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New Years Day 2008 saw us walking off the after effects of celebrating the New Year in our village. It was another circular Valeways walk starting in the village of Wenvoe, near Cardiff. I was surprised to see so much open countryside so near to the city. It was a bit soft underfoot, but we did the 6 miles in just over three hours.

 

After leaving the village, the huge aerials of the TV/radio transmitter were clearly visible, shall we say, and gave us a handy distance marker from several points of the walk. Before long, we crossed an old railway bridge over what was once an extremely busy line. Opened in 1888, it carried one fully loaded coal train every 16 minutes.

It also carried many thousands of excited school children on their annual trip to Barry Island.

Rails long gone, just a slow and shallow stream nowadays.
This rather handsome brick used to be part of the bridge. The Cattybrook brick company also provided 74,000,000 bricks for the Severn Tunnel. Just the bare branches of trees in winter.

Wendy leads the way...

We had heard the odd bang as we crossed the field; now we know why.
I believe this is a Bracket Fungus, but am open to correction. We've been trying to sell Roy for ages, it looks as though our luck is in!

Winter trees, encore.

We enter Cwm George. Doesn't sound very Welsh though, does it? It is a very attractive steep sided valley with extensive woodland. The valley was shaped by water melting from the last ice age.
Lots of ferns lining the slopes.
Soon, we were traversing the edge of Dinas Powis Golf Course.

Then we got a bit lost, but I won't go into that.

 Penarth and the Bristol Channel in the distance.

This was an 'off road' type of road that would have been challenging to most cars.

We all tried different ways of crossing this particularly muddy stretch.
Just some old horse shoes on the wall of Wrinstone Farm. There used to be a hamlet here in the 12th century including manor house, chapel and up to 20 houses. All gone save the farm by 1878. This style seems to have lost its way a bit. Especially as you have to swim to get to it.

We always seem to encounter horses at some stage on these walks. better than bulls, that's for sure.

 Jean isn't quite sure how friendly they are going to be.
Three hours later and we are back at the car. We all agreed that it was a good walk and one of our favourites so far.