Day 8 – how time flies

I’ll start today’s post with a little aside. Up until now, I’ve been getting a lift to Treherbert for the pop up studio and I’ve become familiar with the route there, through the string of towns in the valley, along the river at times, on busy and twisting roads. But today I caught the train, and despite the heavy rain and the mist, I got to take in some very different views from the levels of the rail track. I was struck by the pylons and radio masts on top of the hills right outside Cardiff and wondered if we’d ever get used to wind turbines like we have to pylons. Don’t get me wrong, I know they’re not quite on the same scale… Just a thought! I also noticed lots of houses with solar panels on (and again this is just my own observations) and there seemed to be a lot more than I’ve seen say where I live in England. Ian said the RCT homes had been instrumental in helping with those but I need to pin him down and write down exactly what the support has been.

View from the train – the hills looking imposing even in the mist and rain!

On another note, it was great to travel at the bottom of the valley thanks to the train. I got to appreciate the might of the hills and wondered what it was like to travel on the same track 100 years ago and what it might be like to travel down here in 100 years. Even in the rain, and especially with the mist, the scenery was breathtaking!

Back to our subject and our 9th day open as a pop up studio. We had another busy one thanks to all the folks who came out despite the rain. Here are some of them enjoying the audio and the photos in the studio:

David and Ian braved the weather to go for a walk and take some of the ideas of the studio to those who can’t make it to us during our opening hours and they went to chat to some of the people working in the local shops. In the meantime, we chatted about the past and future of energy to the people who came in – I was told stories of cooking on coal fires and travelling by trams but also of the need to make more of the water available in Wales in the future (very apt considering the weather!). We’ve also made some further connections with some of the other parts of our project, with the visit of Emily Hinshelwood who will be working with us in Tairgwaith n the autumn.

Finally, we should mention that we had a BBC Wales journalist visit last week and we were on Good Morning Wales last Saturday morning. You can listen here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063f550 – the item on the project starts at 19’30 and is roughly 5 minutes long. Hope you enjoy it! One of our younger regulars was interviewed in it so I thought I’d sign off with some of the drawings that the children have made over the last 9 days:

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