Day Trip to Banwen
One of the many projects that I have never gone further with than an idea is an A to Y of Welsh places. Many years ago, I saw a book in a shop in Machynlleth entitled, "50 Reasons to Hate Wales" and it was written by an American man who had settled in Mid Wales and was up on all the stereotypes - rain, language, rudeness, remoteness and so on. I wrote to the publishers offering them "50 Reasons to Love Wales" but they never replied. Prejudice sells, as I suppose we now know from political campaigns a-plenty.
The reason that it would be an 'A to Y' is because there is no 'Z' in the Welsh alphabet. I am tired of seeing books claim an 'A to Z' of something and I want to do more 'A to Y's. This website even has one of its own. There is also no 'J' or 'X' or 'Q', unless you want to use 'j' to make a 'garej' (say that out loud and you will know what it means) but now we are getting into complications. I wanted to write a short introduction to 25 Welsh places and my experiences there.
One reason for doing this was that some years ago I wrote a blog about Briton Ferry. It is a small town on the outskirts of the Swansea / Neath area but I went to a meeting in the Boys & Girls Club there and I was struck by its name 'The Giants' Graveyard'. I wanted to find out who the giants were, why they were buried there and how that part of the world came to be named after them. It was only when I recounted this to my mother and she said, "I always thought that it was 'Brighton Ferry'" that I realised that there is a lot of local knowledge that seems to be fading. To me, it seemed obvious that if you had a large river that needed crossing, you would note where the Britons used a ferry to cross. However, if all you see of Briton Ferry is a sign on the motorway that might not be so obvious.
People liked the story of Briton Ferry so much that I thought that I ought to pull together a few more. I have written about Ebbw Vale before and, of course, I have now performed twice my love letter to Swansea, "It's Always Bloody Swansea". However, I have probably never progressed with this project because I have been conscious of being an outsider talking about other people's homes. Hilarious as it was to be taken to a pub in Abergele where 'a man was beaten to death with a pool cue, but it's okay now', it seems a little unkind to mention that just for the sake of a joke. I would want to do more research.
The truth is that Wales is a phenomenal place. It packs in to a very small space a huge diverse range of places. When I have lived in England, I have been used to travelling five miles and still being in the same conurbation. Five miles in Wales can make a huge difference. Partly this is geography and a lack of cities (in general, Welsh people do not live in cities), but I think that there is also a great deal of psychology to it.
I first encountered Banwen on a very snowy January day in 2002. I was going to a training centre there to learn about how to manage volunteers. This could only have been supported by European funding. Say what you want about the paperwork, but EU funding always seemed to favour the places that no-one else would fund. Banwen seemed to be a small village on a hillside sandwiched between former mines in the valleys that lead down to Neath and the Brecon Beacons. The mines had gone by the time that I was there for training, but that seemed to me to be always the point of that funding, it took people to places that would not otherwise have brought them in.
When writing parody mottos for the new Welsh counties formed in 1996, I went for 'Neath Port Talbot : All the beauty you have come to expect from the industrial revolution' but I was being grossly unfair. Behind the steel works and M4 that you see on travelling through Port Talbot and the brief glimpse of Neath from the A465, there is the most wonderful hinterland. Indeed, it is probably prejudice such as mine that has kept the area from gaining the kind of notoriety that it really should have. Twenty years later, you can find people climbing over each other to get to the waterfalls in the Neath valley, but beyond the obvious tourist attractions, most places are quiet and stunningly beautiful.
I recorded some silence in Banwen today and then realised what a ridiculous thing that was. The sounds of nature used to be the only sounds a human would hear and anything else would be a cause for alarm. Now we are so used to the sounds of traffic and people and industry that we think of silence as being abnormal. Standing by the lake in Banwen, I wondered at what would happen if I played people this silence - doubtless they would say 'I can't hear anything' but that would be the point.
The village itself has a fascinating history. It was an important mining area from before the Roman invasion and then acted as an important stop on the road between Neath and Brecon. That is one of those things that should make you stop and think - the Romans put great effort into connecting Neath and Brecon, two towns that would not now feature on most people's lists of the most important places in the country (though both lovely in their own ways). In Banwen there is a mosaic showing some of the Roman roads around Wales and you can see how places that have now slipped into obscurity were once crucial.
The centrepiece is, of course, St Patrick though. Irish friends of mine do not like me bringing up the idea that their patron saint was Welsh and at his tomb in Downpatrick, it makes some kind of vague assertion about him coming from Britain. However, Patrick himself described his home as 'Bannaven Taburnae' near a Roman villa in West Britain. He lived there until he was 16 and was kidnapped by Irish pirates and taken to Ireland. It is really not a stretch to think that the area of Banwen closest to a Roman site, known as Tavern-y-Banwen, fits just a little too well. It was also an area regularly raided by Irish pirates. It has been enough to have the sign at the entrance to the village changed and the birthplace stone put in place.
Here is what I meant about how local knowledge is fading. Legend tells that the Romans left a large tombstone on the road at Banwen and that it was guarded by fairies. However, one of those Victorian collectors of things decided to have it removed and placed in her grotto in Neath. The grotto was soon destroyed in a violent storm and it was said that the only sound that could be heard was the laughter of fairies. Okay, the 'fairy inscriptions' on the stone turned out to be Latin but my point is that I wonder whether any of this is known beyond a small part of the population. When English people complain about the 'Americanisation' (or perhaps I should write 'Americanization') of their culture, I always point out how English culture has steadily replaced so many things in Wales. Not that I am pointing the finger at the English here, it is a general phenomenon where local legend is lost because we have grander stories to tell. There is, of course, a colliery museum nearby.
This brings me to my final point, which is one of some anger. I am reminded of when I went to Ireland on holiday a few years ago and people told me to look for ruined farmhouses in the west of Ireland because they looked picturesque. They were then surprised if I asked them if they had considered that the reason that the west of Ireland looks so dramatic and beautiful is poverty. If people were wealthier and developed cities and industry there then there would be far less countryside and those tumbled down barns would be converted into holiday homes. We have to be careful sometimes what we are praising.
The same is true in the former coal-mining areas of Wales, once the wealthiest part of the UK. Keeping them as a mix of tourist oddity and worshipping the past is not healthy (as Mike Parker has pointed out, the south Wales valleys are full of attractions that tell local people that their past was magnificent and more important than their future). For all that I praise the extraordinary beauty of the area and encourage you to visit, I wonder what future there is for those communities. I did see that there is still an old railway line running up to Seven Sisters. Even re-opening that so that people could commute down to Neath or Swansea would be a start. It is only ten miles long but that, as I noted earlier, is like a different world in Wales.