Colwinston
Colwinston
At the beginning of our walk, we took a slight diversion to visit the Old Ford Project, an environmental enhancement scheme involving the village’s Ancient Well, Clapper Footbridge, Watercress beds, woodland hedges, Colwinston Brook and Springs. Unusually for the Vale of Glamorgan Colwinston village has steep slopes at its centre. The watercourse is now underground but rises to the surface in prolonged wet weather.
The Michaelmas Well is one of three wells which provided the village with water until 1935 when the main water supply was brought to the village. There are 24 steps to the bottom of the well, with recent rain only the top step could be seen but a local resident told us that there were sixteen steps visible after the hot dry summer of this year.
There was a ford across the stream a short distance from the well. Until the early 1900’s when the old ford was covered for traffic the clapper bridge was the only dry path across the stream for pedestrians. It is an 18th century structure, one of several in the Vale. A pond fed by springs has been excavated to provide more habitats for wildlife and it is hoped watercress.
We returned to the centre of the village to begin our walk and soon passed the village War Memorial which was erected at the village green in 2014. Colwinston is a ‘Thankful Village’ – one of only three in Wales which suffered no fatalities in World War I. However, four men were lost in World War II, one of them Agatha Christie’s son-in-law, Colonel Hubert Prichard.
One house had an exuberant Christmas garland around the whole of their double porch entrance, with door wreaths, small reindeer, and lanterns; it all looked splendid. We spotted several Victorian wall-mounted post boxes still in use on the walk, one on a house called ‘Ramblers’ which we thought appropriate but realised it probably referred to roses rather than walking!
There are ten Grade II listed buildings in the village, all dating from the medieval or post-medieval period. They include a thatched house, ‘the Old Parsonage dating from the 16th century which has a Gothic or Tudor arch and is one of only two in the Vale with a latrine in the form of a small closet next to the fireplace.
Now we walked through fields and crossed the A48 at the old Colwinston village milestone – Cowbridge 3 miles, Bridgend 4 miles, London 173 miles – only to find the next stile blocked, a nearby gate was an easy substitute.
It was a cloudy but reasonably clear day, and we could see the long line of wind turbines on the hills, quite a few rotating. A red kite appeared overhead and seemed to ‘stay with us’ for the rest of the walk soaring high and occasionally swooping quite close to us. Would you ever get tired of seeing this marvellous bird?
A tall chimney north of Gelliaraul farmhouse, Llangan, dominates the landscape. It is Grade II listed and has three distinct levels and an arched opening a couple of feet above the ground; possibly some sort of oven associated with the nearby quarry. Arriving at Llangan we found their public phone box was a book exchange and contained a defibrillator, good idea we thought until we saw a sign ‘Sorry this defibrillator is out of order’. We passed the church, walking through the graveyard, where there is an old cross and noted that the church looked as if it had been doubled in size at some point in its past.
Now we were walking on grass again and spotted a buttercup flowering, not bad for December. We passed a huge solar panel installation and found a pile of logs so stopped to eat lunch; glimmers of sunshine appeared. Some of the logs had a very pretty, thin, pure white, fungus growing on them. As we set off, we met a flock of sheep with square shaped heads, even the ewes looked masculine, and the ram was solid muscle.
Now we walked through Troes and turned south to return. At times it was quite dark but then the sun would come out for a while and brighten everything. Nearing Colwinston we came to ‘Charlie’s Shop’, – open 9-5 so after checking he was open, we finished the walk and drove back up the road for a few minutes to enjoy a piping hot cup of tea next to a wood burning stove, very cosy and he had lots of local eggs for sale.
Walk 6.9m 400ft Map OS151
On a cool, bright morning, we entered Poor’s Allotment at the adder gate, a sinuous adder is carved into the wooden gate. The zigzag pattern on an adder’s skin looks like bracken providing camouflage. In the 1800’s it was established as common land on which the people of Tidenham could graze their livestock. More than 200 years of light grazing has preserved the open nature of the reserve, which is an SSSI. It was once the location of a beacon which would carry messages across the River Severn and is now managed by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust.
A walk near the Wales/England border, beginning in Redbrook, Gloucestershire, a typical English riverside village with church, village hall, local shop, post office and playing field. Quite pretty, with clean air, different from how Redbrook was in the past. It is now hard to believe that ‘it was once the most bustling little place imaginable’, but, since Roman times it has been a hive of industrial activity. First iron (smelting was first mentioned in1300), then copper and later tinplate were made here.
The graveyard attached to the church has several benches and there are alms houses on the boundary, but we didn’t stop as we had hills to climb before lunch. As we left through the lych-gate, we could see that most village houses are stone and full of character.
A long line of mole hills would suggest a good population of moles here but who knows as… ‘Mole activity is usually greatest in late winter and early spring and moles are very territorial and in many cases the mole hills seen in a garden are the activity of just one individual. ‘
blowing in the breeze. Birch skeletons stood with drooping branches covered in pink/ purple buds. And most notable, large clumps of Mistletoe had been a constant companion sitting high up in many of the trees. It grows in hawthorn, poplar, and lime as well as the apple trees with which most people associate it.