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CARERS WALK
21 walkers joined the Carers walk at Barry Island today, including 2 new strollers to Valeways. Sunshine, fabulous views, chatting to fellow walkers and chocolates from Kath, who was celebrating her 78th birthday, encouraged the walkers to reach the ice creams on offer at the completion of the walk
Village Hall News
We would very much like to say a great big THANK YOU to Johnny Tudor for donating his time in hosting and performing at our 100th Year Celebration last month. Feed back from the evening was very positive. Some quotes from the evening “Best night ever” “Need to do this again” “Can’t wait for the next one”. A great night was had by all. Thanks John.
Thanks must go to Ritchie aka Michael Buble for donating his time to perform and to Russell for volunteering on the busy bar. Thank you all.
We will be holding our Christmas draw on Tuesday 13th December at 7pm. Tickets are available from Committee members and from the village shop. Tickets are £1 each and all proceeds will go to the hall.
If anyone would like to donate a raffle prize then please email us on wenvoevillagehall@yahoo.co.uk and we can arrange to collect from you.
Its thanks to everyone in the community who support our hall, through hiring or fundraising that we can offer such a wonderful facility at the heart of our village
Dragon’s Back
In spring, we talked about which walks we would like to do this year and this one was tops for me, but the summer was so hot that we saved it for the autumn. The Dragon’s Back is named after the shape of the hills which rise and fall like the spines on a Dragon’s Back and from a distance it looks like a sleeping dragon.
There is another ‘Dragon’s Back’ which runs from north to south Wales following the mountainous spine of the country. And people have been racing the route since 1992, taking about 5-6 days to cover 236 miles and ascents which would add up to twice the height of Everest!
Our walk was in the Black Mountains and more modest but still a demanding walk. We arrived at the car park on the A479, next to a pub to take the last parking spaces (there is an honesty box for payment). Unusually we were tackling the route anticlockwise to enjoy ‘an exhilarating finale on a switchback route along the crest of a long narrow ridge on Y Grib’.
We took a track towards Cwmfforest farm where we started a gentle climb which soon got steeper. Most of us took regular short breaks ‘to look at the fantastic views’ which were unfolding around us. As we climbed, we could see beyond the ridge to the west to Pen y Fan in the distance. Reaching a cairn, we followed a section of the Cambrian Way and coming round a mountain spotted Sugar Loaf and England to the southeast.
Surrounded by the awe-inspiring Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons, we were crossing moorland and bog, but paths improved by the national park and the dry summer – meant that what was normally bog was now just damp. We came to a steep section which has been reinforced with huge stones making this section easier to climb and preserving the countryside around us.
The high point of the walk is Waun Fach, (small moor) the highest point in the Black Mountains at 810m, it is the second highest mountain in southern Britain (Pen y Fan being the highest) and we felt the keen wind as we reached it. We met a group of deaf people taking a group photo. Then it was time for our group photo, and after heading downhill slightly a well-earned lunch out of the wind and looking over the next stage of the walk.
We saw a few people walking in T shirts, apparently with no refreshments or waterproof gear. But we were impressed by a family: a woman, man and two very young children were steadily climbing with the children stopping now and again to examine something which had caught their attention. The woman carried a rucksack, presumably so that the man could carry the children if it became necessary.
We continued, taking in the views of the Dragon’s Back and the distant hills. It was a perfect day for walking, not too warm but sunny with occasional cloud and the visibility was incredible; we could see the Bristol Channel, rolls of mountains to Pen y Fan and beyond to the west and the flattish landscape of the north stretching into the far distance. Gliders were being lifted by planes from a nearby airfield and then soaring on the up draughts. They mirrored a red kite which flew below us displaying its divided tail and distinctive colouring.
Now we approached the promised finale as we took in the crest of Y Grib and then dipped and climbed along the mounds of the Dragon’s Back keeping the 360O views. All too soon we were facing the last climb to Castell Dinas Hill fort. A few people opted to skirt around it but the rest of us struggled to the top. At 450 metres it is the highest castle in England and Wales and is positioned to defend Rhiangoll pass, between the market towns of Crickhowell and Talgarth. Standing there you get a sense of Welsh history and of the many people who have been there before you over hundreds of years The original Iron Age defence is reduced to stone wall ruins, outlines of ditches and ramparts. One piece of wall has an arch which it was decided was the ‘Dragon’s eye’.
A stroll downhill over a rickety stile, passing some beautiful oaks and lush grassland and we stopped briefly to look back at where we had been. A brief walk along the original track and there was the carpark with the Dragon’s Back Hotel beckoning us for a drink.
The weather had been great with no rain and the word I used on the day, for the walk and views was splendiferous – what more could you ask for? Walk 7.4miles 2100ft Map OL13
A map of any of the walks featured in ‘Footsteps’ can be obtained from ianmood029@gmail.com
“The Fortune Men” by Nadifa Mohammed
The Fortune Men portrays life in the racial, cultural hub of Cardiff’s Tiger Bay in the early fifties. It centres on the plight of a Somali man, Mahmood Mattan, who finds himself on trial for the murder of a local shopkeeper.
Mahmood is a chancer, a father and a petty criminal who is innocent of the crime, but as the local paper of the day described, “Almost within a stone’s throw in which he lived in Cardiff, Mahmood Mattan was executed…” He was the last man to be hung in Cardiff prison. Many years later, the conviction and execution of Mahmood became the first miscarriage of justice case ever investigated by the Criminal Cases Review Commission and in 1998 Mahmood was exonerated by the Court of Appeal.
Nadifa Mohammed, whose father knew Mahmood, is herself a British Somali and seems well placed to write Mahmood’s story. Nadifa manages to paint a credible picture of life and the events in the 50’s that led to the wrongful conviction of Mahmood for the murder of a white woman just because of the colour of his skin. It is a story of racism, discrimination, police corruption, conspiracy and cruelty.
The Page Turners thought it was an important story that needed telling, as racism remains an issue today, and on a regular basis there seem to be reports of miscarriages of justice when wrongly convicted people are freed.
Many book club members thought the writing style and language used was difficult, especially when there were many words in foreign languages that were not translated. Some felt that sentences and
descriptions were overly long and descriptive passages tedious to read. Some readers did not like the fictionalised account of this historical event and would have preferred to read a biography of Mahmood.
Everyone agreed it was an important event that needed to be told; the discussion was mainly around the telling. Have a read and judge for yourself! The Page Turners average score was 6.5!
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, red roses for love.. But for Victoria Jones it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After her childhood spent in the foster care system she finds she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. The story follows Victoria’s blossoming into adult life as she haphazardly learns to trust and be trusted, to love and be loved.
This book was well received by the majority of us. It was agreed that the effects of the care system upon young people was very well understood (the author had herself been a foster parent). Victoria’s difficulty emerging into independent life was palpable; we wanted her to succeed in life.
The history of flowers and their changing language was beautifully versed. The inclusion in the book of a dictionary of flowers and their language made for fascinating study, although there was disappointment when favourite flowers of our own turned out to have negative attributes (eg sunflower: false riches, yellow rose: infidelity) There was relief by most that the book ended on an optimistic yet realistic note. This enjoyable book scored an average of 7/10.
WENVOE FORUM
Considering tomorrow today
Click and drop some of your carbon footprint
How many of us really think of the electronic data we store as part of our carbon footprint? Not many we suspect, until someone like us, points it out. We may be familiar with the idea that server farms, huge banks of computers, that are used for creating crypto currencies like Bitcoin; use lots of energy. But have you considered that all the data that Google, One Drive, Photobucket, Instagram, Facebook, etc etc etc “generously” save on our behalf, free of charge is using energy and therefore has a carbon footprint. If you generated the data it’s your carbon footprint!
Of course some of that carbon footprint replaces a much higher footprint represented by other non-electronic forms of data storage. For example, over its lifetime, the valuation report of 64 pages on a prospective house purchase surely generates, less greenhouse gas emissions as a digital version rather than printed out. However, here is where you might be able to do your bit to reduce global warming. If that report from 2015 is still stored in the cloud, it is still using energy and every day it sits there unused it is using energy. This is where you can help, delete it when you have finished with it.
According to Tom Jackson, Professor of Information and Knowledge Management, Loughborough University and Ian R. Hodgkinson Professor of Strategy, Loughborough University writing in The Conversation (theconversation.com) huge amounts of data is stored unnecessarily and energy is wasted contributing needlessly to greenhouse gas emissions. Jackson and Hodgkinson provided some staggering statistics.
More than half of the data collected and stored by firms is only used once
For a typical data based business, say insurance, of 100 employees they create 3 000 gigabytes of unwanted, but saved, data every working day.
Storing that data for one year has a carbon footprint equivalent to 6 flights from London to New York
Over a year, the never to be used again data that companies store has the carbon footprint of 3 million transatlantic flights.
Back in 2020 is was estimated that all digital data storage accounted for 4% of total greenhouse gas emissions and was growing rapidly
Unless action is taken, by 2025 and estimated 181 zettabytes (that’s 181 trillion gigabytes if it helps) of data will be stored; much of it unwanted and gobbling up energy unnecessarily.
Clearly as individuals we are small fry in the data stakes, however, as often, it’s a case of everyone needing to do a little bit which adds up to a lot. Let’s imagine you take 10 photographs of the family around the Christmas tree intending to send one to relatives in Australia with a Christmas message. Lunch is ready and rather than deciding which, you save them all to Photobucket to sort out and send later. It is likely that the majority of them become unwanted data as you never delete them. If you consider how many mobile phones there are you can see how if everyone takes a little care about what is happening to their data a chunk of global warming could be avoided.
We urge you to just stop and think about what you deliberately save to the cloud to your own Drop box space or Google drive or whatever you use. Go back and delete photos and files that you don’t want or better still select the version for long term storage as you save them and get rid of the others. Be mindful that some applications will keep a copy of your data even after you have deleted it, but that discussion is for another time.
New Forum members are always welcome to join e-mail us on gwenfo.forum@gmail.com Contact to us on :-Facebook: Gwen Fo @ https://www.facebook.com/gwen.fo.1/ and Wenvoe Forum @ https://www.facebook. com/groups/635369267864402 or twitter @ForumGwenfo
Considering tomorrow today
A round up of activities
We had a great time at the Wenvoe Village Show. Well done all those Wenvoe Hub volunteers for rekindling it after the restrictions of Covid over the past couple of years. This year’s at times, very hot and very dry weather has made it a surprisingly difficult one for gardeners, especially inexperienced ones but the show gave motivation for some to expose their hard won produce to keen eyes of judges. It is a lot of hard work to organise but a lovely opportunity to get together.
The Wenvoe Forum decided to join in and we had a stand set up outside in the car park and provided some information. We spoke to lots of people about the various things the Forum has been involved with recently and for those of you who weren’t there here is a round up.
Maybe it was the warm afternoon and the thought of a cold beer that set the agenda, a lot of people were interested in the Community Hop growing. A few Forum members and others in Wenvoe have been growing hop plants in their gardens, harvesting them and sending the cones to join the crop of the Community Hop growing group in Cardiff. They are made into a delightful green hop beer provocatively called Taff Temptress, brewed by Pipes of Cardiff. The Forum has an aim of recruiting enough local growers to brew Wenvoe’s own community beer. Judging by the interest at the show and the new growers recruited, we might not be so far away. If you want to join us e-mail gwenfo.forum@gmail.com.
Along with most of the world, we have been focussing on energy recently and have been asking residents to complete a survey for us. We are trying to assess what we can do to help people in this coming winter when energy prices are going to be so high. We do know the answer would probably be “cash” but in the long run we have to learn to do without fossil fuels and other carbon creating heating, lighting and cooking methods. The real answer is to use less energy altogether and now seems a perfect time to accelerate the process of learning how to do that. Our survey offers different ways in which we might be able to help for the community to prioritise what the forum develops. Please complete it by 31st October, you will find it on our blog site https://wenvoeforum.wordpress. com/ or we will leave some copies at the library and please pass it back to the library or e-mail it to us gwenfo.forum@gmail.com. To encourage you to complete and return a survey, each that includes a name, will be entered into a prize draw for a bottle of wine.
On our table at the show we had a recording of Manny Ebubedike’s thorough rundown of a host of energy saving tips small and large. The recording is a must listen and you will find it via our blog site. https://wenvoeforum.wordpress.com/
One way we can help was mentioned last month. Tackling some of the bigger alterations and installations that will help reduce energy use and keep those bills down is a daunting prospect, full of potential pitfalls. The community could actively help each other with some of these issues by sharing their own experiences. Those who have already travelled the path could shine a light for others. One of the activities we will be undertaking is creating a few case studies and making them available on our blog site. If you have experienced the purchase and installation of a solar panel scheme or of a heat pump or improving insulation, and you are willing to share the story whether good, bad or indifferent as an anonymised, written, case study, we would like to hear from you. A forum member will interview you and do all the hard work of writing it up. Nothing will be made public without your permission. Please e-mail gwenfo.forum@gmail.com, your e-mail address will go no further without your permission. You may be able to help someone get on the road to a more climate friendly future.
To help keep children interested while their parents or grandparents were talking to us at the stand, we held a free guess the name of the bear competition. So now this delightful little bear has a new home and is called Embo.
Village Hall News
We are very much looking forward to seeing everyone to celebrate 100 years of our Village Hall. Over 18s only, as we have a licensed bar.
You are welcome to bring your own snacks, however, please do not bring your own alcohol as it will be in breach of our licence. Carrier bags may be checked on entry. Thank you.
Many tickets to this event sold in August and they are selling fast. It’s sure to be a great night. See you there.
We were hoping that the Children’s Halloween Fancy Dress disco would have returned this year. We are sorry to say, as Halloween is in school half term and many of our volunteers are away, we are unable to offer this.
We are holding our Christmas Draw in December, so please keep a watchful eye out for draw tickets (available from Committee Members) in November.
We rely on support from all of our residents in the village to keep the hall up and running. If you are unable to support by attending an event or purchasing raffle tickets, as a Registered Charity we can take donations anytime of the year.
The hall relies on hirers rents, fundraising and kind donations for its up-keep. Without the support of a Voluntary Management Committee the land the hall stands on would be handed back to the landowner and demolished.
I have personally volunteered for 28 years and I know there have been many residents over the past 100 years who have fought to keep the hall alive with fundraising efforts, not to mention finding the funds to have it rebuilt in 1974 and for the continual roof repairs from 1996 to date.
A big thank you to all past and present residents for doing such a great job in supporting efforts to keep the Village Hall going for 100 years. Well done and THANK YOU ALL .
