Checking that the Rhymney Still Flows

 

When you plan a walk it’s often a good idea to double check the route.  Is it as it was last time you looked?  And when you are involved with writing books full of walks then this can be doubly important.  Has someone moved the right of way?  That left turn onto the industrial estate, is it now blocked?     Or, worst of the lot, has the river bridge been destroyed by floods and the walk rendered impossible without a fifteen mile detour?  Luckily none of these apply on the ramble I engage in today.   We’re in the Rhymney River valley doing a six mile circuit from Rhymney Hill Gardens to Llanederyn and back.  In the book (Walking Cardiff) this is a slice out of the full trek staring at the site of Rhymney Castle and finishing at Castleton with a return by bus.   But as these are times of Covid we decide to walk half of it as a circuit. 

The actual walk turns out to be pretty much as originally described.  Green, riverine, the deep country right at the edge of the city and, if it were not from the roar of completely hidden Eastern Avenue, pretty convincing too.   We walk neatly socially distanced and manage to pass others with the requisite two meters almost every time.  There are families, dog walkers, teenagers, one bloke in the distance on a motorbike, two twitchers with telescopes and a fisherman with rods and bait bags but no fish.

After the river crossing just south of the Pontprennau Park and Ride depot we do not make the mistake detailed in the book (mud, river slide and gashed by bramble) but take the easier much decorated subway under Eastern Avenue (known locally as Devil’s Ditch) and access the church by taking life slightly into hand navigating the edge of a 300mph Eastern Avenue exit.

St Edeyrn’s Churchyard is an oasis of calm.  Benches, green, a sundial showing perfect GMT high on the Church tower wall.  This ecclesiastical wonder dates from about as far back as you can go.  Square tower, low entrances, blocked-up doorways.  A pre-Norman foundation is attested to by the persistent rumour that Saint Edeyrn is buried somewhere in the churchyard.  The bells – there are five of them – date from 1766.  In the book this gem is erroneously identified as having a starring role in Gavin & Stacey.  That church is actually in Peterstone super Ely.  They look so similar it was an easy mistake.  Errata can haunt but, luckily, they are rare, and you learn to live with them.  The worst I’ve come across is the tale of the poet who, on publication day, opened his first copy of his first ever book to find it credited to a Peter Fnich.  Not happened to me.  Not yet.

The return walk along more or less the same route sounds as if it might be boring but it’s not.  Three hours of lockdown exercise in one sunny afternoon.  Try it yourself.    

Walking Cardiff is a large format title detailing twenty walks.  There are maps, a full selection of John Briggs’ brilliant photographs and a whole raft of suggestions for where a locked-down Cardiff walker might go next.  It’s available from Seren and readily purchasable through good booksellers and or online from Amazon.  Walking Cardiff­ – Peter Finch & John Briggs, Seren Books.  £14.99