Mae gwenynwr lleol yn ysgrifennu am ei brofiad o gadw gwenyn yn Aberdar…
Mmmm… mêl ar fy nhost y peth cyntaf yn y bore… mmm… arogl persawrus yn codi i’m ffroenau… mmm… mêl fy hunan o gwch gwenyn ar ddiwedd yr ardd… mmmm… miloedd o weithwyr fach ufudd yn paratoi bwyd melys o flodau hardd y Cwm…
Breuddwydiaf am fwyd yn aml ac fe freuddwydiais am fêl a chadw gwenyn mêl ers pan oeddwn i yn blentyn. Daeth cyfle i wireddu fy mreuddwyd y llynedd pan ddechreuais cadw gwenyn yn Aberdar.
Postscript : One of the most depressing sights of the summer is the sight of people putting their ugly oily machines in the sea so that they can race about on show creating a lot of noise. The pollution caused by these useless toys threatens the natural habitat of many species, not just the bottlenose dolphins.
Once again Groundwork Trust host another Green Dayz Weekend at the Fedw Hir Eco Centre near Llwydcoed. The event runs this weekend on Saturday 17th May and Sunday 18th May from 10am until 4pm.
The fun-filled ‘green weekend’ is all free with plenty of activities to entertain the whole family including hands-on pottery and ceramic session, handmade twig pencil-making, felt-making, face-painting, willow weaving, hurdle fencing and … welly wanging.
For Saturday only there was grand show of eagles and owls, including the world’s largest owl who was, thankfully, quite placid and friendly.
According to the Groundwork Trust, Welly Wanging is a sport that originated in Britain, most likely in Yorkshire. Competitors are required to hurl a Wellington boot as far as possible within boundary lines.
In the brand-satured world we live in, corporations do their utmost to protect their brand name and logo. Shell – the Royal-Dutch Shell Group – are experiencing some difficulties protecting their logo at Trenant, near Hirwaun.
The Shell fuel station closed in January 2006, and the site has remained a rusting industrial eye-sore ever since. Soon after the business closed, they covered their signage and large logo with a white plastic sheeting to hide the ownership of the site.
Eventually this blew away. It was replaced by bright blue plastic material in February 2008. This looked like a cheap blue plastic bag one might use at nearby Rheola Market! This too blew away within a few weeks.
The fuel station is situated at the junction of Trenant and the ever-busy A4059 Aberdare to Hirwaun road. There is a pedestrian crossing within a few feet and this stretch of road has been the scene of many serious accidents over the years, hence the presence of a nearby speed camera.
As one of the UK’s largest corporations, one would expect a more responsible attitude towards the small community that has tolerated the presence of a fuel station since the 1960s.
Contact Details for Shell UK
Telephone Freephone 0800 731 8888
Address : Shell Customer Service Centre, Rowlandsway House, Rowlandsway, Wythenshawe. Manchester M22 5SB
Jane from Mountain Ash blogs here with a story on the proposed opencast plans for Mountain Ash…
We had a knock at the door last night from a nice man called Ian. It was -3*C and he was going door to door with a petition. Ian was collecting residents signatures for his petition to raise awareness of one anonymous landowners intent to dig for coal on a small plot of land behind the graveyard in Caegarw, Mountain Ash.
We had been wondering about the sounds of heavy machinery and the Apex Drilling vans seen on our street over the past few weeks.
It appears that the plot of land was sold by Lord Aberdare in the ’60’s to this man and he has twice been denied permission to excavate the coal from a 100 year old tip.
We understand that the land has a preservation order on it due to its environmental value following the tree planting which has occured on it. It is close to a hospital and two
schools, not to mention hundreds of houses.
We wonder why this is being attempted again, when the council and Welsh Assembly Government have spent over £20 million on cleaning up the Cynon Valley, when there are plans for a new community hospital less than half a mile from the site and when there are concerned residents, the authorities have done nothing.
Has planning permission again been sought? If so, wouldn’t the residents who live within 500 metres of the plot have been told? Where is our voice in all this? We understand that the land is an old tip. We don’t want a return to dust and smoke – we value our environment and hope that the council and WAG do to. Anyone know anything about this???
The residents of Caegarw are a vociferous bunch and we welcome any information that can help us get to the bottom of the drilling, digging and the looming threat of coal dust again…
Now that Tower Colliery has finally closed, the new language that has been incubating there during the past thirteen or so years finally emerges.
Tyrone O’Sullivan and Tower Colliery shareholders now speak the language of business development and exploitation, the language of managers of men and land, of balance sheets, profit and bottom lines.
Over the past year or so, stories have been drip-fed via the corporate press about possible developments at the Tower site after its closure, including entrepreneurial-sounding visions for a waste processing plant, a housing and retail development, a museum and a range of other schemes.
There has been much talk about creating “sustainable jobs” at the former Colliery site, but one is skeptical of this type of lofty talk. The only idea not discussed by Tower Colliery shareholders is that perhaps the land be left to recover after nearly two hundred or so years of gross industrial exploitation.
No discussion has taken part with the communities of Rhigos or Hirwaun, or indeed any other community that will be blighted by more industrial expansion or development at the Tower Colliery site.
The new language of Tower Colliery is the language of a business class.
Many people visit Aberdare Blog looking for creatures that inhabit Aberdare Park including the Bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) a rare and elusive African antelope, the black rhino, the bush pig, or giant forest hog.
We apologise, but we are only able to offer ducks, geese and other birds, trees, flowers, a variety of fungi, the annual colourful Carnival and road races, and of course, last but not least, the Aberdare Park grey squirrels.
We are nonetheless very, very proud of our local wildlife, flora and fauna.
Aberdare Park in Wales is around 50 hectares. Aberdare National Park in Kenya is around 77,000 hectares. The mind boggles at this scale.
If our mathematics are correct, you could fit nearly 3790 Aberdare Parks into the Kenyan Aberdare National Park.
Why did the Kenyans name such a vast nature reserve Aberdare National Park ?
Trecynon will get a good spring clean in the latest round of Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s street care ‘blitzes’.
Cleansing teams will be in Trecynon on Thursday December 6th with a range of equipment – including chewing gum removal machines, road sweepers and graffiti removers.
The street blitzes were launched three years ago, as part of the campaign to make Rhondda Cynon Taf a cleaner and safer place to live, work and visit.
Caught in the act of tearing up the Welsh countryside! Here is a photo of National Grid’s gas pipeline near Llanigon, north of Brecon.
The photograph was taken in mid June 2007. It is an ugly site to behold. The gas pipeline is a giant industrial phallus imposed on Wales by planners in London. A few corporations will benefit from this project. It will do little good to resolve the peak oil crisis we face in the next few years.
But do we not accept all the noise and the pollution ? Do we not rejoice at the smell and smoke that remind us of our industrial might ?
Ralph Borsodi’s book This Ugly Civilization (1929) reminds us of how man accepts the ugliness of his own creation :
THIS is an ugly civilization. It is a civilization of noise, smoke, smells, and crowds–of people content to live amidst the throbbing of its machines; the smoke and smells of its factories; the crowds and the discomforts of the cities of which it proudly boasts.
The places in which the people work are noisy. The factories are filled with the recurring, though not the rhythmic, noises of machines and the crash and clatter incidental to their operation. The offices, too, are noisy with the rat-tat-tat of typewriters, the ringing of telephones, the grinding of adding machines. The streets on which the people move about, and around which they work and play, resound with the unending clatter of traffic–the roar of motors, the squeaks of brakes, the shrieks of sirens, and the banging of street cars. And even the homes in which they are supposed to rest are noisy because they are not only packed close together but built tier on tier so that the pianos, phonographs, and radios in them blare incongruously above, below, and on all sides of them.
The people of this factory-dominated civilization accept its noisiness. For noise is the audible evidence of their prowess; the inescapable accompaniment of their civilization’s progress. The greater the noise, the greater the civilization.
The poet Harri Webb (1920-1994) spent twenty years living in Cwmbach in Cynon Valley. Today we could only spare twenty minutes in this Welsh village to reflect on the man and his work.
For a few of those minutes we stopped and stared from the Cwmbach hill and looked out towards the area of land they call Tirfounder Fields. The heart is being robbed from this land as the trees are ripped from the earth for a new housing development.
Hundreds of mature trees have been removed, simplifying the local environment in preparation for man and his machines to lay the concrete, the asphalt and the other toxic materials.
Harri Webb remembers the trees and birds in his poem “The Woods of Cynon” thus :
Aberdare, Llanwynno, all
Merthyr and Llanfabon,
The worst thing ever to befall
Was cutting the woods of Cynon.
They cut down many a parlour sweet
So pleasant with the sun on,
Places where men and boys would meet
In the forest of Glyn Cynon.
If a man had to take flight
From vengeance of the alien
He’d get a lodging for the night
With the nightingales of Cynon.
Many a birch tree in green attire
(Hanged high be every Saxon)
Is heaped as fuel for the fire
By the black men of iron.
For cutting down and making bare
The wild birds’ resting place
May confusion be the share
Of the false English race.
Better should the English be
Hanged in the depths of ocean
In hell to dwell in misery
For cutting the woods of Cynon.
I heard them saying yesterday
The parish is now so dreary
All the red deer have gone away
To the black wood of Mawddwy.
Hunting the badger and the hind
And the roebuck in the dell
All that is now behind
For Cynon Woods are felled.
If a stag was in the chase
Before the huntsman running
You’d never see him slack his pace
Till he reached the woods of Cynon.
If a girl came, fairest fair,
Beside the river strolling,
Pleasant it was to met her there
Down in the woods of Cynon.
And if they seek as in old days
For wood to bridge the river
Or build a church or a dwelling place
Glyn Cynon is no giver.
In judgement I’d set up a court
Of every honest fowl
And in his robes of office there
Their hangmen be the owl.
If anybody asks who made
This cruel declaration,
It’s one who often met his maid
In the forest of Glyn Cynon.
* from the Welsh of an anonymous poet (17th century).
Harri Webb, Collected Poems. Edited by Meic Stephens (Gomer, Llandysul 1995). ISBN 1 85902 299 5
Imagine living in a world with no birds and no spring songs to enrich our lives and nourish our souls. A world where the fires of industry had burned all the trees and where the only sounds were artificial and anonymous sounds : a chorus of machines, rotating monotonously.
This weekend the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds organised their annual Big Garden Birdwatch, perhaps the biggest such birdwatching event in the world. This event offered many people an opportunity to ‘re-connect’ with their own natural environment.
We take our environment for granted at our peril. By our overuse of chemicals we risk losing not only our spring birds, but poisoning ourselves. This is a lesson that an American scientist and writer taught in her book Silent Spring (1962). Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was a marine biologist working for the US Government. She started investigating the use of pesticides after receiving a letter from the owner of a bird sanctuary that had been sprayed by the US Government.
Rachel Carson wrote about the abuse of chemicals and the perils they posed industrial society. She questioned the received wisdom of science, and faced a barrage of criticism and opposition from publishers, fellow scientists, and in particular, the corporations who profitted from society’s increasing over-reliance on chemicals.
The idea for the book title was taken from the poet John Keat’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
In her book Carson was able to communicate an ecology freed from the laboratory and her academic training as a scientist. It was a subversive ecology and her text is a seminal work for the environmental movement.
This brave woman’s voice helped shape a new consciousness as she challenged a materialistic, rational industrial society heading for self-destruction. In her book she concludes :
The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. . . . It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth. – last paragraph from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962)
May 2007 is the Centenary of Rachel Carson’s birth. In Wales, as we go to the polls in May 2007 for the Welsh Assembly Elections, we may like to consider the legacy of this woman. If we value our environment and all that lives in it, then we should consider what our politicians stand for and vote accordingly.
Plaid Cymru’s Deputy President Jill Evans MEP has been arrested at the gates of the British Nuclear Weapons Base at Faslane in Scotland today and has been taken to Clydebank Police Station.
Jill Evans was arrested with Plaid Cymru Welsh Assembly Member Leanne Wood. Both were at the base to reaffirm Plaid’s commitment to nuclear disarmament.
Plaid Cymru is contributing to the Faslane 365 continuous blockade of the Trident naval base which includes members of the Westminster, Scottish, Welsh, Dutch and European Parliaments, and local councillors.
Speaking from Faslane Jill Evans said:
“We have taken part in the blockade today to reflect the views of the majority of people in Wales who oppose and have protested against Trident.
“Nuclear weapons make the world a more dangerous place. They will not protect us from global warming or terrorist attacks.
“The Labour government has to make a decision on the future of Trident. This is the opportunity to honour the commitment made by Britain 35 years ago in the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to disarm its nuclear weapons. In financial, environmental and security terms, the costs are too high.”
*
We salute both for their willingess to stand up for their principles and to protest peacefully… to “do and dare what is right”.
Today is Buy Nothing Day 2006. It’s a day to switch off from shopping and live more. It’s a chance to opt out of the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy albeit for just one day in the year. And most importantly it is a day to ask yourself serious questions and reflect on how you live your life.
Here’s a challenge… Choose a day of Voluntary Simplicity.
Opt out of shopping, spending, buying, consuming for just one day.
Freecycler Robert Grady is reunited with something special…
Retired railway worker Robert Grady was surprised to find a FREE railway manual offered on his local Rhondda Cynon Taff freecycling group.
Freecycling is way of recycling things for free – free + recycle – using the Internet. Aberdare’s local freecycling group is now nearly two years old with nearly 700 members.
As a conductor working across the Valleys railway lines, Robert carried this manual, and others, as part of his every day work load. “It’s a specialist manual called the National Routeing Guide so I was surprised to find it being freecycled,” said Robert.
“My wife Caroline and I learned to freecycle from my children… and we prefer to recycle rather than bin things… it’s such a waste.”
“We caught the train today. It was great to visit Aberdare once again.”
Photo : Caroline and Robert Grady from Porth in Rhondda Cynon Taff
Mae gwenynwr lleol yn ysgrifennu am ei brofiad o gadw gwenyn yn Aberdar…
Once again Groundwork Trust host another Green Dayz Weekend at the Fedw Hir Eco Centre near Llwydcoed. The event runs this weekend on Saturday 17th May and Sunday 18th May from 10am until 4pm.
In the brand-satured world we live in, corporations do their utmost to protect their brand name and logo. 
Now that Tower Colliery has finally closed, the new language that has been incubating there during the past thirteen or so years finally emerges.
Many people visit Aberdare Blog looking for creatures that inhabit Aberdare Park including the Bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) a rare and elusive African antelope, the black rhino, the bush pig, or giant forest hog.
Trecynon will get a good spring clean in the latest round of Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s street care ‘blitzes’.
The poet 
Imagine living in a world with no birds and no spring songs to enrich our lives and nourish our souls. A world where the fires of industry had burned all the trees and where the only sounds were artificial and anonymous sounds : a chorus of machines, rotating monotonously.
Plaid Cymru’s Deputy President 
“The Labour government has to make a decision on the future of Trident. This is the opportunity to honour the commitment made by Britain 35 years ago in the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to disarm its nuclear weapons. In financial, environmental and security terms, the costs are too high.”
