eastville, which lies north of the River Avon. Our walk, though, started somewhere familiar, namely, Greenbank cemetery in Easton, which was brilliant with foliage despite the overcast weather.

Three headstones, close each other and with angels as security, commemorating children who died between the ages of 12 and 18 in the 1930s and 40s

Just alongside an entrance at the northern edge of the cemetery, there's a flight of steps that leads up to the disused viaduct that's now part of the reserve.

I remember the painful birth of this place thirty-plus years ago. It was saved from redevelopment in 1991 and listed as a Site of Nature Conservation Importance, only for the owner, who wanted to build houses there, to send in the bulldozers at 6am on a Bank Holiday Saturday the following spring. Local protestors arrived within minutes, but it took took hours for the council to get an injunction, by which time a third of the five-acre site had been destroyed.

Ultimately, the developer didn't get his way, and it's now a lovely and very unusual place to wander. 

view of Clifton in the distance

Once down from the viaduct, we wandered up through Clay Bottom, joining Coombe Brook, a tributary of the River Frome, for part of the way.

jelly ear fungi

Much of this section of the walk took us through allotments, bright with foliage, late-blooming flowers and plastic. 

a piece of hoggin in situ

Our return route took us under the viaduct and back into Greenbank cemetery.

I was quite intrigued by this modest stone dating from 1982, propped up against - and partially obscuring - the older, grander one, especially since the surnames are all different. 

It was exhilarating to visit a couple of new places, and I'd like to say I'll try to keep it up once a month through the winter, but the season of mud will be setting in presently, so maybe I'll end up sticking (ha!) to ground I can be sure of. We'll see.