Fran, Paul and Bill take a walk to Werfa, near Treorchy
Tuesday 16 April 2002.

Werfa  SS  91279  94784

Paul has, in the past, expressed his wish to explore some of the hills in the South Wales coal field. He had the great idea to take a look at Werfa, a hill a few kilometres west of Treorchy in the Rhondda Valley. This would also provide Fran with a local walk. We arranged to meet Fran at 10.am on Tuesday 16 April, then prayed for fine weather. We must have done something right for the day was very nice with lovely sunshine and puffy white clouds - a "Simpson" sky (devotees of the "The Simpsons" will know what I mean).

The VHF masts atop Werfa soon became evident as we approached the meeting place. We all arrived simultaneously. We parked at the start of the track leading to the masts. This was no beauty spot, in fact Paul had to be physically restrained from searching amongst the debris of wrecked cars for spares. The place was knee deep in all sorts of wreckage. Anyway off we went in the direction of the masts behind which was our first objective, the trig point of Werfa (568m).

The details duly checked, Fran then had some instruction from Paul on setting a waypoint in her new Etrex GPS. The going underfoot was deceptively soft. The ground was dry but comprised a fair depth of peat, much of which had been churned up my motor cycles. The walking was easy and our route took us west towards the col between Werfa and Mynydd Caerau The further hill Coetcae Isaf stood out against the darkness of distant forestry and the village of Blaengwynfi could be seen to the north west. Further along a view of Craig Walter a quite spectacular cwm presented itself. The pull up to the top of Mynydd Caerau was soon achieved with a bit of contouring. On the way up a nice view of Werfa and its masts could be seen . By the way, while Paul and I were plodding along with out daysacks on our backs, Fran's load comprised little 2 year old Emily in her backpack/seat. At first Emily seemed to be a bit concerned by the cold southerly wind, but once wrapped up snugly, she nodded off for a while while mum plodded on to the top of the hill. At the trig point of Mynydd Caerau (555m) we checked the height and grid.ref. then, Paul and Fran went looking for the actual high spot as shown on the 1:50000 map, but not on the 1:25000 map. This point was allegedly some metres away in a north westerly direction from the trig point. The top was fairly level and to ascertain the actual top proved fairly inconclusive.

The return trip was enjoyable with a nice view down the Garw Valley
to Blaengarw. Soon we reached the Werfa Trig Point giving Fran a chance to practice her GOTO technique with her Etrex. It wasn't far to out last port of call, the little summit Twyn Crugyrafan which was once a large cairn with a trig point on the top.
The trig point has been demolished together with some of the cairn.

This had been a short walk of about five and a half miles which suited the purpose of visiting some summits and giving Fran a chance of an accompanied walk. Also Emily seemed to thoroughly enjoy the proceedings spending her time either sleeping or singing on mummy's back.