South Wales Part One

After our tour of the caves we left Cheddar Gorge by driving all the way up it and through some narrow country lanes. (At one point we were met by a series of trucks, each one about a minute after the last, all coming in the other direction!) As we headed to Wales, we crossed the Severn River at one of its widest points, and the bridge was enormous, very long and quite a feat of engineering, a very impressive structure.

Our B & B was The Mount Pleasant Inn, a little pub in Merthyr Vale, with a room newly refurbished, quite large and very comfortable. Our hosts John and Ann were very friendly and most helpful, providing us with a meal and lots of conversation each evening and morning! The photo above shows the view from our window out across the valley.

The next day we started our ancestral trail with Merthyr Tydfil, home to Elizabeth’s great great grandfather’s family (the Griffiths) in the 1830s. We visited the church of St Tydfil (pictured above) in the heart of the city. St Tydfil was a woman who was martyred around 480 CE allegedly on the site of the church. Apparently caught by rampaging Picts, she refused to recant her Christian faith and was therefore killed by them. The church was open and staffed by a local historian knowledgeable in the history of the town. He supplied us with photos, some small history books and a calendar celebrating the area’s pubs. Elizabeth was very pleased to find such a strong minded woman as the patron saint of her Welsh mining family and took this photo of the carved wooden stature of the saint.

After leaving here, we went to Dowlais to see the church where Elizabeth’s 3 times great grandfather Griffiths was married. It was no longer in use and now somewhat in ruins, as you can see.

We then set off to explore the Brecon Beacons, the area’s National Park. The scenery was much more inviting than the more common view of industrial towns in South Wales.

Towards the top of the mountain we visited another church connected with Elizabeth’s family, at a rural settlement called Vaynor. There had been two ancestral marriages here, in 1803 and 1838, so it was good to view the church where they took place. As it was clear this place had always been farms, we realised that Elizabeth’s 3 times great grandmother Humphries must have come from Welsh farming stock.