Places to explore in Blaenau GwentWales · South East Wales

Blaenau Gwent lies at the head of the south Wales valleys, where the Ebbw and Sirhowy rivers cut down from open moorland into narrow, once-industrial glens. Iron and coal made towns like Ebbw Vale, Tredegar and Nantyglo, whose ironmasters raised fortified towers against their own workers in the hungry 1830s — the decade that gave Wales its Chartist rising. Above the terraces the ground opens onto high, empty upland along the southern rim of the Bannau Brycheiniog. Beech woods and reclaimed valley floors, green again now, mark where the furnaces once burned.