Latest news with #Blaenavon
Yahoo
20-07-2025
- General
- Yahoo
I tried: These award winning cheeses made in Gwent
JAMES Joyce once described cheese as 'the corpse of milk.' As a veteran cheddar sceptic there's nothing more corpsey than cheddar 'cheese'. I also regard adding faddish ingredients to cheese as pointless. Cheese is just milk, culture and time. So, when challenged to try a cheddar that has cider and marmalade added to the mix, I envied those munching - or slurping - on pot noodles. I had long dismissed cheddar as dairy's beige wallpaper, fit only for grilling, a workday sarnie filler or to placate uncouth guests with a token cheese plate. Proper cheese, I insisted, should challenge the palate, not comfort it. So, when I was dared to try Blaenafon Cheddar infused with onion marmalade and taffy apple cider, I braced myself for disappointment, culture shock and possible revulsion. My last brave food assignment was trying what was billed as 'Wales's best hot dog' at Aimmee's Street Food, and was impressed by the top dog! I do believe in food redemption, but not in miracles, so I didn't hold out much hope for cheddar from Blaenavon with added bits. Taste test: Ok, I was completely wrong about cheese and my own palate! From the first bite, it was clear this was no ordinary cheddar. The texture was a revelation, buttery and still as crumbly as any quality mature cheddar. The mouthfeel was exquisite, the combination of complexities made me search for cheese accompaniments and pretentious foodie words like 'umami'. The flavour was layered and complex. The mature cheddar brought a deep, savoury hit, while the onion marmalade added a smoky sweetness that contrasted the crisp cider vibe. It was sweet and sharp, rustic and refined, a cheese with true character. This is no sandwich filler, toastie griller or sop to uncultured palates. It was a conversation starter, a centrepiece, a must-try for anyone who thinks cheddar has to be dull - fromage ennui! This delightful cheese challenged me and taught me something I didn't know - that cheddar is a great cheese and deserves its place on any discerning plate. Blaenafon Cheddar has earned its place not just on my cheese board, but in my heart. It is proof that even the most familiar cheeses can surprise you, if you give them the chance. These cheddars are handmade, vegetarian-friendly, and wax-coated, which gives it a six-month shelf life. The above reviewed taffy apple cider and onion marmalade-infused cheese is an award-winning cheddar and is among several products that use local alcohols that act as natural preservative. The 1868 cheddar is aged in the cellars of The Lion Hotel. The Pwll Mawr cheese is matured in Big Pit coal mine, 300ft below the surface. All wax casings show Blaenavon industrial heritage designs. Eat them all, you'll have no regrets.
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Road closures announced for 10K race in Torfaen
Several roads in Torfaen will be closed on July 13 for the Mic Morris Torfaen 10K. Residents and motorists are warned of the closures to ensure the safety of race participants. More than 1,000 runners have signed up for the 10K race, starting in Blaenavon at 9am. The finish line will be in Pontypool Park and runners are expected to complete the race by 11am. All participants will receive a medal and merchandise, with proceeds going to the Mic Morris Memorial Sporting Trust Fund, which supports young athletes in Torfaen. Road sections to be closed at specified times are: Blaenavon to Abersychan (junction of A4043 and B4246), from 8am to 10am; Abersychan Old Road to Hospital Road, from 9am to 10.30am; and Hospital Road to Park Road (Salvation Army), from 9.15am to 10.45am. A full list of affected roads includes: A4043 Cwmavon Road (from Prince Street/New William Street in Blaenavon to Old Road in Abersychan), Old Road, Limekiln Road, Freeholdland Road, George Street, Mill Road, Hospital Road, the northern section of Osbourne Road (up to Riverside), Riverside, and Park Road leading up to Penygarn Road. Side roads will remain open, but no vehicles will be allowed on the race route during the event. The emergency services will have access at all times. Ben Jeffries, event organiser from Torfaen Council, said: "Whether you're a seasoned runner or just starting out, there's still time to sign up and be part of one of the fastest 10Ks around. "We appreciate the public's patience with the temporary road closures. "This year, we've worked to stagger the closure times to help reduce disruption for residents and road users. "Roads will reopen as soon as it's safe—thank you for your continued support." Residents living on the affected roads will be informed in advance, and each section will reopen when safe. If the road closures affect your travel or caregiving responsibilities, contact Torfaen Council on 01633 628936 as early as possible.
Times
20-06-2025
- Sport
- Times
Lions legend with calves the size of footballs who sold jeans to KGB
There are two spaces, about 450 miles apart, where Maurice Colclough persists. The first is at Stade Chanzy, where Angoulême reveres her former England lock; a small espace in his name where supporters can congregate on match day. The second is at 32 Broad Street in Blaenavon, at Welsh General Store. He never stepped foot in the latter, yet his memory is here. Colclough was, on paper, a great rugby man: a grand-slam champion with England, and a starter in eight consecutive British & Irish Lions Tests in 1980 and 1983. Yet his legacy is almost rugby adjacent, different from the fruits of Willie John McBride, Martin Johnson or Bill Beaumont (Colclough called Billy, his second-row partner, 'head boy'). Mountainous in stature and will, yet his family laugh at how ungainly he could be. Rugby was not his raison d'être, merely the vehicle by which he lived and which gives cause to remember him. Early one Friday, Colclough's wife, Annie, sits at a table at the back of Welsh General Store with her four daughters: Fen, from her first marriage; Morgane; and the twins, Brogane and Freya. It is a riotous morning of storytelling, punctuated by light dabbing of eye, for a husband and father who died in 2006, aged 52. Through chemotherapy and disgusting broccoli smoothies, he survived with a brain tumour for almost four years when six months was expected. The invincible man who could drop a breeze block on his foot and hardly wince, carrying on building a wall, was cut down. Colclough was outsize, a bon viveur. A second row whose calves were described as footballs, so big they would rub together and wear holes in his socks, and who sat on a bench at Freya's parents' evening and broke it. Even if he were on the delicate seating at the back of the shop now, he would not have been telling the stories. Colclough left that to others — and everyone has a yarn about Maurice Colclough. It inspires a question: is the man also the myth?His wanderlust took him to France, where he was Marquis de Colclough, running cruises as Holiday Charente and keeping a bar in Soyaux called Liverpool. Angoumoisins such as Fabrice Landreau, the France hooker who spent time at Bristol and Neath, worshipped Colclough. He remains a prince in those parts. He also played for Swansea and conducted business in South Africa, returning his family to Wales after a car-jacking. 'He directed the hijackers,' Brogane says. 'He was actually really funny. 'Would you like my watch?' ' 'I arrived in this country with a rucksack over my shoulder and £25 in my pocket,' Colclough said in 1982, a rare example of him as narrator. Story time. The legend of Colclough's arrival is that he was kicked off a train, having paid the wrong fare, and hitchhiked with a man who happened to be the coach of Angoulême. Brogane retells this. 'Oh, I didn't know that,' Annie says. This is how two hours in Blaenavon unfold: a torrent of five sources providing collective memories, or individual offerings and details pieced together. Here is a flavour of some greatest Colclough hits. He toured the Soviet Union and sold jeans to the KGB. He performed perorations inspired by Churchill, Kipling and Shakespeare as captain. He swam naked across the Liffey in Dublin to waiting policemen. He locked out a team-mate on a window ledge in Canada. He beat Fen's South African rugby friends in arm-wrestling and so they had to do the family's gardening. He frequented a French all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant with such abandon that they had to change policy. A recent Rugby Journal essay recounted some of the tales. 'A couple of things in there we didn't know,' Freya says. Now for the most famous tale, of which variations exist. Colclough, in a post-match function, downed what appeared to be a bottle of aftershave. Colin Smart, the England prop matching his consumption, did so too, but Colclough, a prankster, had switched his liquid. Smart had not. Cue stomach pump. 'He'd gone in before, he'd tipped it out, he'd put white wine in,' Brogane says. 'What Dad said he thought would happen is he'd basically put it in and then spit it out.' At Brogane's wedding last year, every guest had a bottle of aftershave with limoncello in it. 'I actually think the one where he shot the bullet through the roof is better,' Brogane adds. That was on tour when a policeman came to quell rugby rowdiness and Colclough, thinking the safety was on, aimed at the ceiling. Maurice met Annie at Cardiff Arms Park and settled in south Wales. Both were entrepreneurial. He bought a trawler called the Picton Sea Eagle with plans to turn it into a floating restaurant. When in South Africa, he was involved in slot machines. 'I remember taking him to Cyril Ramaphosa's house,' Fen says. 'For business.' A week before this interview, Ramaphosa was at the White House as president of South Africa. In her father's image, Morgane opened Welsh General Store on St David's Day this year. It used to be a bookshop with 10,000 books — she points to the sagging roof — and, seeking a change from London, she bought it in an online auction. Annie ('the veg deliverer'), Fen and Morgane live nearby. Brogane has travelled from London, Freya from Manchester, to recollect. The quintet hammer home the sense of adventure he instilled. 'Excess is best' was his motto, giving one's all but having fun. 'Life was about risk,' Freya says. When Colclough had a boat that needed to sail from Spain to South Africa, via Brazil, he enlisted a 17-year-old Fen. 'That was my choice, but I would never have made it had he not brought me up,' she says. 'I did sail with him across Biscay, so we did sail on the boat together. He bought a boat off a Russian spy, basically, and it still had all the spy stuff on it.' That included a 'spy pen' that exploded. The travelling companion fainted, and Colclough carried on sailing solo with a damaged finger. Theirs was an active childhood, with rugby as part of it. Twenty years ago the family featured in The Times as Morgane and the twins played sevens for Llandovery College (Maurice was in Vienna, having been told the wrong week). At a memorial match in France after his death, Morgane was asked to begin proceedings. 'It says she did a drop-kick in that article,' Freya says. 'She did not do a drop-kick.' Morgane adds: 'They had to restart the match. It went about two metres.' For Colclough, it was all a game, a fraction of life. The sisters chortle at his love of sports day, once sending a camera crew when he was unavailable, and training the twins for the three-legged race so well that they were almost banned. 'The head teacher was like, 'Sorry girls, you can't compete together in the three-legged race, it's not fair,' ' Brogane says. 'Dad has never gone to see a head teacher before. Ever. He turned up in the school. He must have been in the office for 30 seconds. He came out, he's like, 'It's fine.' ' No one gets in the way of a Colclough and sports day. Such activities were far more important to Colclough than publicity. 'Head boy' Billy was captain on A Question of Sport and until recently chairman of World Rugby. Colclough was a player first and last, and the family agree that he would have known no trivia. 'He didn't have any real interest in celebrity,' Brogane says. Fen adds: 'Other people are more interested in rugby than he is. He would never watch it.' Freya tells another story: 'We went camping and fishing on his motorbike and I was on the back and we turned up at this camping site, just the two of us. We were just signing in and the man that was signing us in was like, 'Oh, Maurice Colclough, there used to be a famous rugby player called Maurice Colclough.' Dad said nothing and I was like, 'That's him!' ' At the start of this interview, Annie had laughed and said: 'Sorry, can I just ask? What is the reason for this?' It was to hear memories not from the Lion's mouth, but from the cubs. 'It's sad, obviously, to think that he died at 52, but I swear to God, that man lived 12 times more in those 52 years than so many other people do,' Brogane says. Now Annie: 'I'm just trying to think what he would have thought. He did philosophy, and he could be quite philosophical. Trying to imagine him, what he'd be doing now, and that's quite painful to think about. But then I don't know if he would actually enjoy being older.' Unanimously, they believe the seriousness of professional rugby would have been anathema to him. Those who recall him are still excited when they find out they are in the company of one of Maurice Colclough's daughters. 'One of our regulars found out and he's just brought in a Lions book today that he had,' Morgane says. 'He put notes where Dad's name was.' Rugby, again, as the gateway to the man. His approach to life continues fivefold through the women on a street in Blaenavon. 'I think about it more and more now — there is so much of Dad in all of us,' Brogane says. 'I feel like I've got that tin-of-beans-on-someone's-head energy.' Oh yes, the beans on the head. Well, that's a story for another time.
BBC News
03-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Big Pit charging mine admission is 'wrong'
It is wrong to charge people to enter the Big Pit National Coal Museum, a Senedd report museum in Blaenavon, Torfaen, has started charging £8 per person, with some concessions, on a trial basis until July the culture and sport committee says access should remain free on principle and not be a luxury for those who can afford it, calling for better funding for Welsh museums so collections remain free for Welsh government said it was committed to keeping entry to all seven museum sites free, as well as to the national collections, and would consider the report's findings. Tours of Big Pit, one of Amgueddfa Cymru's seven museums, are led by former miners and explore original mine shafts and museums.A sign outside the entrance now states: "Due to financial pressures and funding cuts, from 5 April we will be charging for the underground tour." But Delyth Jewell MS, chair of the Senedd's culture and sports committee, said the tours are "a fundamental part of our national collections, they are part of our national story, and that shouldn't be limiting if people can't afford to access them".The report says the Welsh government has "not fulfilled its responsibility in funding museums adequately", citing a 17% cut in real terms to funding for culture and sport in Wales in the last decade. "We appreciate that it is expensive for Amgueddfa Cymru to provide access to the underground workings at Big Pit," it says."However, we think this is an argument for the Welsh government to provide an adequate level of funding, not for Amgueddfa Cymru to charge for access." Visitors gave a mixed response to the charge, with Deborah Clubb from Merthyr Tydfil saying: "I think [the fee] would make it something that I wouldn't visit as often, definitely, because it was always a free attraction before and something that you could do as a family without thinking about."Mother-of-six Amy Hughes, from Aberdare, said she took the underground tour several times when it was free. She said: "[The admission fee] does make me not want to take all my kids down there but I do feel it's such good value to be able to go underground and see an actual mine."It would be good if they did a family ticket." Savannah Knox, visiting from Southern Ontario, said she didn't mind paying because she is used to doing that back home in said: "If it's historical or a museum it's usually charged. It helps with the upkeep, right?"Showing her around Wales was Lauren Price from Risca, who said she didn't mind paying the fee "if the money's going back into keeping it up and going". Amgueddfa Cymru said the Big Pit experience extends "far beyond" the underground tour, and the rest of the site remains free. It said it looks forward to continuing working with the Welsh government as they consider the report's findings.
Telegraph
02-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Villagers win battle against 200m ‘Great Wall' at Welsh beauty spot
Villagers have won a fight to tear down a giant fence that was blocking views of a national park. The 200m-long, 6ft-high steel fence was dubbed the 'Great Wall of Clydach' after it was built by a Labour-led council without notice at a cost of £40,000. But weeks later, officials have agreed to tear it down – and will spend £20,000 on its removal. The roadside structure blocks views of the mountains and valleys within Wales's Brecon Beacons National Park (now known as Bannau Brycheiniog) and close to the Unesco World Heritage site of Blaenavon. Locals described the fence, made of galvanised steel with sharp spikes on top, as 'disgusting' and criticised the council for a lack of consultation. Officials said it was erected along Pwll Du Road, which has been closed to traffic for five years, over fears it could collapse. Resident Clive Thomas said: 'It's just an eyesore. When the sun is on it and everything, it just looks out of place.' Simon Elliott added: 'There was no consultation with anyone. The fence has been put up with no understanding at all of what the area is. 'All it needed was a low-level fencing to stop any cattle or people going over the edge into the quarry.' Monmouthshire County Council has agreed to remove the fence and replace it with a shorter structure that will 'blend in' with the surroundings. Independent councillor Simon Howarth said he was pleased with the council's decision, but added: 'We shouldn't have got here' and claimed huge bills could have been avoided. He said: 'Overall, we are where we should have started, but around £50,000 to £70,000 worse off.' A council spokesman said: 'Following a positive meeting, the local community and the council agreed with the proposal to reduce the height of the back line of the palisade fencing, replacing it with stock proof fencing and painting the reveals and pillars with a suitable colour to blend in with the landscape.'
