Discover The Beauty Of Gwyddon Valley In South Wales – Exciting Photo Exhibition Update!

Another video will follow with more in-depth information.
More Exhibition news will follow in the coming days on the Ffoto Website: https://ffotonewport.com/exhibitions-events

Check out the #Gwyddon #Valley website to learn more: https://gwyddonvalley.com/

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The exhibition will focus on #Abercarn, inspired by the themes in the book “Lily of the Valley” by Catrin Morgan. It will feature an audiovisual experience and a talk by me, with photobooks available on site and through my website: www.juicypixel.co.uk and they will also be available on the day with limited stocks.

Book Snippet:
Evan Walters had no intention of marrying Margaret Ann Jones when they first met in 1887. He knew they were too different. Her family was obsessed with respectability, and his heart was already captured by the lovely but unpredictable Ellen Rourke. However, Evan had a soft spot for small, vulnerable creatures. The sudden death of Margaret Ann’s parents led to an unexpected marriage proposal, and she became the wife of a miner in the rough part of Abercarn—far from the lace-curtained respectability she had dreamed of.

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Music
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[Music] for [Music] [Music] I’ll See You Again mate take care dude so as you just seen I made a new friend then called [Music] Dave who’s an actual Scotsman from Scotland practicing his bag pip in the world in the wilderness of abacan so now that I’ve got my breath back let tell you why I’m in the woods and currently on a bit of a pilgrimage that I’ve been doing since I was a child and this is one of the the routes that I’ve been taking since my grandfather first took me up the what you would call the gwin valley or the TU in uh there’s a river here a brook that goes down into the river Ebu behind me but we could follow the source up which has got a nice open area so let go check it out I’m also up here to research a project I’m working on which I’ll let you know in uh videos to come but let’s continue this pilgrimage that I’ve been doing since I was like 9 years old um I show you the path right here the path is no way as good as it was when I first started coming up here over 20 years ago with my grandparents but there’s a lot of history in these Woodlands including coal mines distilleries maybe some Iron Works so let’s follow this around and I’ll tell you a bit about the gwin valley history so we’re back on the original track now that leads down into the valley we all we be scourging around the valley on the way but yeah I used to ride my bike down here quite often falling over the side of the the path here numerous times but it’s a gorgeous afternoon it’s probably about half 5 now in the evening afternoon I can see a tent down there already so yeah once we get to the far end I’ll explain why I’m on this pilgrimage there’s a there’s a couple of bridges down here and man-made things that they help you get through so we’ll check those out at some point but it’s been a great walk bringing back a lot of uh memories from when I was a child especially memories of my grandfather and my own father actually we used to come down here on the bikes very often like I said in a previous clip actually falling over here before you can see the brook down here which goes down Valley I was talking to one of the locals the other day and I’m a I I like fishing myself especially for trout and some of the trout have managed to get out the river and flow up the brook so that’s one of today’s agendas is to get down with the brook and see if there’s any brown trout down there so I’ve got my polarizer sunglasses on today to help me look through the water but yeah it’s nice and Lush and green just love this and because I grew up around here I kind of took it for granted growing up but now I’m older you kind of realize how much how much of a lovely place I actually grew up in like we didn’t need youth clubs growing up we just had the valleys to explore you know and the valleys are full of ruins and old farmsteads loads of stuff to discover just wandering around these Hills so the path is declining here which will lead us down to the brook where there should be some bridges [Applause] so as you saw that bridge has been there since I was a child I think it’s the second one actually the first one got damaged and then this is one of the other trails that come up the valley which is a lot easier than where I just taggle so by here it used to be as deep as where you see the grass start in this has been worn down here by bikes the water would be up to here here and I remember there being little fish actually skirting around skir in around the banks here so what we’re going to do is continue up and over up into the valleys even further that’s kind of cool being back down here is um it’s quite a Sentimental area for me to be no sign of any brown trout so far um Pro I it it would be they would be very lucky to get this far up so maybe further down where I passed let’s continue go back over the bridge and head further up the gidden valley if you do walk all the way up you could drop down over the other side and you be in cumbran which is crazy cuz if there was a road connecting cumbran from here it would take like a third of the time driving in a car to get combr that it would the standard route now which means you have to go to crumbling then Ponty pool then come brown but yeah it’s absolutely beautiful up here but yeah I can’t imagine any brown truck going this far [Music] up so now we’ve reached the fire roads these fire roads are created to allow fire trucks access to the mountains if there’s ever a forest fire unfortunately I’ve lived through quite a few forest fires and as a child growing up around here it is quite scary when you see half the mountain in a placee but it doesn’t necessarily happen that often anymore the usual causes for forest fires of glass left up here uh that’s usually for people leaving bottles or from X commercial waste from where there used to be a water Distillery plant here on occasion you do get people who come up here and purposely start fires which is not cool um I would uh scroll with a person who actually did do that I didn’t know he did it until L years later but yeah it causes so much damage up here and uh uses a lot of Human Resources to put the fire out you do see helicopters up here dropping water on the blazes um now they can put the blazes out quite quickly but as a child when helicopters wasn’t wasn’t always something that the the local council could afford um the mountain would burn for days on end until it went with natural causes or just a way the the trees are planted so they do plant the trees now you can’t see it here but you can see it if you look at a wide view um shot of the mountains they do grow trees in a particular way that stops fires from jumping from one to the other so if there is a forest fire usually get like a section that burns and it burns out then it’s one of the many paths that lead off from here so this would go to The Kuman scenic drive if you go up and drop down over the other side you probably get the tumball and tum going that way as well take a lot longer than where I’m going because there’s a lot more inclines over there so yeah I’ve been walking for about 20 25 minutes now there should be a path on the left that drops down to where the brook is and there should be a bridge unless that’s been destroyed so we’ll continue walking and find out [Music] so there’s actually a reason why I’m here which I haven’t mentioned on the way up but I am really hungry so good job I brought a lunch for me but yeah my grand father first brought me here when I was a child only I just living just down there 20 minutes walkway 25 minutes walkway and um for me to come here as a child for the first time just exploring this area alone was just like so eye opening for me it was incredible like so every time I’ve come here I just I just share just like feel that same experience I did as a child and if I just show you around here it is so beautiful we even have the little area where I used to build dams and everything it’s still there there used to be bridges over these sections though and these are like these picnic benches are probably like the 10th iteration of them being put here because the amount of vandalism that’s happened here over the years since I was a child um we got to the point where the council just got fed up and replaced in the benches there was even barbecue sections and you can you can even see here where they planting new trees and they got protection around them but uh it’s nice to see that the area has been preserved since they’ve re since they’ve been redoing the area up so we’ve got beautiful little Meadow section here with these picnic benches so yeah it’s incredible just to be back up here so um I am going to enjoy my lunch and I’ll be back to you and I’ll explain in a bit more detailed why here it’s not just for personal reasons for um for other reasons too so I’ll be right back I’ve been trying to stick this in a tree but I’ll just freehand it so the reason I’m here is because I’m doing an exhibition in Newport on the 3rd of August that will be at photo which is based inside the Victorian arcade just opposite with spoons and it’s within 2 minutes walk at Newport train station so the book is going to be based on the theme of abacan and the surrounding area with the images Loosely following um the story of lily of the valley and I think a lot of people back home know about that you guys may not so much I’ll put a link in the description of this video if you want to learn more about that so I come up here to do a bit of research and the book is kind of fictional but I think it draws inspiration from factual events that maybe happened in and around abacan it was written by a woman called Katherine Morgan there’s not a Who real name of course I’ll put that in the description about the offer um but I’m Happ be here today because there’s a segment in the book that is quite tragic where a farmer ends up committing suicide and um his body is found in a pool around here um so I’m up here today doing research and a little bit of Photography to help me with the exhibition so that’s why I’m here and I’m really excited to announce that to you guys so if you want to come along it’s in Newport South Wales on the 3rd of August time to be announced is going to be in the afternoon evening I will be doing a talk there will be a Q&A uh the Q&A probably be mostly based about myself and the equipment I used to um capture the images on the day um I am going to try and reach out to the author to see if uh she is still about um but the book was written in the’ 70s I think I’ll have a fact check there but obviously look in the description of this video if I may have said something that might be not true um but yeah I’d like to invite anyone who sees this video to come along on the day um listen to what I got to talk about and obviously share your own experiences of living in abacan and the surrounding area I’m actually taken back today because this place did fall apart with a lot of vandalism and it’s really nice to see that it’s come together quite well with uh local funding from the council and I assume mostly from the people who live around here as well these benches are put in by the gidden valley group um I I haven’t he of the V the gwi valley group before but I am assuming that’s the name of the forestry that looks after this area maybe people who live in the area too but like I said everything is going to be in the video description so I’m going to have to head back now I think got about an hour and a half till it’s dark but I’ve walked this route so many times in my life that I could probably get home um with my eyes closed um I might spend a few more minutes around here though just to take it in because it has changed a lot I remember there used to be a lot of barbecue sections here that got destroyed uh there was a bridge just by this tree and uh just down by here there was another bridge too that you could use to sit on and put your feet in the Stream which is lovely you nice fresh water straight from the um top of the the valley right there but you in research and at the same time just sort of reigniting creative spark with be myy cuz as well um but yeah so don’t forget to check out the exhibition if you’re available on the 3rd of August which will be on a Friday afternoon evening I think it might be more to towards the evening the talk will be but um while if you do tend or not uh there’s going to be a picture book available which you can buy there or you can actually buy through my website or I might actually put a copy on Amazon as well just to make it easier and more accessible for other people to get a hold of I can’t believe how much this has changed you could use to I’m pretty sure there used to be sections here where you could park the car cuz you you can still get access here by Road um but there’s no access here by car but I think back then you could park the car along here I saw a guy on a bike just a moment ago came down the mountain they do use the mountain here to do uh time trails with uh downhill motorbikes down yeah they call it downhill and don’t so as a child growing up my neighbors we’re from Brussels um in Belgium and we used to bring them here in the summer the one summer we came down here there was so many people here just enjoying the weather I don’t think it’ll ever be like there again unfortunately but yeah since the next door neighbors are from Belgium we used to bring them down here and they used to have a whale of a time let’s go down and see if this Old Bridge is still here so yeah I can see that the bridge is still here but unfortunately it’s in disrepair now um I can’t believe how much corrosion has made that fall over but it was originally a wooden bridge and um you could actually put your feet in the Stream it’s just crazy how much this area has changed over the past few years but it is still just as stunning as the first time I came here just like how much how much like just the amount of wildlife here and um the vegetation and how green and Lush the area is so we got a decision to make now this is the old trail that used to come here there also the old trail they used to come here as well and come over the bridge I’m assuming because there’s no access there anymore that I’m just going to walk 20 minutes in a into a dead end situation so considering the light is falling right now might as well just head back up the valley so this is not the route I come here on but this is probably the safest route by foot rather than the other side so these guys do have a website here gidden valley.com so I’ll be sure to put that in the video description thank you walking sticks are fun pieces so when get a stick with a vshape in it so you put your thumb obviously you put your thumb in the stick when you walk so I’ve got it oversized and I’ll cut it down when I get home [Music] [Music] [Music] so cool how um how the trees are just growing on that old Farmstead wall so there’s an old wall that continues down here quite a bit there’s not much in there anymore but probably used to be Farmland back in the day it’s like one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen it says keep out [Music] CCTV so this walk is about to come to an end uh we’ll finish it right by here because my parents house is just by here but uh got beautiful view of Kuman Farm Kuman is the next Village down from aban where my grandparents lived so yeah we’re going to finish that video right by here so uh if you like that make sure you hit the Subscribe button on the notification Bell and uh be seeing you soon so peace out [Music]