We are Paul and Rebecca and we explore abandoned railways canals and old
infrastructure this week we're exploring an abandoned railway tunnel in south wales.
we travel a lot to make our films and for me that always feels like quite a privilege
we are lucky enough to have a platform and an audience to listen to our stories and perhaps more
importantly we're lucky enough to have an audience to listen to the stories that we tell from the
past the stories that aren't ours but perhaps in us telling them will in some way mean that they're
remembered for that little bit longer and i guess that really does feel like a privilege because of
the way my head works i'm forever thinking about the next project that we're doing the next bit
of research the next location the next film the next story that we want to share with you
often we don't savour a place that we visit to the point that i have probably forgotten how to savour
and the trouble is with savouring it takes time and this really isn't what youtube nourishes
you see we edit the life out of our videos we try and ensure that your eye is kept moving
and not a moment to pause not a moment too much talking to the camera you name it every second
of today's attention grabbing information age is considered and then we publish and we move
on to the next product as if the last was just a passing thought today though is different today
is the one place that draws us back the one place that feels a little bit like home
it feels a little bit like we need to come back here it draws us in
the history the heritage the things yet to be discovered here the mountain the roots
the people the lives and the strife of those people this is the garnddyrys forge and tunnel
hi everybody uh welcome to a little video from the side of the blorenge mountain in south wales
you've been here for we've been here a few times before we love this place one of the things that
concerns us the most when we make these videos and we visit these wonderful old relics is who looks
after them now that's kind of obvious in the more modern railway sense when you look at things like
the brunel era and the early railways railway mania the middle of the 1800s
but what about before that so behind us right there that is a wall of a tunnel
now that tunnel was built around 1810 and it's not looked after specifically by anybody cadw
here in wales do a great job looking after their monuments but that's not on their list
it's privately owned it's open access land so you can come here but who looks after it now
we've been here before this tunnel twice and we've noted that there is in in a bad state so what we
want to do is try and document it this time try and have a good look inside it up and down it see
how far we can get and what um state it's in just to try and make a note and maybe pass on to cadw
for the meantime let's go and have a look inside the garnddyryrs forge tunnel so yeah we have been
here before this is the forge that operated in the early 1800s probably built around 200 years ago
and i'm not going to go into history too much now because i've done so already
so i'll add in the description below the prior two videos in their link
well the goal of today is to see how much is sort of navigable how many collapses there's been
over the years and just see if we can sort of have a look at it and document it because i kind
of feel that's kind of a thing yeah maybe i draw a map afterwards and everything so we say right
here's the claps here's the collapse here's what we think it was yeah let's do that do that okay
so whilst i'm clambering in the side entrance here let's bring up the map
as we start to go in and see if we can look at the layout of the tunnel this is google maps with
the traditional north view now this is roughly where we recall the tunnel position to be and
roughly concurs with some old maps possibly with a curve here on the southern side now our side
entry point is marked here with a big red arrow so let's flip this into the more pleasing 3d view
this is us now facing south looking towards a mountain looking southeast you can see the line
cut by the hills tram road across the side of the branch here before it headed into where we are now
at the garnddyrys forge it then carried on going around the valley through the Phw Du tunnel into
blannavum so let's pop our blue shape back on the map and let's get inside and see what we can find
right here's really interesting because i always used to think this part was a collapse and it
probably is but i'm not convinced because that is there is as clean as you like as in
very very on the other side there you can see another section so if i look up here
and through there you can see another section that is as crisp and clear and cut as you like so this
all that looks like collapse i'm not convinced it is there's a lot of masonry there but right
there is like a separate center section you're quite happy to get in and out of there alone
so we suggested that bit down there i might gonna have a look at it from above
because there's clearly two more bits there that would be quite easy to get to
so we'll do that from above in a moment but let's carry on going back the way we came
behind us see how far this goes this way i'm careful getting down with these rocks
there's a little rubbish in it but that there is good
so back the way we came back to that middle bit on the left you can see
you see a long way down there as well heck of a long way
obviously what's in front of us there is clearly a collapse
i say it's clear that's not convinced again
look at that it goes a heck of a long way that's a bit ropey there mama walking that is a bit ropey
a block hanging down and also interestingly just there you've got a side entrance you see that
that is daylight and a collapse
big spider and a long way down there hooks all the way down the left
i have a funny feeling this was purpose designed
the heck of a long way down there but i got funny feeling this here
that was purpose design you can see it's purpose design let's get a couple of pictures of that
so
hey you can see a light again
right good news is you can see light down here which means that there is good airflow potentially
another designed little hole up there look
so that there is a collapsing end now i think that is the portal
so if we can find that from above we're laughing because that is exactly what we want to know
we'll find out from above and see if that is the collapse
all right so back out the way we came up over the top to either portal to see if we can see
the extension to the west and if we can see the portal to the east so here we are on the tunnel
and you can see it going out that way slightly curving to the left and behind the camera to
the east off it goes that way now i was here and i went about 40 yards this way and you can
see what i thought first of all was the collapse let's have a look at that you need to be careful
so looking at that now there that is crystal cut nicely cut there's nothing else there
that's perfectly so i wonder if that was the portal main tunnel and this side here uh again
it looks very well cut clean i think that's another 50 yards of tunnel which is separate
why there's a lot of mesa in the middle i don't really know um literally i reckon 50 yard
straight line clear portal which we've never found which is ridiculous so let's go and have a look
all right shall i go in up to you all right there's no thistles running here that's always
a good start i know there's another exit because there's an exit end so that there it's just where
i've come in that's the western portal the likely western portal of the garnddyrys tunnel
flick it round and face east and we're now back um in the first section the western end
of the garnddyrys tunnel and this is the section i haven't been in before again look some great nick
looks really good well i'm loathe to think that is a collapse because of the portals here ahead
of us are very well kept um yeah and there we go there's the opposing view from what we saw earlier
although that there has shifted that's interesting maybe not recently but that has shifted at some
point i'm saying at least 50 years ago because of a little calcite that's growing over the top
of it but there is that line there i'm looking at anyway maybe that shifted um when they pulled
all this rubbling because i can't see that is part of the collapse if it was a collapse
there we go right let's go back out and try and find the eastern portal of the tunnel full stop
so i don't know if by this point in the video i've drawn a map of where i think the tunnel is
um i hope i do because that would be quite funky but we're walking now again eastwards along the
top of the tunnel with slightly off-center because we don't want to put any more pressure on it yeah
i entered the tunnel here there is your little collapse which wasn't far in so there it is now
that there you wouldn't be able to get out of that because that is about seven feet deep drop down in
uh so we're going to carry on walking now because this part of the tunnel i could walk
solid as you like solid fairly slowly there's a couple of bits of earth and stuff
and then as i came carried on going this way you could see it in the distance turning left right
okay you can see it and you can see the stone wall ahead of us looking left right yep it's turning
so we've just found this which is it looks like another collapse and may not even be the end
of this could be what i saw in the tunnel and assumed was the end but maybe it's not the end
maybe it carried on going further that way
right so that you see masonry down there so that must be the light i saw
i assume that was the eastern portal facing out this way because you can see you can see
i will go down there on account that there's only about half a foot gap between the soil and the in
the masonry and lots of things in that suit now i think it carries on here because there's a lot of
mason with eight there's no chance you're getting in there because i can't even see a hole in there
but there is masonry so that makes me think it does carry on even further or did carry on even
further but no chance again i said this end of the tunnel is obviously in a much worse state
um let's go down there see if we see any more evidence before we crack on
so let's zoom in to the eastern end of the tunnel and try and understand it a little better
this red arrow is the hole that we were just at where we found masonry either side although we
couldn't really show it well on camera oh and to the vegetation so we walked a little further east
to attempt to map the portal it was rather tricky and we did notice this section here
looked like it had collapsed there was a clear slope to the uh edge of the the ridge were
stood on just there so as we head further east you'll notice this bit of the land on top of
the tunnel seems to slope downwards could this be the end could this be where the portal is
and then finally you may also notice this where the red arrow is to be a warning perhaps this
was for the actual base of the tram road itself so maybe the portal is there between the orange arrow
and the red arrow and of course if we flip back to the original map that we used to try and map
the tunnel we believe this is now what it looks like with all of the key features um well i hope
we can map this a bit better now i hope we can look again in the future maybe in a year's time
come back again for the fourth time and make another little video about the the garnddyrys
tunnel hopefully you've enjoyed this little jump we love this place if someone would um
really sort of take ownership of it it's a world heritage site isn't it this this mountainscape
so um hopefully we'll we'll be back next week and we'll see you probably next sunday you