The Garw Valley

This area is a snapshot tour of the valley and how it looks today.
There are various bits and pieces and some of them will be disjointed but I hope that you will still find it interesting.
The centre of the valley is the village where I live this is called Pontycymer and here you can see a general view of Pontycymer.

It has been developed very much in the last 20 years or so and has changed beyond all recognition.

There is another part of this site Now and Then where you can see the extent of some of the changes.

In the main photograph at the bottom, you can see a part of the new lake that has been built on the site of the old colliery.
In this photograph you can see a closer view of the lake.
It is not unusual to see people taking walks around the lakes, this is a big contrast because for so many years it was the colliery grounds and after the demise of the pit the area was in a very poor state and it looked just like a very bad building site.

Children of course are never far from the scene of any water and in the summer use the lakes for swimming and playing in, this is slightly different from the past when children would dam a river and then swim in it but not this river as the colliery would use this river for washing the coal and the river would run black with coal dust almost all the time and the river was know locally as the Black River. There is now a path is on the bottom of the valley floor and many more people now ride bicycles up and down the valley as well as walking and jogging.