Inclined to cache? Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Alexander Cordell wrote many books about his beloved Wales. The
most well known is ‘The Rape of the Fair Country’ which tells the
story of the Mortymer family who worked in the fledgling iron
industry of the early 1800’s. This cache, like
The Queen Victoria Inn (GC18DDV) takes you to the real
locations from the story.
The iron forge at Garn Ddyrys was opened in 1817 to work the pig
iron produced from the furnaces at Blaenavon. The raw iron was
transported along a tramway from Blaenavon and the finished iron
from Garn Ddyrys taken further around the north side of the
Blorenge mountain and down to the canal at Llanfoist.
The tramroad from Blaenavon was taken through a 2.4Km long tunnel
under Garn-yr-erw mountain to Pwll Du and then around the contours
to the forge at Garn Ddyrys. The tunnel was built around 1818 and
still exists although it is closed for safety reasons. You can see
the northern portal of the tunnel. It's worth looking through the
gate which secures the tunnel mouth at how it was constructed. This
is a significant example of the industrial archaeology of the area.
Eventually the single track tunnel wasn’t capable of handling the
amount of traffic so a tramroad was built over Garn-yr-erw mountain
from Blaenavon to Pwll Du by Thomas Dyne Steel using an inclined
plane. This cache is located at the summit of the tramroad inclined
plane. Unfortunately erosion and later quarrying have destroyed
parts of it but from the top it is possible to see how long it was
and the gradient. It was worked by using full wagons descending the
slope to pull empty wagons back up. The footpath over Garn-yr-erw
roughly follows the tramway. The path is quite a long climb (from
either end) and due to erosion is rocky and muddy in places.
The cache container is a large box and is suitable for larger swaps
or TB's.
If you want to find out more about the industrial archaeology of
this important area there are many websites. A search for the
keywords ‘Blaenavon’, ‘Pwll Du’ and ‘Alexander Cordell’ will bring
up many sites which offer lots of information and excellent walks
around the area.
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