I’m sure…
Newport is in Wales. Just. It’s in Wales about as much as Berwick upon Tweed is in England. So close to “them” that “they” may as well have it. I am of the previously unshared opinion that the rest of wales is quietly ambivalent about ownership of this particular corner.
What do I know about Newport?
Well, I became intimate with the roundabout beneath junction 24 of the M4 during a stalled hitch-hike home back in my army days – specifically where the A449 branches north; the fans of Newport County football club could be friendlier (one savage purple-jumper wearing Newport fan has stayed long in the memory of my home town’s fans); AND nobody ever chose Newport as a holiday destination – except when confusing it with Newport, Pembs.
So, given the feeling in the rest of Cymru it was with some trepidation that long-term correspondent to these pages MartYn Fielder (a son of Abergavenny) had to visit the town with his mother for a medical appointment. He need not have worried. It was while waiting for the NHS to do its thing that MartYn followed his Indiana Jones urges and explored an old railway track bed in Malpas just to the north of the town. I’ll let his words describe his adventure:
“I came across the noble form of an old pole, forlorn in the splendour of its decaying grandeur. The pole is incredibly pock-marked, as though it’s been attacked by giant woodworm, and there are no identifying markers. It is also entirely alone – having walked all the way to the point where the old railway has been obliterated by the link road between the A4042 and the A4051 in one direction, and then followed it in the other direction where it has been transformed into a tarmac footpath wending its way through endless housing estates, I can confidently state that this is the only remaining telegraph pole on this stretch of the old Eastern Valley Line of the Monmouthshire Rail and Canal Company (1852) which closed in 1963. This splendid solitary specimen stands as a witness to a century of spectacular growth and slow decline in the industrial heartland of South Wales. A humbling thought.”
So there we have it. Newport, Gwent, still in Wales, has Big Mac’s Wholly Soul Band and a single old and isolated, redundant and woodpeckered multi-arm telegraph pole. The word “Yay!” comes to mind. Put Newport on my holiday list. Summer 2074 should do it.
Anyway, I looked it up recently, MartYn and I have been exchanging telegraph pole related missives for more than ten years now. He is this close ” to getting on my Christmas card list.
