The Afon Lwyd - what a difference in 50 years

I spent my secondary education attending school at Croesyceiliog in Cwmbran. A river runs at the bottom of the school playing fields, the Afon Lwyd (Grey River in English). Being only around 13 miles long the Afon Lwyd is hardly a mighty stream and my childhood memories of the river are of something dead and dirty.

The river's source rises to the north of Blaenavon, flows through Abersychan, Pontnewynydd, Pontypool, Llanfrechfa and Cwmbran before flowing into the River Usk at Caerleon. In other words it flows through what were some of the most industrial sites in the area and was polluted by industrial waste and mine discharge and in more recent times, fly-tipping: my goodness, didn't the poor river suffer for it.

The Afon Lwyd at Llanyrafon, Cwmbran

Fortunately since the mid 1980s an effort has been made to clean the river up and improve both water quality and fish stocks. It certainly seems to be working too, the river today is almost unrecognisable from my its days in my youth.

The Afon Lwyd looking much better today than it did in the 1960s

Still not as clean as it could be, but the Afon Lwyd looks alive now and you can see the river fish swimming in it. There are dragonflies flitting about and I even caught sight of a kingfisher this morning while walking through Llanyrafon. All I can say is, what a difference 50 years makes!

Enhance your language skills with Y Gudel

Unless you live locally to Solva or St Davids in West Wales you may never have come across the Welsh language term Y Gudel.

As you will see from the signage above a Gudel translates as a Narrow Passageway and in Solva that passageway led to the river, originally giving residents access to the water for drinking, clothes washing, slops disposal, etc. (note: no mention of drinking water in the sign, but in the days before mains water was piped in, drinking water was either pumped or collected in buckets).

These are two examples of Gudels in Solva... steep stepped and narrow, not much fun on an icy winter's morning I'd guess.

The river water wouldn't always look this dirty (heavy rain washing down a lot of silt), though it would still have been full of all kinds of nasty stuff...

Solva Pump

Drawing water from the village pump wouldn't have made it any cleaner unfortunately since the water came from the same source. Oh well... Another glass of cholera anyone?