Monday, June 13, 2011

merthyr tydfil

The River Taff running through Merthyr Tydfil
For the price of an hour's minimum wage I am able to buy a return rail or bus ticket to several places in south Wales and England. A week or so ago I went inland to the town of Merthyr Tydfil in the Welsh Valleys and enjoyed a very fine hour's train ride through beautiful countryside and a day in a town that once held four ironworks.

I think I decided on the visit to Merthyr simply because I liked the name. From Welsh it translates as the 'memorial to St. Tydfil,' a daughter of an ancient king. Today, the town feels as if it's looking for a new start. It may be badly in need of a planner (the train station arrives on the doorstep of a shopping mall and its architecture is a jumbled mixture of the old with badly aging 60s renovations), but somehow Merthyr seemed to have a strong heart beating defiantly beneath its fractured surface.

There isn't much to do in the town's centre except shop, but outside the town is the Victorian-era faux-castle home of one of the ironworks industrialists which has been turned into a good little museum on Merthyr's time as a hotbed of the Industrial Age. The nice lady at the information centre told me it was 'only ten minutes' away, but in reality Cyfarthfa Castle is a twenty-minute walk from the town's centre -- uphill (which means it's downhill on the return!)

The museum relates the disparities between workers and wealthy employers and it gave me a good sense of how horrid conditions were while also pointing out that for many people industrialization gave them a chance to move away from backbreaking subsistence farming. Tough choices, sometimes no choices.


View from Cyfarthfa Castle with Cefn Viaduct in background
























Not surprisingly, given the sense I had about the town today, Merthyr has been a hotbed for lightweight boxing champions.

While having a bite to eat at Anne's Pantry on High Street, I met another little big man. Walking purposely through the cafe a young boy of about four, tousled haired in a pair of capri-length military pants, surveyed the tables and clients proudly. He carried a small cloth with him, walked to the back where his mother, the owner, was in the kitchen and complained that he wanted to clean some more. She gave him some cutlery to set at a table. Following that, like a captain proudly striding across his ship's bridge, he carried salt and pepper shakers to a table outside.

When I got to the train platform for the ride home (trains running every half hour until almost midnight), I met three young boys of about ten years of age on their bicycles and skateboards. A red-haired lad (or ginger, as they say here) immediately engaged me in conversation, asking if I was going to Cardiff, to which I replied that yes, I was. They were going to Newport, just beyond Cardiff, and had come up to Merthyr to use the skatepark, he told me. They were also going to visit the skatepark in Cardiff Bay before returning home. How wonderful and rather marvelous, I thought, that these boys use the train to broaden their skateboarding options. They were nice and well-behaved but nonetheless young boys and got thrown off the train for going up the aisle one time too many for the conductor.


High Street

Local lads bareback at the local

2 comments:

  1. I'm envious that you can take such nice day trips by train.

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  2. Yes, the bus and train service is excellent. I think Merthy Tydfil is only 25 miles away from Cardiff, but still that's a reasonable fare with options to return at practically any hour. There are a lot of small towns, cities and villages I'll be able to access this way. There is even a service in Cardiff as a city route -- actually 10 cents cheaper than the bus!

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