On our recent walk around Garreg Ddu Dam in the lower Elan Valley we noticed that, since we were last here, even more carvings had been created along the trail.

This area of land was originally a Victorian Douglas Fir plantation, clear-felled to reintroduce native species and increase biodiversity. The project to carve the trees lining the road was commissioned Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water and created by chainsaw sculptors Simon O’Rourke, Paul Edwards, and Matthew Crabb, who worked from ideas presented by schoolchildren from the community.

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It was getting late in the afternoon, the day had been gloriously sunny and warm, but now dusk was settling in and the gathering clouds in the sky were showing signs of the rain forecast for the following day.

Foel Tower: a point of interest at the start and end of our walk around Garreg-ddu: Just upstream from the submerged dam at Garreg-ddu is the Foel Tower, the starting point for the 70 mile journey of the water supply to Birmingham.

The lower section of Foel Tower has a number of openings inside at different levels where a system of valves and cylinders can be raised and lowered to draw off water from the reservoir at the right depth for the current water level.

Photographs courtesy of http://history.powys.org.uk/history/rhayader/foel.html

The above photograph was taken in 1947 showing the Foel Tower during very low water levels in the Garreg-ddu. Most of the openings in this image are normally underwater.

Foel Tower takes in water from the Claerwen Valley through a pipeline which takes water underground from the dam system. Water is also collected by Pen-y-garreg and Craig Gochhe, the two dams higher up in the Elan Valley.

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My latest book, published in November 2024 is The Stranger

Review for The Stranger:
5.0 out of 5 stars Storytelling in a class of its own… stunning.

“One of the author’s many strengths is in capturing the clear and authentic voice of a confused child – Mandy’s voice, in The Stranger, still haunts me, torn between her own grief, her sense of right and wrong, and her love for her family. And once more, in her latest book she wonderfully portrays the suffering of eight-year-old twins Chloe and Charlie – already grieving the loss of their mother, their lives torn apart by their father’s marriage to her former nurse, an evil manipulator of the highest order…“