George Barron times it right as trout rise to the coch-y-bonddu in the Elan Valley
DURING THE LATE 1800S, AT the height of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, clean water was needed to supply the rapidly growing manufacturing towns in England where water-borne diseases like typhoid, cholera and diarrhoea often reached epidemic levels. Birmingham’s search for a reliable new source of clean H2O was to be in the Elan Valleys in Mid Wales, a region with above average rainfall and narrow, easily dammed valleys, but more importantly, an altitude enabling the water to be transported the 80 miles to Brum by gravity alone, without needing to be pumped. Massive infrastructure was put in place for the 50,000 workers employed. A railway, housing facilities, schools, shops and a library, even a doss-house where new workers spent a night being deloused before they had access to the new village. The first four dams in the Water Scheme were opened in 1904 and the same year water finally flowed to Birmingham.
Another piece of interesting history — you’ve probably all watched the Dambusters movie at least once and “da-dattad-a-da-dad” along to the theme music, but I wonder how many of you realise on the 80th anniversary of those famous bouncing bombs created by Barnes Wallis in 1943, that one of the 280lb prototypes was tested on a minor support dam at Caban Coch reservoir, leaving a 60ft-wide breach, a sobering remnant still visible today.
Early June, and as they say locally, “It’s a right-looking day for a coch-y-bonddu hatch” and that’s my plan for the day. As I pull into my decades old, familiar parking spot beside the bridge spanning one of several mountain streams that run into Craig Goch reservoir, the early morning blue wall-to-wall sky suggests it will be another flaming hot June day to follow what had been an equally flaming May. A quick cup of Earl Grey in hand, I walk back 20 yards, lean over the bridge railings and peer down at the parched bare bones 30ft below and the miserly trickle of water coming off the mountain. Then, as if on cue, in one small, shaded oasis of water enclosed by rocks, a sign of life as a small trout rises through the dark, peaty water to take what I assume to be a small insect off the surface, leaving behind telltale rings.
Surprisingly, considering the worrying lack of rain during the previous few months, the lake itself does hold a decent head of water, unlike the three lakes further down the chain I’d passed, driving along the mightily impressive scenic route that contours through the Elan Valley all the way to Craig Goch, or as I prefer to call it, Top Dam.
