A nice gentle walk offering a pub stop and great views of the surrounding hills. You might see Herons or Kingfishers on the canal section – I see them more often than not on this walk.
There is normally parking available just by the canal bridge in Pontywaun, but you could park anywhere in Pontywaun / Cwmcarn to pick up the canal. The walk along the canal is nice and flat on a good tarmac surface.
There is a memorial to
Up a hill, just over a canal bridge on this walk there is a memorial to the 142 men and boys killed by an explosion on the 1st December 1860, whilst working on the notorious ‘Black Vein’ coal seam above Risca.
50 bodies from that disaster are buried here, in a now peaceful field, just above the canal that has shed its industrial past and is now teeming with wildlife, whilst the towpath is alive with joggers, walkers and cyclists.
The memorial was badly overgrown and largely forgotten until 2010 when a community payback project cleared the site and uncovered the memorial, part of which reads:
“A sudden change at God’s command they fell/They had no chance to bid their friends farewell/Swift came the blast without a warning given/And bid them haste to god in heaven.”
You then descend at the end of the canal section – where it is cut in two by the road – to the Darran pub if you wanted food / drink and cross the road heading towards the river.
You can walk the riverbank all the way to Crosskeys park which has a good play park for kids and lots of green space to run around in.
You can then cut back to the canal and head up some steep steps and a bridge over the railway. If you wanted to make this a pram friendly route, you could stick to pavements and head back to the car that way.