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Wales Online
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
The stunning Welsh waterfall you can swim under that appears in BBC's Death Valley
The stunning Welsh waterfall you can swim under that appears in BBC's Death Valley It's not a coincidence that the new BBC comedy crime drama used the beautiful Bannau Brycheiniog as the backdrop of their second episode. (Image: BBC/ Death Valley ) We all know how beautiful Wales can be, and we're lucky to have some of the most gorgeous scenery in the world on our doorstep. Now, the beauty of our country is gracing the screens of the nation once again, through BBC's new comedy crime drama, Death Valley. It follows Detective Janie Mallowan, played by Gwyneth Keyworth and former TV detective John Chapel, played by Timothy Spall as they form an unlikely crime fighting duo in the Cynon Valley. Despite being set in Mountain Ash, the series was actually filmed across South Wales. You may be watching the second episode of the series, and thinking to yourself, "the scenery is beautiful, where was this filmed?" For the latest TV and showbiz gossip sign up to our newsletter . During the episode, John and Janie join a walking group as they attempt to solve the murder of one of the members. The walking group are taking a hike through Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons), right next to the beautiful Blaen y Glyn waterfalls, when they discover a body at the bottom of the falls. The waterfalls are used as the scene of the crime. (Image: BBC/ Death Valley ) Gwyneth Keyworth even said that this was her favourite location to film, and can we blame her? The waterfall itself can be found within Talybont Forest in the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. To reach the falls you can walk from the National Park's two car parks, Blaen y Glyn Isaf is the lower car park and Blaen y Glyn Uchaf is the upper car park. Each walk has a different grade of difficulty described by Natural Resources Wales. Lower Blaen y Glyn Waterfall Walk is described as moderate, as it is 0.8 miles (1.2 kilometres) long there and back and should take roughly 45 minutes. This trail is not waymarked, although they recommend reading t he information panel in the car park for the suggested route. Upper Blaen y Glyn Waterfall Walk on the other hand is described as being strenuous, with a one mile (1.6 kilometres) walk there and back, which should take roughly 1-1.5 hours. This trail is also not waymarked, but again, there's the information panel in the car park with a suggested route. Waterfall at Blaen-y-Glyn Waterfalls, by Dave Sealey (Image: Dave Sealey ) After, what could be a strenuous walk you could also take a dip in the series of waterfalls, as most of them even have small pools at the base. However if you're not one for a full plunge in what very well will be some cold water, there are also plenty of rock platforms to sit on beside the water. It's recommended you go when the weather is warm/dry, as the walk is slightly more difficult when it is raining and you'll be more likely to enjoy a cold plunge after your walk. Timothy Spall plays the lead, John Chapel a former TV detective (Image: BBC/ Death Valley ) If you would like to plan a day out with the family, there are also picnic benches in each car park, which means that you can really make a day of it with the family. So, pack up some cucumber sandwiches and a couple of scotch eggs and take a trip down Bannau Brycheiniog. Article continues below Alternatively, if you're not one for a picnic, you could always get some pub grub nearby. Including The Old Ford Inn in Llanhamlach, which is also used as a filming location in the episode and just 20 minute drive away from the waterfalls.
Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Severance' star Britt Lower on how the severance procedure is similar to real life
'Severance' star Britt Lower talks about the 'meta quality' of making the Apple TV series: 'We go to work and put on a new outfit and assume a new identity.'Watch Lower, Jason Isaacs, Sterling K. Brown, Allison Janney, Kaitlin Olson, Billy Bob Thornton and Noah Wyle on The Envelope Drama by @andorofficial
USA Today
14-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Justin Lower odds to win the 2025 PGA Championship
Justin Lower odds to win the 2025 PGA Championship PGA Championship details and info Date: May 15-18, 2025 May 15-18, 2025 Course: Quail Hollow Club Quail Hollow Club Location: Charlotte, NC Charlotte, NC Previous Winner: Xander Schauffele How to watch the PGA Championship Thursday: ESPN, The Golf Channel ESPN, The Golf Channel Friday: ESPN, The Golf Channel ESPN, The Golf Channel Saturday: CBS (KBAK-Bakersfield, CA), ESPN, NBC (WBGH-Binghamton, NY) CBS (KBAK-Bakersfield, CA), ESPN, NBC (WBGH-Binghamton, NY) Sunday: CBS (KBAK-Bakersfield, CA), ESPN, NBC (KUAM-Guam), NBC (WBGH-Binghamton, NY), NBC (WBIR- Knoxville, TN) Watch golf on Fubo! Lower odds to win the PGA Championship PGA odds courtesy of BetMGM Sportsbook. Odds updated Wednesday at 3:03 PM ET. For a full list of sports betting odds, access USA TODAY Sports Betting Scores Odds Hub. Lower odds to finish in the top 5 at the PGA Championship Lower odds to finish in the top 10 at the PGA Championship Other betting markets for Lower at the PGA Championship Lower recent performances Lower has participated in 13 tournaments this season, securing one top-five finish. Lower finished 31st in his only finish over his last four events.
Telegraph
27-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The stories behind some of the world's weirdest motorways
In the first half of the 20th century, motorways – also known as expressways or, more generally, controlled-access highways – were heralded as utopian. They were the embodiment of progress, launched with huge parades, decked in Art Deco ornament and applauded by a jubilant press. The optimism would not last long. All too soon, around the world, such gigantic roads would become symbols of dystopian urban planning from above, wounds inflicted upon cities, mechanised floods tearing communities apart: as Richard J Williams puts it, they were seen as 'an everyday form of devastation'. The Expressway World challenges this binary. Williams, professor of contemporary visual culture at the University of Edinburgh, points out the self-deception and absolutism in this Manichean way of seeing the built environment. Instead, he views these roads more soberly, as attempts to solve a traffic crisis, the evolution of which branched off into divergent paths. In doing so, he makes a compelling case for truths that lie beyond exaltation or condemnation. Each chapter focuses on a different place, approach and outcome: the West Side Highway in New York, the Samil Elevated Highway in Seoul, the Minhocão in São Paulo and so on. (The last of these is named after a worm-like folkloric beast.) While his book is notionally centred on automobile infrastructure, Williams effectively creates a portrait of the rise and fall of modernist urbanism. A great deal of its charm lies in returning to the delusionally halcyon days when architectural critics, in this case Reyner Banham, could herald an interchange as a 'work of art'. Still, given the architectural torpidity and piety of our contemporary age, the megalomania on display here has a certain villainous charisma. For instance, in celebrating the elevated panoramic view over the Hudson that New York motorists would enjoy, the notorious urban planner Robert Moses claimed that 'by comparison, the castled Rhine with its Lorelei is a mere trickle.' Moses's egocentric ambition was exceeded only by Paul Rudolph's gargantuan proposal for Lomex (Lower Manhattan Expressway), which Williams dubs 'Futurism meets the Death Star'; it's still a stunning vision and, if it falls absurdly short of its inspirations, which included the Parthenon and Chartres Cathedral, the audacity is easy to admire. Thankfully, given it would have involved mass evictions and bulldozing swathes of SoHo and Little Italy, Rudolph's Bladerunner-esque design remained a series of unbuilt renderings. The car was both an object of desire and a tool of democratisation, and the motorway was its apotheosis. Even now, hit one at the right speed and hour and you can still feel, in Banham's words, it's 'the nearest thing to flight on four wheels'. But as these monumental roads spread via government planning, from Fascist autostrada and Autobahn to the American post-war building boom, 'autogeddon' followed. Expressways went from panacea to poison. All the initial hyperbole flipped to denunciations. They were a no-man's-land, embedded with structural violence, so grievous that their very existence put 'civilised life at stake'. Today, they're seen by critics as a necessary evil at best, though the photogenic brutalist retrofuturism of their bridges and service stations continue to attract admirers. Williams is a scholarly guide: literary, artistic and cinematic references abound. But his strength is his aversion to histrionics. He acknowledges the 'severed neighbourhood[s]', displaced citizenry, race and class issues, pollution and noise that many controlled-access highways caused in urban areas. He quotes from jeremiads, and charts various 'occupations', including the artistic festivals that flourished on the Minhocão. Yet he resists easy partisan positions, and his resolute critical eye makes him something of a gadfly. This is why The Expressway World, which could have been arid or marginal, has a zing to it. For instance, rather than settling for the monstrous caricature of popular lore (The Spectator labelled him 'the psychopath who wrecked New York'), William argues that Robert Moses was motivated by his own admittedly twisted conception of progress; and while admiring Jane Jacobs's ardent work in opposing the New York expressways and preserving neighbourhoods, Williams rejects her latter-day sainthood, contending that the clashes were, partly, 'one set of privileged actors battling another'. Though he is by no means contrarian, Williams can be commendably sacrilegious. His scepticism towards artwashing and performative politics is timely, especially on how both can reinforce the social inequalities they feign to oppose. At the same time, he acts as a Devil's advocate for London's Ballardian Westway, which has had few defenders from the beginning (there were over 20,000 objections filed to the Greater London Council at the time regarding their motorway plans): he claims that, for all its ills, it 'brought new possibilities the old city lacked'. Formerly the site of slum tenements, he argues 'the Westway became a carnivalesque space […] in which a certain amount of bounded disorder was possible'. Whether this ideal of 'bounded disorder' can survive either gentrification or deprivation remains to be seen. William's strongest argument comes in the chapter on the Cheonggyecheon redevelopment in Seoul, where a seven-mile-long elevated motorway, running through downtown Seoul since 1976, was replaced with a riverine space that is, if its global press coverage to be believed, the best thing since Arcadia. 'It's hard to imagine,' Williams retorts, 'a more controlled space outside of an airport or prison.' As he points out, Cheonggyecheon has simply exchanged one form of authority for another, one that has greenery instead of concrete and tarmac, while continuing to consist of 'constant exhortations to behave in approved ways', predicated on 'surveillance and the pressure to spend money'. The Expressway World is a discerning study of fantasy and erasure. Twenty-first-century urbanism, after all, has become a realm dominated by mythic or near-Biblical thinking, in which the automobile is sinful, the environment (or rather 'simulated nature') is Edenic, and the expressway a convenient scapegoat for modernity's ills. In truth, these roads are just another arena for competing centres of power, their visions and blindnesses. Until that is recognised, we'll be vulnerable to the comforts and temptations of ancient fantasies and those selling them; and for all the talk of the future, society will be hurtling forwards with its eyes firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror.
The Hindu
22-04-2025
- General
- The Hindu
Rehabilitation of irrigation systems in Kurangan Pallam Odai to be carried out at ₹15 crore
The State government has accorded administrative sanction for the rehabilitation of irrigation systems in Kurangan Pallam Odai (Hanuman Nadhi) at a total cost of ₹15 crore. This project will benefit an ayacut area spread across 9,000 acres in the taluks of Modakkurichi and Kodumudi. The Odai is a rain-fed natural stream that originates at Devanampalayam near Hanumanpalli village in Modakkurichi taluk, runs for 39 km, and joins the Cauvery river at Vengambur in Kodumudi taluk. It receives water during the North-East monsoon and from seepage from the earthen Lower Bhavani Project (LBP) main canal during the irrigation period. The stream typically dries up between May and September every year, when water supply from the LBP canal is stopped. Over the past 20 years, seven check dams have been constructed across the stream to harness floodwaters and seepage. The stream's irrigation system is a lifeline for farmland in the two taluks, directly and indirectly irrigating around 9,000 acres. The Punjai Kalamangalam Canal, which originates from the Kurangan Pallam anicut at Elumathur village, runs for 12.60 km and was designed to irrigate an ayacut area of 3,840 acres. However, since these systems fall under non-system irrigation, there are no funds allocated for their regular maintenance. Only a portion of the stream was rehabilitated under the Tamil Nadu Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation Project (TNIAMP) in 2018. Due to leakages, the check dams can no longer retain water, while the water spread areas have become heavily silted and overrun by Juliflora vegetation. Since the stream remains almost perennial due to seepage, people living nearby use the stream daily for bathing and other domestic activities. The foundations of bridges across the stream have also eroded at various locations and require urgent repairs to extend their lifespan by a few decades. The Water Resources Department submitted a proposal for rehabilitation works, which includes the construction of bund protection walls, desilting and strengthening of check dams, installation of silt traps, jungle clearance, construction of bathing ghats, reconstruction of canal sluices, and provision of a trough section and protection walls along the canal embankment. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin announced the project during his visit to Erode on December 20, 2024. A senior engineer from the Water Resources Department told The Hindu that once the works are completed, it will ensure the free flow of water, thereby restoring the stream's original water-carrying capacity. He added that the conveyance efficiency of the Punjai Kalamangalam Canal would be significantly improved through the construction of the trough section in the embankment reaches of the branch canals. Leakages in the damaged structures will also be eliminated following the reconstruction of cross-masonry structures, he added.
