POSTPONED - Welsh Heritage Walks: The Story of Merthyr Tyd..

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Lowland and Hill Walks
Jun 13
2020

14 people attending

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£12.50
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This walk is roughly 19km

This is the third walk in the Welsh Heritage series of walks and this walk focuses on the great, surprising and sometimes heartbreaking history of the former [unofficial] Welsh Capital.

This walk starts and finishes in Merthyr Tydfil, which saw the worlds first railway steam train journey in 1804....surprisingly 25 years before Stephenson's Rocket Train supposedly changed the world. It was also the birthplace of the composer of Wales's saddest love song, Myfanwy. Joseph Parry went on to become widely regarded as the best composer to be produced by Wales.

We will pass the debtors court which is synonymous with the tale of Dic Penderyn. The working class martyr who's integral to the story of the 1831 Merthyr Rising, that saw the death of at least 24 members of the public and 16 soldiers.

We will then take a section of the Taff Trail and pass the site of the greatest heartache ever to befall Wales, Aberfan. Here 144 people, 116 of them children, died when the side of a slag hill collapsed and crushed Pantglas Junior School in 1966. 

The trail then leads onto Pontygwaith, where there has been an iron works since 1580. This iron works used to make cannonballs for the royalist army and so, during the civil war, became a target for the Roundheads fighting for Oliver Cromwell.

The trail then merges into the Trevithick Trail, named after the Cornishman who created the steam engine for the Penydarren Ironworks. In 1804 the worlds first steam train took 10 tons of iron and 70 passengers along this route during the worlds first ever steam train run.

We will then head back to Merthyr over Puddlers Bridge, where you will see sculptures of Merthyr born fashion designer Julien Macdonald, designer Laura Ashley and engineer Richard Trevithick

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