Port Talbot tourist information

Port Talbot is an industrial city in Neath Port Talbot, Southern Wales. Town is created along the eastern rim of Swansea Bay in a narrow strip of seaside simple surrounding the River Afan estuary. The town grew from the initial tiny port and market city of Aberafan (Aberavon), which belonged towards medieval Lords of Afan. It built its wide range regarding the abundance of coal in the vicinity and on the abundant liquid available in the River Afan to run machinery and operate the docks.

The city got its present name from Talbot family, who have been patrons of Margam Abbey, an old Cistercian foundation, and whom built Margam Castle, a Victorian mock Gothic residence, now partly restored and ready to accept people combined with the surrounding Margam Park.

The Talbots saw the possibility of area as a website for an extensive ironworks, which launched during the early 1831. Copper had been smelted at Neath since 1584, and there were tinworks and ironworks at Pontardawe. Emily Charlotte Talbot (1840-1918) go about generating a port and railway system additionally the Port Talbot Railway and Dock business opened a dock at Port Talbot and also the Llynfi Railway in 1897. By 1900, the dock had been exporting more than 500, 000 tonnes of coal reaching a peak of over three million tonnes in 1923.

During very early twentieth century, the docks and an important steelworks lured substantial investment, and this had been accompanied by the siting of a chemical plant at Baglan Bay by British Petroleum. BP has now gone although the steelworks remains right here it is currently part of the Tata global company.

When you look at the late twentieth Century the town has seen a significant decline, caused by the withdrawal or cutting back of major employers, along with significant redundancies, but there's been a feeling of improvement in the air since Michael Sheen centered the whole world's attention on Port Talbot along with his three-day community play and tv programme, The Passion, last year.

Although a commercial town Port Talbot boasts two beaches: Aberavon Sands is found across the side of Swansea Bay amongst the River Afan together with River Neath; Margam Sands, popularly known as Morfa Beach, stretches through the harbour into Afon Cynffig, near the seaside resort of Porthcawl.

Other tourist attractions close by feature Margam Castle and Country Park, the Margam Stones Museum, the Go Ape! high-wire Forest Adventure and lastly the Afan Valley Forest Park.

The Afan Valley Forest Park, found in the mountains behind the town and understood locally as 'little Switzerland', is a major center for walking and hill biking in Southern Wales. Hill bicycle tracks such as the Penhydd Trail, the Wall, the Whites degree while the Skyline Mountain Bike Trail add to the sense of adventure inside Forest Park.