Category: Latest News

Gardens in South Wales well worth a summer visit

In summer everyone enjoys a colourful garden and the bigger the better. Wenvoe What’s On has in the past covered the joys of the National Garden Scheme which covers private gardens, fine as they are, which are open only a limited basis. This article is about three large gardens which are open to the public for much of the year. They are all within an hour’s drive of Wenvoe and each one has a café to revive weary visitors.

Aberglasney was made famous by the BBC television series “A Garden Lost in Time”. Today it is quite simply one of Wales’ finest gardens. A renowned plantsman’s paradise with a unique Elizabethan cloister garden at its heart, Aberglasney offers the opportunity to explore more than 10 acres of magnificent gardens, along with the fully restored ground floor of Aberglasney’s grade II* listed mansion.  

The house and gardens have had a chequered life. Uninhabited, neglected and vandalised over the years, Aberglasney was on the brink of collapse when it was rescued from oblivion in 1995. The house and gardens were bought by the Aberglasney Restoration Trust and thanks to the generosity of individual donors, trust funds, charitable donations and grant money from many statutory bodies a tremendous amount of work was done in a very short time.

Aberglasney finally opened to the public on the 4th of July 1999.  Aberglasney is located near Llangathen in Carmarthenshire’s beautiful Tywi Valley. You will find it just off the A40, 15 minutes from the county town of Carmarthen and 5 minutes from the market town of Llandeilo. Further information is at the website http://aberglasney.org/.

The National Botanic Garden of Wales is set in the beautiful Carmarthenshire countryside, the Garden is a fascinating blend of the modern and historic. Here you’ll find an inspiring range of themed gardens, the magnificent glasshouse, play areas and a national nature reserve, all set in a Regency landscape which provides the stage for a packed programme of events and courses throughout the year.

This very large garden offers a wide range of visitor amenities with a very good shop, café and restaurant. It has good disabled access and mobility scooters are available for hire. The huge glasshouse is the largest single-span great glasshouse in the world and houses the largest collection of Mediterranean plants in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Garden is situated 10 minutes from the M4 and 2 minutes from the A48 in Carmarthenshire, mid-way between Cross Hands and Carmarthen. For Satnav users the postcode is SA32 8HN. It takes just under an hour to drive there from Wenvoe. More details are available at https:// botanicgarden.wales/

Dewstow hidden gardens and grottoes are rather closer to Wenvoe and it takes only about half an hour to drive there. These wonderful gardens, and their unlikely grottoes, are one of the most exciting horticultural finds of recent years. In 1893 Henry Oakley bought the estate with house and gardens.

He was a rich bachelor and set about creating a glorious garden which, after his death, fell into decline. It has recently been restored and now offers visitors three main attractions. There is a very large rock garden with a wide variety of plants and shrubs, underneath that there is an extensive labyrinth of grottoes with ferns, flowers, waterfalls and fountains.

Then in front of the house there is an area of ponds and walkways and a further grotto. Dewstow has a splendid, if small, café which offers a good range of sweet and savoury foods.  To find Dewstow gardens drive to Caerwent and then, from the middle of town, follow the signs to the garden. Further details can be found at the Dewstow website www.dewstowgardens.co.uk

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Wenvoe Website

The site has been down for a few weeks but hopefully by publication date it will be up and running again. The site has been looked after by Len Jones since it was built.

Following Len’s death we now have anybody to look after the day to day running of the site. The builder of the web page, Phil, is prepared to train a new local site operator.

If you would be prepared to manage this community facility please contact Ian Moody (see the Wenvoe Directory) or contact the Clerk to the Council.

QUEEN’S 90TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.

In co-ordination with other communities throughout the country Wenvoe will mark the special occasion by lighting a beacon positioned at the highest local point ie the Quarryman’s Tribute which is located opposite the turning in to Twyn-yr-Odyn.

The lighting ceremony will take place at 8.30pm Thursday 21st April, everybody is welcome to help mark this historic occasion.   Is your birthday on the 21st April? Would you like to be the person to light the beacon?

Please inform the Council Chairman at ceinwenfrost@uwclub.net. If know of somebody who is 90 on the same date that would be superb.

My Fruitful Fields

I have been taking Treasure Hunting for the past 20 years and look forward to my copy every month. In the last couple of years I have had some cracking finds, the best coin probably being a Durotriges silver stater which is dated 1st century BC. I am almost sure that it is the only silver stater that has been found in Glamorgan where I live.

My next brilliant find was a Roman hoard of 34 coins which were all copper dating from AD 28-29. They involved two emperors, Carausius and Allectus and apparently the latter emperor murdered the former one. I had found over several years about seven similarly dated coins from the same field but over quite a wide area.

It was quite exciting on the day that I found the Roman hoard. I found one coin, wandered about for about 30 minutes and arrived back to where had I had found the original one. I then had another ‘bleep~ and dug out another coin, then the bleeps kept coming and within 10 minutes I had 20 coins in total. Two were even stuck together.

I had to leave the area as I was going to watch a rugby international in Cardiff but returned the next day to the same spot where I found 14 more coins plus a round ring object that probably had a bag with the coins inside, as there was no trace of a pot, Steve Sell, Mark Lodvic and Edward Besley from the National Museum in Cardiff came at a later date to inspect the site and had a small dig, hut no more coins were found. The hoard is now at the Museum wailing for a Treasure Inquest.

On the field where I found the silver stater, I also found a Roman silver Republic coin of Farat in poor condition which has been dated by the museum at c.60 BC. Also on the field I found eight hammered coins and nice silver posy ring inscribed ‘I like my choise’ which is now waiting for a Treasure Inquest.

On my own farm, on one field where I have detected on for 23 years I found a small Bronze Age hoard. A year ago I found an axe one evening with a small piece missing from it. The following evening I found the missing piece! The next night I found another broken axe but have never found the other part. This autumn we ploughed the field and cultivated deeply and found another brilliant find in the same area – it was a beautiful decorated Bronze Age socketed spearhead in very good condition. The museum now has the axes and the spearhead, provisionally dated to early to mid-Bronze Age. They are both going forward to Treasure Trove.

I would have loved to keep the spearhead as I’m sure it would have belonged to the chief of the tribe who was living on our farm. Somebody was here 3,500 to 3800 years ago, farming the same sod as myself and hunting the same pastures and wood and this same field has yielded many more finds – a 13th century religious copper seal, a Roman bucket mount and about a dozen hammered coins. I also found a medieval buckle, which is about the best I've seen for a long time. I mostly detect in the evenings because I’m still working on the farm.

What a wonderful relaxing hobby we all have. We all I think, have lean times but hang in there and hopefully a cracking find or two will materialise.

Gwyn Rees, 

RECYCLING – WASTE MANAGEMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS IN WENVOE

In Wenvoe our weekly collections for household waste and recyclable items are on Friday. This is the day we have to scurry out of bed early to put our bins and bags outside – as they have to be there before 7.00am, but you are not meant to put them out overnight as the paper and cardboard may become soggy and the birds and animals might scatter the contents about. For anyone unsure about when to put out their recycling the dates are helpfully given on page 3 of Wenvoe What’s On.

The recycling of items that can be recovered is very important and we should all make a positive effort to separate those many things which can be recycled such as Paper – Glass – Cans – Cardboard – Plastic – Clean foil – Empty Aerosols – and Cartons. These items should be put into the special green bins or blue bags which are readily available from the Alps Depot in Wenvoe at cost of £1 each. These items most definitely should not be put into black bags, Tesco bags and preferably not into any other plastic bag.

The Vale of Glamorgan Council is required by law to increase the amount of household waste that is recycled and this target is becoming higher each year. This year the target is 58% but it rises in 2019 to 64% and in ten years’ time it has to reach 70% which will be challenging. Councils who miss targets receive punitive financial penalties. So we all need to make a greater effort to recycle the items above – and to avoid the lazy option of putting recyclable items into a black bag.

Some may ask why we have to separate our rubbish, and there are a number of good reasons why we should. When we recycle, used materials are converted into new products, reducing the need to consume natural resources. If used materials are not recycled, new products are made by extracting fresh, raw material from the Earth, through mining and forestry. Recycling also helps conserve important raw materials and protects natural habitats for the future.

Using recycled materials in the manufacturing process uses considerably less energy than that required for producing new products from raw materials – even when comparing all associated costs, like transport. Plus there are extra energy savings because more energy is required to extract, refine, transport and process raw materials ready for industry compared with providing industry-ready materials. Recycling reduces the need for extracting (mining, quarrying and logging), refining and processing raw materials all of which create substantial air and water pollution. As recycling saves energy it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which helps to tackle climate change.

Current UK recycling is estimated to save more than 18 million tonnes of CO2 a year – the equivalent to taking 5 million cars off the road. When we recycle, recyclable materials are reprocessed into new products, and as a result the amount of rubbish sent to landfill sites reduces. There are over 1,500 landfill sites in the UK, and in 2001, these sites produced a quarter of the UK's emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Reducing kitchen waste is also very important. There are some obvious ways to achieve this such as buying less food, making good use of leftovers, and turning unused vegetables and salads which may have passed their “use by” date into good tasty soups.

Making a good effort in recycling shows good integrity, good community spirit and an awareness of the environment. If you do not have enough green bins or blue bags the council staff at the Alps depot will be pleased to sell you some. Let us in Wenvoe set a good example of environmental awareness.

DVSA Scam Warning

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Authority (DVSA) is warning the public of scam emails asking you to find your receipt attached.

‘We’re aware that some members of the public have received emails claiming to be from the DVSA Fixed Penalty Office which contains an attachment to a Fixed Penalty receipt. DVSA never sends fixed penalty notices to customers by email. We strongly advise anyone who receives any of these emails to delete the email without opening the attachment.

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