PLEASE NOTE: The most obvious route to this cache is currently under legal dispute as a public thoroughfare due to a planning error on Carmarthenshire County Council's Definitive Map and my original recommended route, since last summer, is being actively prevented by a local land owner both by signs and also by personal intervention (see past log entries) despite it being a walking route used by locals for many years. Since this is an on-going issue, this cache can actually be approached from the opposite direction along an established public footpath from a country road that starts in Garnant or by an alternative route from GCG - see description below.
This unfortunately invalidates some of the description of what you can see, given in the description below - but I recommend going to have a look at some of this infrastructure before/after finding the cache if you have the time.
Alternatively, here is a description of an alternative route from the GCG side by PKBathrooms: Walk past the waterfall which is well below you. Do not turn right where you see the private signs through the trees but head straight up the road. After about 30 yds you will see a slight bank. Head up this bank which leads straight on to the foot path to the cache.
The cache is placed not too far from a Royal Observer Corps cold war nuclear bunker, one of 1563 set up around the nation in the 1950s to warn the public of impending nuclear attack, monitor the effects of nearby nuclear blasts and report back the path of nuclear fallout (should the telephone line have survived!).
The first thing to take note of on the way to the cache is the arrangement of railway viaducts that branch off the still existing (but now unused) railway line. At Gwaun Cae Gurwen the junction was originally planned to be triangular, with an east curve from the existing line to join the new line. A four-arch viaduct was built, but astonishingly, it was never used. I suspect someone's head would have been on the block had this happened in today's bean counting economy!
The branch only ever used the western viaduct and is one that ran to Abernant Colliery until the mine's closure in 1988.
Abernant Colliery shortly prior/after closure. My uncle worked here for many years until the coal dust made him an invalid with chronic breathing problems. These very engines used to wake me up when I was a child, in the small hours in the morning as they trundled up and down the line near Ammanford. BR Class 37 - more commonly called Tractors or Growlers due to the noise they made. Image credits, see below.
The railway has subsequently been lifted. Rail traffic continued on the single track you saw where you parked until the mid 1990s to washeries situated a short way up when it was mothballed when the washeries closed. When the cache was placed in 2007 it seemed that a £1 million refit on the branch from Ammanford (Pant-y-Ffynnon) to GCG was a folly after initial plans for its use fell through, but since then a recent service of 1-2 trains a week now service the nearby opencast mine, taking coal to Aberthaw power station.
The Amman Valley Railway Society also have aspirations of opening this and indeed the branch to Abernant one day as a herritage steam line. Indeed, they have now purchased all the necessary land from the two arches in Gwaun Cae Gerwen to Abernant with this in view.
More recently they have released a long term plan to turn the line into a loop commuter line running from Swansea, via the Amman Valley, to Abernant and then purchase land all the way to Pontardawe then down the Swansea Valley back to Swansea.
On your walk to the cache you will have some excellent chances to see the eastern, never used viaduct. Walk up the small roadway to the point just after it crosses the Cwm Garnant river. Your course will be the track-way that branches off the road to your right - carry straight on down for another view of the viaduct or turn left for the route to the cache.
You'll eventually cross the course of the Abernant branch on a bridge over a deep cutting. See how overgrown the track-bed is already!
Close to the cache location you'll see a small gateway. This is in fact the official access gateway to the ROC nuclear bunker. But where is the bunker?
This is the closest you can get to the bunker without going on private, no-access land. But from the gateway, look up the field - there's a telltale lone telephone post, a sure giveaway of an ROC post if ever there was one! The bunker is now completely overgrown and even if you trash your way to the hatch, it's been filled in with gravel and concreted over.
The trackways you're walking along are some of the now long forgotten tracks that interlinked the local farms in the past. Now merely rights of way and public footpaths.
Be careful when looking for the cache itself - there's a small amount of old barbed wire in the area at waist height, along with some thorns, but the cache is easily accessible.
