April 19

Green valleys 

I had a memorable Easter Monday, thanks to Brenda and Ivor who took me to their lovely house on the hillside above Tonyrefail.

Memorable because of the changes the years have made to the town and to the valley.

It was was almost five years ago I drove Rosemary there from Windsor Court Penarth andwhat a difference to the town centre.

The town centre  is a sad sight. Almost all the local traders have gone, the narrow road into the centre choked with cars parked outside the neat long rows of houses. But turn right and drive uphill for in a minute or two and the scene changes dramatically. 

Brenda and Ivor’s semi detached house is twice as big now since they moved in many years ago, four bedrooms a large dining room kitchen looking out onto a long garden with a stream and, trees bushes with a wooded green hill.

It made a perfect picture in the bright sunshine.

About twenty miles from Penarth, Tonyrefail and its surroundings present a different picture from the days when it was in a typical Welsh mining valley.

The local colliery is gone as is the ugly Coed Ely coke works that for decades had spewed out toxic fumes as it produced coke from a lovely green valley 

In its  place now, a lovely green valley. A few miles south there is another sign of the new age, a commercial complex with a huge supermarket and range of stores.

Many other valleys in South Wales have been transformed. Most of the them, including the Rhymney Valley which had fifteen collieries when I worked there as a reporter for many years with towns and villages overlooked by mountainous slag tips.

Modern houses have cteated  new communities on the green hillsides, reached by new roads. Just outside Tonyrefail hundreds of trees have been cut down at the start of work on a new double lane road linking with the modern network that leads down to the M4.

The valleys, so forlorn after the death of the coal industry is alive again.

. In it place, a loveLov