I retired from working in Local Government a few years ago. As part of my job I had experience of organising and using volunteers for projects ranging from tree planting, community events to large Country Fairs. I never thought that one day I would become a volunteer or that I would volunteer in an area that I knew from my childhood.
My paternal grandparents lived in Newport and sometimes when my family visited them we would go to Goldcliff to walk along the sea wall. My father and his brother used to tell me that as teenagers they would regularly cycle to Goldcliff and the Lighthouse, where they said they friends would swim. I distinctly remember seeing signs for Whitson zoo, and how flat and comparatively featureless the area was compared to the Sirhowy Valley where we lived. The water weed covered reens were a mystery as were the lines of baskets (putchers) that I saw in the estuary.
Little did I know that many years later I would get a call from my friend Gavin, who is the Living Levels Community Engagement Officer, asking me if I would like to volunteer and help him with a Guided Walk that he was organising which would run from the RSPB Centre to and over the Transporter Bridge.
My youngest daughter who was In university at the time offered to help as well, partly I think to make sure her ‘old Dad’ was up to the job and also because she was training to walk the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu to raise money for a cancer charity.
Gavin and I checked the route before the actual walk and I soon learnt that the levels may be flat but they are certainly not featureless, the hedges, foot bridges, stiles, grips, ditches and reens were small but important landscape features and all played a part in how the land was and is still managed.
On the day of the walk we all met at the RSPB centre, there were about 25 taking part with Gavin leading, Rhiannon and myself ‘back marking’ to make sure that there were no stragglers, that gates were closed and
any road crossings controlled. Another volunteer,( Jeremy White) also came along to explain about the east Usk Lighthouse. From the centre the walk went through the Nature Reserve to the lighthouse and then returned to pass the Centre and then following footpaths over the small fields, bounded by hedges and water filled ditches, to the Church of St Mary’s, at Nash. This was a revelation, with a mark showing the height of the Great Flood (or was it a Tsunami) of 1607, its leper window, Mass dial and its box pews. From the church
we carried on over farmland and then passed through an industrial area to the banks of the Usk all the time heading for the Transporter Bridge.
The Bridge again holds childhood memories for me as I frequently travelled on the gondola with my parents. My father often told me that when he was a teenager you could pay threepence to walk over the Usk on the bridges walkway. At the bridge we had a choice of either crossing the river on the gondola or crossing over on the gantry walkway linking the bridge towers.
The walk to the bridge may have been flat but the climb to the gantry certainly wasn’t. Our legs were aching, we were breathless and it was very breezy when we got to the top. But the view over the city, the docks and the Usk, towards Cardiff and up to the distinctive ‘pimple’ which distinguishes the iron age hillfort of Twmbarlwm certainly made it very worthwhile.
I have helped on this walk twice now and would have done so again this April if it had not been postponed due to the Lockdown. On both occasions I have seen the walkers I helped ‘look after’ see the Levels, their history and their importance to the biodiversity of south east Wales in a new light. I am certainly looking forward to helping on this walk again.
Norman Liversuch
For general queries about volunteering with Living Levels, please contact the Living Levels Volunteer Coordinator, Beccy Williams: rwilliams@gwentwildlife.org