Tregaron 12m

The walk involved a good mix of open country and hillside side forestry tracks and farmland all capped with good views in good visibility. The flower of the day seemed to be the buttercup that lined the lanes. The weather forecast for the day was warm and sunny with the possibility of an isolated shower. The temperature reached a steamy twenty degrees at midday.

The walk started from car park just behind the Talbot Hotel from where they walked out of town for about a quarter of a mile along the mountain road that goes across the Cambrian Mountains to Llyn Brianne.

At a white bungalow called Llygad-y-rhiw they turned off this road into a dead end road and crossed a bridge over the river Berwyn continuing on into the driveway of Brynhownant. They passed through the farmyard to emerge onto a grassy track into a field as they slowly ascended Esgair Fedwen for about a mile before passing through a rusty gate to reach open access land.

They followed tracks over boggy ground and continued ahead following the line of a greasy, stony stream until they were level with the farm ruins of Bryn Coch.
At this landmark they turned towards a clear green path leading diagonally up hill passing another landmark - a small clump of trees surrounding a ruined barn, then followed a sheep track as they contoured around the hillside below Craig Pantshiri.
They then turned to follow the line of an ancient roadway running just above a fence and an old dry stonewall and followed the track as it descended gently around the hillside stopping on the bank for lunch as a very convenient cloud blocked out the baking hot sun for half an hour.

In the afternoon they crossed the Afon Berwyn and left the open land to reach the mountain road. Once on the road they climbed steeply for about a mile to reach the Forestry Commission carpark and took the permissive path along the forestry road to an official viewing point in the Cwm Cerwyn Forestry plantation with a view down the valley towards Tregaron.

The group continued along the main forestry track for about a mile and a half then left the main track for a minor one following it right to the end where it became a stony surface and then rough boggy grass and followed it to the edge of the forestry out onto the open moorland to ascend rough ground to the trig point of Garn Fawr, the highest point of the day at 1,549 feet, where they stopped to take in the panoramic views, with Tregaron in the valley below them.

Knowing that they had to descend the hillside they had to make the decision as to the best way to cross the open land avoiding the marshy areas to reach the end of forestry and a gateway. This gave access to a wide boggy track downhill that they followed for about a quarter mile towards Pant-glas to reach a bridleway and followed it across a stream to reach a road just beyond Gwndwn Melyn and then a dirt track to Cwm Gors. Taking a bridleway to reach a tarmac track they crossed a cattle grid to meet the road near the fire station then followed the road the last few hundred yards into town where they stopped at the Talbot Hotel for some refreshments and a debriefing.

Points of Interest.

Tregaron is a market town in the county of Ceredigion, lying on the River Brenig, a tributary of the River Teifi. The town is twinned with Plouvien, in Finistere, France. According to the 2001 Census, Tregaron's population was 1,183,of whom 68.8% spoke Welsh fluently.

Tregaron received its royal charter as a town in 1292. It owes its origin and growth to its central location in the upper Teifi Valley. It was the market town for the scattered agricultural communities in the broad, fertile countryside to the south and the rich landowners with extensive holdings in the uplands to the east, the home of many sheep and few people. To the north was Cors Caron which was a fertile land when drained, and to the west a hilly region with self-sufficient farmers on smallholdings of a few acres. These people all converged on Tregaron for the weekly market and the annual fair, Ffair Garon, where the sale of poultry, pigs, cattle and horses took place.

The charter for the yearly fair was granted by Edward I in the 13th century. Sheep fairs were held in May and June and two hiring fairs took place in November. A large number of taverns and inns in the town catered for the influx of country folk to these events.

In the middle of the 18th century, Matthew Evans kept an inn in the town. He had two sons and a daughter who were celebrated robbers and collectively known as Plant Mat. They lived for several years in a cave near Devils Bridge which still bears their name. They terrorized the district and would give to their friends a glove to act as a passport and identify them to their brethren. It was difficult to apprehend the trio because of the narrowness of the entrance to the cave that made it impossible to storm. After several years of success, they committed a murder and, eventually being taken, were sentenced to death and executed.

Tregaron was a main gathering place for the drovers who, before the advent of rail transport, herded large numbers of cattle, sheep and even geese hundreds of miles to the markets of south-east England. Many Tregaron men were drovers and accumulated considerable wealth in the process. They acted as news carriers and unofficial postmen and some were adept at avoiding tollgates.

The Tregaron area had a number of water-driven woollen mills and was a centre for the manufacture of hosiery. Woollen socks were knitted at home by men, women and children and sold at the market, often to dealers who resold them in the industrial valleys of South Wales.

The town holds an annual festival of harness racing in August, which also attracts race goers from across the UK. This was started in 1980 by the Tregaron Trotting Club. A race day is now also held early in May each year.

Tales about Twm Sion Cati vary on details, but he is usually said to have been born in or very near to Tregaron, in or around 1530, his mother being one Cati Jones of Tregaron. His father was supposed to be Siôn ap Dafydd ap Madog ap Hywel Moetheu of Porth-y-ffin, also near Tregaron. He was an illegitimate son whom his mother named Thomas. It was also common practice in rural Wales, traditionally a matriarchal society, for children with common names to be nicknamed after their mothers. Thus he became known as Twm Siôn Cati.

He was supposedly a Protestant by faith at a time when Mary I of England, a Catholic monarch, ruled and he had to gain an income as best he could, choosing robbery as his trade as his religion had him marked out as a rebel already and his high status meant that he could rely on any advantage or protection from others. As a young man he fled to Geneva in 1557 to escape the law. After the accession of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, he was able to obtain a pardon for his thievery, enabling his return to Wales in 1559.

Twm was active in west Wales, with forays into England, in the late sixteenth century. Stories centre on his tricks, with which he outwitted law-abiding people and criminals alike.

Although the original tales were passed on orally, there were later a number of written stories of Twm Siôn Cati. An English-language pamphlet, Tom shone Catty's Tricks, was printed in 1763. William Frederick Deacon wrote two books involving him in the 1820s. In 1828, T J Llewelyn Pritchard's The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shon Catti, descriptive of Life in Wales was published. Enlarged (and somewhat altered) editions of this followed. An eight-page pamphlet, Y Digrifwr, was published in 1844, its subtitle admirably describing its contents ("The jokester: a collection of feats and tricks of Thomas Jones of Tregaron, Cardiganshire, he who is generally known under the name Twm Sion Catti").