A Grand Day Out

How about this for a place to live? Cold, windy, boggy and infested with rabbits. It is truly a beautiful location and well worth a visit. Take a drive and head for Carmarthen then take the A484 road towards Kidwelly and turn left onto the B4309 at the fork in the road. Carry on a short distance and take a left onto the B4306  through Llangyndeyrn and you climb steeply up the mountain. Just as you come to the top you will see the open land to your left. Park somewhere safe along the road and there is a gate which takes you onto the path up to the standing stone. Take a picnic and take in the spectacular views. 

Ancient Stones & Chambers

A Link To Our Ancient Past

Mynydd Llangyndeyrn  may have been a centre for ritual and funerary activity from at least the Neolithic period  to the late Bronze age. There are two Neolithic   cairns.

Bwrdd Arthur and Gwal Y Filiast  which may have shared a common covering stone cairn. A large 3m tall standing stone represents the Bronze Age.

There is also a smaller companion stone, and a variety of round barrows of differing designs including ring cairns and ring cairns with cist burials. 

There are stone field boundaries and a cist burial to the East but these are hard to find. 

A Village Tour

Pontyates

Named after the man who built the bridge it dissects the river Gwendraeth Fawr. Today was the first time I have stopped to take a look at the river. It always seems very low in fact the recorded depth this week was 0.28 metres. I did spot some fish jumping and the water looked clean. There seems to be a lot of shale built up on either side of the bridge but even so the river was quite fast flowing.Apparently this shale is as a result of the colliery using the river water to wash the coal and an interesting story unfolds (see link) Hansard/Commons/1945/mar/29/flooding-pontyates-carmarthenshire There are meadows either side with some lovely wild flowers coming into bloom. There is also a walk along the banks and it is well used by dog walkers. The river eventually finds its way down to Kidwelly and out into the estuary. The river has it's source up at Llyn Llech Owain in Gorslas (blue bog), we also resided near there for some time. Pontyates has an elevation of 15 metres above sea level so the river does fall on its way down to the estuary. Imagine the benefits for tourism if one were able to take an indian canoe from Pontyates down to Kidwelly through al that lush meadowland. One can only imagine what could have been had the honourable gentlemen of the time had their way and had the river dredged.

St Clears Boating Club

St Clears Boating Club.From the W D Evans collection.

Phil Bennet

Phil signing an autograph for some local boy. More mages like this on www.facebook.com/themezzaninestclears

Measles Epidemic

66 years ago the measles epidemic was here.Image ©Alan Evans from the W D Evans collection

Sideburns and Flares

The Queen arriving in St Clears. More like this on www.facebook.com/themezzaninestclears

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GIVE THANKS

With almost 100,000 children homeless in the U.K. today we have to give thanks for a roof over our head, food in our stomaches and the people around us to help and care. The statistic may not move some or shock but it is an absolute outrage. The media and the Government have jumped on the Derby case and demonised the poor yet again. The middle classes and wanabee upper classes are being whipped into a frenzy of fear and loathing of the poor. Meanwhile the TV execs and newspaper journalist allow the parasites and criminals to get away with more and more choosing to ignore the real stories of corruption and greed. 

 It is a world we see changing and one familiar to the likes of Charles Dickens. It is no coincidence that the largest pockets of poverty in England are in the familiar location of Limehouse and Poplar. Of course the media scoff at this or they wheel out someone to analyse some statistics but never the real people.

You see we have just taken his parent's home away and Nick is working out how many more homes on the street can be flattened to make way for a wind farm. That is what we need in the U.K.