Off your bike! - Canal Caper Series Traditional Cache
WelshCathRog: Post carrying cache has gone. Nowhere to fix a new cache.
Off your bike! - Canal Caper Series
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This cache is part of the ‘Canal Caper’ series of caches. This walk is along the Neath canal path and most caches can be reached from the path. Please be aware that there is deep water in the river Neath and in the canal so please take great care especially with geokids and geodogs. The caches were placed with the kind permission of The Neath Canal navigation Company.
Descend the steps on the left of the entrance to the car park. This walk is along the Neath canal, which was opened from Glynneath to Melincryddan, to the south of Neath, in 1795 and extended to Giant's Grave in 1799, in order to provide better shipping facilities. With several small later extensions it reached its final destination at Briton Ferry. The canal was 13.5 miles (21.7 km) long and included 19 locks. In 1856-60 approximately 200,000 tons of coal was brought down annually for shipment at Giant’s Grave. However, after the opening of the Vale of Neath Railway the trade began to dwindle and by 1893 had ceased altogether. The Neath canal finally closed in 1934. The Neath and Tennant Canals Preservation Society was formed in 1974 with the aim of restoring the canal for use by everyone. This is now an area of peace and tranquillity, even with the cars roaring along the road overhead as you walk under the bridges! Look out for ducks, swans and barges as you walk along. Beware of Muggles as it is a well used path.
If you wish to walk this series or section as a linear route then you can get the X5 bus from Glynneath to Neath via Resolven. From Neath you can get a range of buses to / from Briton Ferry including X1, 227 and 202. You can check the current timetable on www.traveline-cymru
The whole of the walk is along cycle path 47 from Briton Ferry to Neath and then along cycle path 46 from Neath to Glynneath. There is one section off the canal along the B4242 from Abergarwed to Resolven. This makes the whole route cycleable.
The walking path is along the canal most of the way, however, the section between Abergarwed and Resolven has to be walked along the footpath by the B4242 - follow the cycle path 46 markers which link this section. The road was built over the old canal at this point and the canal is picked up again in Resolven. The whole route is approximately 12 to 13 miles. The route can also be split into sections e.g.
- Briton Ferry to Neath,
- Neath to Aberdulais,
- Aberdulais to Clyne
- Clyne to Ynysybwllog Aqueduct
-Ynysybwllog Aquaduct to Abergarwed (then along the B4242 to Resolven)
- Resolven to Glynneath
If you would like to have a flavour of what life was like on the canal as the barges carried coal from Glynneath to Briton Ferry then Alexander Cordell's book 'Song of the Earth' paints a vivid picture of the Neath Canal in the early nineteenth century and is a very good read.
The cache is a camouflaged nano which contains only a log sheet so please bring your own pen or pencil.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Gur uvag vf va gur gvgyr naq gur pbagnvare vf n zntargvp anab.
Treasures
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