Hen's Guided Tour Of The Tennant Canal - Jan 2001
The Tennant Canal - Port Tennant to Tonna
I made it my mission to walk the Tennant Canal in this week, and I can now proudly say that I walked the entire length. It is hardly the most famous waterway and certainly isn't one of the longest, yet to walk it is a real treat. On its short route it passes some of the most tranquil unspoilt landscapes of South Wales, apparently forgotten. This is despite, or more likely because, it is right next door to the industrial areas of Swansea Dock and the Neath Riverside.The route
To pin-point the start point on a small scale map of area - click here.The canal starts at Port Tennant on the eastern outskirts of Swansea. It runs roughly parallel to A483, the coastal road which connects Swansea Docks and the East the city to the M4. It then turns sharply inland and follows the river Neath, through Neath and connecting with the Neath Canal at Tonna, in the Neath Valley.
Port Tennant
Port Tennant is on the opposite side of the River Tawe from the city. It follows the base of Kilvey Hill and overlooks the docks. The view from the main road is an impressive industrial scene.
The view from Port Tennant
towards the sea.
Railway sidings front a view the dock cranes. Oil and gas storage cylinders and a reactor are in the background. Somewhere between the truck and the sea, the A843, main dual carriageway is completely lost in the scene.
Map of Port Tennant and the start of the canal
According to the map, the the canal starts at a wide pool in Port Tennant. The Vale of Neath Arms, on the dual carriageway, is now boarded up and is a sad sight to see. The road into the east side of Port Tennant dives under a very narrow railway bridge only yards after leaving the main road at the pub. Immediately after the bridge, a track leads into the distance, next to the railway sidings. I couldn't find the wide pool, as marked on the map, and this track looks very private and very un welcoming as it passes a few houses and a burnt out car.
Don't be deceived, as soon as the track has passed the entrance to the city's landfill entrance, it becomes pleasant quiet and suspiciously well tarmaced. According to the map, at this stage we are walking parallel to the canal, only yards from it. In reality the canal has completely vanished and there are reeds as far as the eye can see to the left and a surpassing amount of EWS activity on the sidings to the right.
The tarmac is eventually explained by a mile post indicating that we are on the millennium cycle route! I knew I wanted to be here, but the entrance to this track still put me off, so I can't imagine many passing cyclist having a quick nose down here. The cycle path disappears without trace anyway after a few hundred yards and then the canal finally comes into view.
It is worth the wait. - The best way to describe it is with one word - tranquillity.
Actually it would be better to say that two canals seems to gradually appear from the miles of reeds. This is the junction with the Glan-Y-Wern Canal, marked as disused on the map. There is significant flow on the canal at this point, and the scene looked entirely natural; a river taking water away from the miles of wetland. It seemed like no one had been there for years and years and the only sounds were those of the birds and there were hundreds of them. I couldn't believe that I was only 1/2 a mile from the dual carriageway and some seriously heavy industry. According to the map, the Crymlyn Bog is a nature reserve of rushes and marshland, which covers several square miles. It would be wonderful to take a tiny boat, (a punt?,) right through it along the course of the Glan-Y-Wern.
Looking back along the canal
towards the wetlands.
The only signs of life are
the power lines cutting across the reads.
The towpath is far from the tarmac of the disappearing cycle route, but the path is pretty good condition, and only slightly overgrown in sections. Out of nowhere a huge pipe bridge appears in the distance. It carries gas and oil pipes between the oil refinery at Llandarcy and the terminal and storage at the docks. Some might say its an eyesore - but its impressive how the pipes glide over the wetlands on stilts, a few feet above the reeds.
An impressive bridge, but
have any boats gone under since it was built?
This
section of the canal doesn't look like it has been navigated for years.
The pipes head towards Penisa'r-coed
on the top of the hill and down the other side to the refinery at Llandarcy.
Jersey Marine
Even after living in Swansea for 4 years and exploring it well, I'd never realised how impressive the location of Jersey Marine is. The village is nothing special, but it is surrounded by a wealth of interesting sites, both natural and industrial. The village sits low in the wetland with wooded hills surrounding it.Map of the Jersey Marine area
Be warned - within sight of Crymlyn Bridge, where the canal passes through the village, the towpath disappears completely. Here the path is a narrow ledge of soil with reads in water on either side. At times it is easy to forget which side of the canal you are on! At one point I had to wade, as the path was well below the waterline.
After the bridge, the towpath has been maintained well, (on the other side of the canal,) and the canal looks navigable. There is even a boathouse, which made me wonder if the canal was still used from this point onwards. Later this was proved not to be the case. The wetlands at this point have a picnic and viewing area, accessed from the B4290. Although they are far less impressive that the Crymlyn Bog, they are much more assessable, with two raised walkways connecting Jersey Marine, the canal, and the picnic area.
The canal heads away from
Jersey Marine. The wetland viewpoint is to the left of here.
The pylons
in the background head over the hills a straight line toward Briton Ferry,
on the other side of the River Neath.
After passing underneath the Burrows Sidings, under two particularly low and dark iron bridges, the canal makes a sudden change of course. It turns northward toward the gas works and the view changes dramatically. The reeds and the hills are replaced by wasteland, the M4 motorway (up on its stilts,) the A48, (up on its own stilts,) the A483 and a mass of railways. No particular part of this was impressive, and photos were impossible because at this stage the rain was bucketing down, but the whole scene is impressive.
The path is in bad condition here and there seems to be some very brutal
earthworks going on, leaving much mud and some scary temporary girder bridges.
You do need to take one of these before the gas works and avoid a very
marshy dead end!
Junction 42 of the M4
Anyone who has used junction 42 will be well aware that it is a little 'odd.' This was the section of the motorway to be opened, (for a good while the two parts of the motorway didn't join up!) Long motorway spurs were made to funnel all the traffic onto the A48 to cross the River Neath. This was all aerial, taking account of very very tall ships perhaps? When the motorway bridge was built next to the dual carriageway A48 bridge, it seemed like it all might look a bit of waste of time so loads of really bendy and scarily links were added. All of these are up in the air and are very confusing. Its like spaghetti junction, up in the air, scaled down (but no less complicated,) and without the traffic. This means that you can go anywhere you want in this area on the A48, or the motorway or on a redundant motorway spur. Its overkill.Oh I forgot - the model they used to design it all forgot to take the wind into account. This is a problem when you're building a road on stilts, in a flat river valley, near to the mouth of the river. This means that the top speed on any part of the maze is 50 mph and the motorway is often closed. Luckily there is the A48 only a few yards away and there is plenty of slip roads!
Anyway I mention all this because the M4 is very wide at the point the
canal goes under it, and it can be used to shelter from the pouring rain.
If it happens to be raining.
Typical weather under the
M4
Neath Abbey
A map of Neath Abbey and Neath areaAfter going under the motorway, the canal inters a very quiet section. There is nothing remarkable about this stretch water, but it is still pleasant. There are goods railways on both sides of the canal. Both of these are operational and have plenty of EWS activity.
After passing under the main railway, (a branch of the main-line, but still bigger than all the other sidings seen so far,) the path emerges onto a small track with a narrow bridge and lunatic tipper trucks zooming past, glaring at you. BE PREPARED - this is a shock after seeing no one for hours. From this point the tow path should continue on the other (western,) side of the canal.
As luck would have it, this is the only section of the path marked as a right of way, so everyone has done all that is humanly possible to ensure that is completely impassable. I know- I passed it & I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, not even a prat like myself.
The towpath has been eaten by some huge ground moving vehicle and all kinds of rubbish is flowing down the bank from the criminal scrap yard owner on the other bank. (No libel here, the fly tipping is crime enough.) This truly is a section of unpleasant and unloved water, but this is where there is a pair of swans.
A very careful look at a 1:25000 scale map shows that the right of way suddenly diverges from the towpath. I didn't notice this, and there was no path on the ground anyway and this is what I stumbled on:
The canal is sealed where
it goes under the A465 near Pentreffynnon, Skewen.
Note
the dates 1973-1985.
The canal is completely sealed off as it goes under the dual carriageway. My immediate question was, why? And what's this 1973 business?
I turned round and headed back to the bridge over the canal, next to the scrap yard. Here there is the option to go underneath the dual carriageway to some wasteland. The mad truckers road appears to be another spare road in the spaghetti. It is very wide, but half the width is unkempt and is very local. Beware of litter and other rubbish, everywhere, and the local boy racers. (The dog walkers are friendly though.)
Its possible to get down to the other side of the sealed bridge, which is sealed from the other side as well!!??? This time there is a huge padlock & I therefore presume there is one on the inside of the other iron door. Why seal both ends? The weird thing is that the canal looks navigable from Jersey Marine, past this.
The next section of towpath is completely impassable, as the canal passes through a very steep cutting and the bank is in bad condition. There is a bridge marked on the map, which appears to be entirely fenced off on the eastern side. It isn't! a small path takes you to the Neath Abbey Trading Estate. Walking through the small estate seems like a really bad idea but it takes you to through a pedestrian gate at the back, leading to a junction. Every track looks like a private drive, but take the one on the left and you arrive back at the canal, right next to Neath Abbey.
Neath Abbey and the aqueduct
over the River Clydach
The abbey is on the other side of the river, but there is a bridge immediately
in front of the abbey itself. The abbey was much bigger and more impressive
than I'd imagined and a small aqueduct adds to the whole scene. At
this point the town and river of Neath come into view, along with the M4
again. The light was fading rapidly so I pressed on.
Neath
On its approach to Neath, the canal runs parallel with the river. It is very impressive how the canal stays full when its hundreds of feet above the river below it. The river Neath carries a huge volume of water, (much more than the Avon or the Tawe,) and is impressive to see from a height.
The River Neath, below the
canal and the only craft seen in the canal.
How does this soil keep
the canal in? Note the bizarre bridge arrangement.
As the canal carried on towards Tonna, I took the impressive stone bridge over the river and into Neath, as it was rapidly getting dark. Note how the impressive bridge is cut dead by the A465, so the obvious answer is to build another pedestrian bridge on top. That's right the bridge over the road is on top, not behind, the redundant bridge over the river. That is clever.
Now for a train back to Swansea, to carry on the next day.
Proof that Neath is at the
end of the rainbow.
Neath (Day 2)
The track at Swansea, heading toward Neath.
The next section of canal is quite pleasant, but isn't exciting.
Map of the area around Cadoxton-Juxta-Neath.
The towpath is in good order, but with railways on either side of the waterway, together with the original and new Neath Valley roads, a lot of time is spent under concrete bridges and roundabouts.
The A465 Bridge, A4109 bridge
and B4434 bridge over the canal.
Tonna and Aberdulais
Tonna is a small town, with allot of arteries. Four main roads join, the rivers Dulais and Neath join and the Neath and Tennant canals join as well. It's no surprise that it has more bridges than anywhere I've seen.
Map
of the Tonna and Aberdulais area
The view from the B4434
bridge over the River Neath.
Behind
the railway bridge is the Tennant Canal aqueduct.
The canal joins the Neath Canal immediately to the right (NE) of
the picture.
Behind the aqueduct the Neath river heads to the right (NE)
Next
is the new A465 valley road over the River Dulais as it joins the river
Neath.
Finally
the old valley road, now the A4109 crosses the Dulais
I told you there was a lot of bridges.
As the the canal enters Tonna, it passes under the old road, (that bridge isn't even in any of the photos,) and immediately enters a lock. It was here that I met up with Sim. So now I shall say 'we', not 'I'.
The sight is a very sad one. A huge iron fence prevents anyone from getting anywhere near the lock or the aqueduct. The weir in the river and the channel to fill the canal are also worth a look. Again the channel is protected by a huge fence. The former lock house is now a branch of the British Legion. It appals me that they don't have the respect for the canal that it deserves. The lock is stagnant and shuttered and the fence really spoils an otherwise impressive scene.
Don't be fooled - access to the aqueduct is straight forward, from the
other side of the river. As you can easily cross the river on the aqueduct,
you can see the lock. Standing on the other side of the fence, will make
it al seem even more non-sensical.
The aqueduct carrying the
Tennant Canal over the River Neath. Now sadly dry.
Note
the weir.
Crossing the river on the B4434, within Tonna, there is a tourist sign just past The Railway pub, directing you the Aberdulais Canal Basin. Sounds nice? It's actually a mud bath.
It's still well worth going under the railway arch to the basin, because then you can hop up on the aqueduct and cross the river on it. It can now be seen that the aqueduct has been bricked up at both ends and is entirely dry, except for a little rain water. Very disappointing, but the view is still good.
In the 'basin', (i.e. mud, gravel and a GroundHog,) the stub of the Tennant Canal, before the brickwork, joins the Neath Canal. It would be nice to see them linked properly again as they spend so much of their routes within eyesight of each other, on opposite sides of the River Neath.
The Neath Canal is significantly wider than the Tennant, but has many
obstructions in this area. We soon turned back, as the mud set in.
There's work going on at
the Neath Canal, but right now its not too pleasant here.
Crossing the river again, under the new road and over the old road takes
you to Aberdulais Falls.
We didn't get a chance to look at these NT attractions, as they were
closed and I can assure that all attempts to go via the housing estate
back alleys are useless. We ended up above the falls clinging to a tree,
with a 7 foot spiked fence between us and any views there may have been.
The bridge to nowhere at
Aberdulais falls. (View from the A4109)
Time to head back to Port Talbot for some more photos.
The new valley road as it
crosses the Dulais and runs parallel with the Neath.
Only a four
second shutter speed - some of them are speeding.
The end..