A Route 150 for my 150th!
18 February 2024
ABOVE: Stagecoach South Wales 47720 (YJ58 BZX), an Optare Solo, calls at the Senior Citizens' Hall stop in Gilfach Goch, Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales. All photos in this article were taken on Wednesday 7 February 2024.
This is my 150th article, so I thought it might be appropriate to review a route 150 for the occasion. There are several to choose from (13 in fact, according to bustimes.org [SEE FOOTNOTE 1]), but I have settled on one that is startlingly close to the route 100 in Pontypridd that I presented 50 articles ago.
I’m back in South Wales, heading for the town of Porth, in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf. Rhondda Cynon Taf consists of five valleys - Rhondda Fawr, Rhondda Fach, Cynon, Taff and Ely. It's principal towns are Aberdare, Llantrisant with Talbot Green, and Pontypridd.
Here in Porth I'm about 13 miles north-west of Cardiff city centre, just over three miles from Pontypridd and route 100. The Rhondda River rages through here - and I do mean rages - these are fast currents flowing through the town centre. Not a recommended place for a swim!
ABOVE: The river runneth through... The Pontypridd Road in Porth town centre (left), alongside the fast-flowing Rhondda River. At the bus stop is LO18 TXC of Thomas of Rhondda, a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Mellor Strata, working a local service. Behind it is Stagecoach South Wales 26099 (YX66 WKF), an ADL Enviro200 MMC branded for 'Stagecoach Gold' route 132 (Cardiff to Maerdy), although actually working route 120 (Caerphilly to Blaen-Cwm).
This isn’t my first road transport of the day; there’s a long-term possession (since April 2023) of the railway line between Pontypridd and Treherbert, so I’m arriving in Porth on a rail replacement coach, provided by Stagecoach. There are less than a dozen of us for this mid-morning journey, though.
Pontypridd is one of those stations where the far platform is completely isolated from the main station and its building. I have to walk down a ramp from the platform to the road, pass under the railway bridge and head up the other side of the station building to access the coach. There’s no signage for this but I have been here before so I know the layout, broadly speaking. And in any case, I have four minutes to get from the train to the coach before it leaves!
Porth town centre seems to be one massive one-way system, and buses on routes in both directions run down the same street, Pontypridd Road. There are two bus stops, but there’s clearly a principle that most services will only call at one stop or the other, depending which direction they are going in - something that isn't immediately obvious to me at the trip planning stage, where I just see two bus stops a few hundred yards apart.
There's a sizeable queue at the Pontypridd Road stop but no-one, other than me, bats an eyelid when a pair of buses go cruising past without stopping. Cardiff and Caerphilly services use this stop whilst those going the other way generally use the Morrison's stop further back.
ABOVE: Stagecoach South Wales 26201 (YX67 VBB), an ADL Enviro200 MMC, is about to pull into the Pontypridd Road stop in Porth, on route 124 (Maerdy to Cardiff). A fellow Enviro200 MMC can just be seen in the distance, at the "Morrison's" stop. The supermarket itself is on the other side of the river, accessed via the bridge in the middle distance on the right.
But my 150 is an exception to the general stopping rule, as it terminates at and starts from the Morrison's stop, and also picks up at this stop.
This is a half-hourly service, requiring three buses which are provided by Stagecoach South Wales. Stagecoach runs a lot of the services around here, although Thomas of Rhondda is also very much in evidence.
The 1115 departure, like most on route 150, is an Optare Solo – a 33-seater in this case. The eight people already on board are joined by three more of us – a mum with a young child, who has diligently folded up the pushchair (the mum that is), and me. The driver has no trouble finding my Network Day Saver on his machine, even if doing so does generate such a lot of different bleeps on the machine that I wonder if it's trying to communicate with the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
ABOVE: The bus is coming! The 150 has completed its inbound trip and will be with us shortly.
The destination of this service is the wonderfully-named Gilfach Goch, a village that is only three miles away as the crow flies, although our arc-shaped route will more than double that.
First, of course, we have to get out of Porth. We cross the river and immediately double-back on ourselves, effectively driving round three sides of Morrison's.
ABOVE: Morrison's car park, looking across to the Pontypridd Road and beyond. The river sits between the car park and the road beyond, but is not visible from here.
We are climbing out of town, quite literally... The town seems to have been built on the side of a valley and the only way is up. The 150 has clearly been designed to serve as many parts of the town as possible, and my initial impression is that we are zig-zagging around the residential areas as we criss-cross the main road.
We eschew the bulk of the High Street of Cymmer in favour of a drive around the residential areas to the east. One bus stop is positioned on the corner of a junction. Stopping to pick up a passenger (who is paying a cash fare and needs change) blocks the side road for a minute or two.
The views are already stunning...
ABOVE: Looking along Dyllas Road, where the bridge ahead crosses over the A4058, which appears to act as a bypass for Porth town centre. The building on the left with the tower is 'The Pop Factory', a music and media complex built in an old soft drinks factory, the "Welsh Hills Works".
We briefly touch the main road, where Cymmer High Street becomes Trebanog Road, before pulling off the opposite side into another residential area, where we take a circuit of the semi-circular Ton Hywel in Rhiw-Garn.
ABOVE: Looking broadly northwards as we pull out of Ton Hywel and back onto the Trebanog Road.
We enter the village of Trebanog itself. Historically a mining village, the name derives from the Welsh Tref Banog, meaning the prominent homestead. The Banog part means prominent, high, conspicuous or lofty, which I can quite understand, given the territory.
We take another brief detour - a double-run this time along Rhiwgarn Road. This is another residential area, and the views look back across Rhiw-Garn itself (perhaps why the road is so-called)?
ABOVE: looking across from Rhiwgarn Road towards Rhiw-Garn itself (left) and Cymmer (right)
We're on the main road briefly - just long enough to vacate the environs of Trebanog. The road heads towards our next traffic objective, Tonyrefail, but we take a left fork off the main road, followed by another left fork, which puts us on the road towards Rhiwinder (which, if said in a certain way, might be a Hitchcock film with James Stewart).
The country lanes here are more rugged:
ABOVE: Near the Brentan Villa bus stop on the Collenna Road, south of Trebanog
Momentarily, we are out of town, and away from residential or developed areas, enjoying open countryside. We soon turn off the Rhiwinder Road, though, and enter the residential back streets of Tonyrefail. And very nice they are too.
ABOVE: The Capel Farm area of Tonyrefail
Tonyrefail is a village of 11,000 people. Early industrialisation came from a corn mill and woollen factory, but it was deep coal mining that made it a busy town in its own right.
A number of different roads, from all sides, come together at Tonyrefail, bringing no fewer than three bus routes through the town. As well as the 150, the town sees the 122 (Tonypandy to Cardiff) and the 172 (Aberdare to Bridgend). All are run by Stagecoach South Wales. Feels like quite a decent bus service.
We continue, with another brief detour into a residential area - this time Bryngolau. After that is a major road roundabout where the B4278 (our road from Tonyrefail) meets the A4093. On one of the smaller turn-offs from this five-way roundabout is a bus stop on the edge of a residential area. I ponder over what route serves that stop, as it looks rather lonely and isolated. I'll come back to that later.
In no time at all we are at Hendreforgan, soon after which we turn off the main road and head into Gilfach Goch.
ABOVE: Just beyond Hendreforgan, where we turn off the main road to head into Gilfach Goch itself.
After a mile, we reach the Senior Citizens' Hall, the nominal terminus at this end of the 150. I say nominal, because we're not quite at journey's end yet... I leave the bus here - we're a few minutes behind the scheduled arrival time of 1148.
Like many villages in these parts, Gilfach Goch developed as a coal mining village during the industrialisation of the South Wales valleys in the 19th century. In his "Handbook of the Origin of Place-names in Wales and Monmouthshire", published in 1887, the Reverend Thomas Morgan suggested that "the village probably derives its name from a heap of red cinders that remain as a memento of the ironworks that stood there in olden times".
It's the mining community, though, that is commemorated by this memorial at the Gilfach Goch Community Council Offices:
Buses stand at the Senior Citizens' Hall briefly for time regulation before setting off again, but there is still undiscovered ground to cover. Buses follow an approximately two-mile loop from here, digging deeper into Gilfach Goch and calling into the adjacent village of Evanstown.
Just to confuse things bus-wise, alternate buses run round the loop in opposite directions. The bus I have just left is taking the clockwise loop - Evanstown first and then back into Gilfach Goch. No passengers, though, in this case - the last of us have alighted at the Senior Citizens' Hall.
ABOVE: The junction where the loop diverges. Clockwise buses head straight on into Evanstown, whilst those going anti-clockwise turn right.
To be honest, it's not obvious where one village ends and the other begins; nor why there are two separate names for what is ostensibly one large village (that's my opinion - with apologies to the locals). There's a Gilfach Goch Welfare Centre in Evanstown, and a Gilfach Goch Social Club.
It took me a while to work out the service pattern at this end of the route, as the timetable provided by Stagecoach is ambiguous. Gilfach Goch Post Office is the only timing point on the loop, but the timetable suggests that only alternate buses call there. This isn't true - all buses stop there - on one side of the road or the other. There's no mention of Evanstown either, nor of the fact that buses pass back by the Senior Citizens' Hall again at 27 and 57 minutes past the hour, once they have completed the loop.
Back to reality, and I have a few minutes to wander around. The area is very distinctly South Wales - those hills with the population centres in between feel to me to be unique to this region.
The village of Evanstown is just across the county border into Bridgend County Borough.
ABOVE: The kind of view that I feel can only be found in South Wales - a village in the Valleys; this is looking across from Gilfach Goch to Evanstown
Gilfach Goch is dominated by the hills behind it, but the High Street is uphill too.
ABOVE: Gilfach Goch High Street - you can just make out the 150 bus in the distance, near the end of the village loop and heading back towards the Senior Citizens' Hall, before returning to Porth.
But there are some attractive houses here, some with lovely views of the rolling valleys beyond.
Half an hour after arriving, I am back at the Senior Citizens' Hall for the next bus back to Porth. As I have a day ticket, I am hoping that the driver won't notice (or won't care) if I travel around the loop first.
Unusually, this is an ADL Enviro200 MMC (8.9-metre length) rather than one of the route's usual Optare Solos. It carries discreet branding for Pontypridd Town Service 99.
ABOVE: Stagecoach South Wales 37467, an ADL Enviro200 MMC, approaches the Senior Citizens' Hall stop in Gilfach Goch, operating route 150. This is the stop at the start of the village loop. Direct services to Porth leave from the stop opposite.
Unlike the previous departure, which went empty around the loop, there are about eight passengers on this bus. Two of us join them for an anti-clockwise tour of the northernmost parts of Gilfach Goch, followed by Evanstown. All of those who were on the bus when it arrived at the Senior Citizens' Hall leave during the course of the loop, although one not until the very last stop before we're back at the Hall. Presumably the locals don't mind which way they go round.
We're back at the Hall after a few minutes, now forming the 1227 departure back to Porth. The lady who joined the bus at the same time as I did is still on board, so, again presumably, it's quite normal to board the bus before the loop and ride right round. On a seven-to-eight minute circuit and with a half-hourly frequency, we're not going to miss an earlier service by doing so!
We retrace our steps towards Porth, but there's a peculiar occurrence at the five-way roundabout near Bryngolau. Remember me talking about the lonely, isolated bus stop on the edge of a residential area? When we come to this roundabout, the driver undertakes a complete circuit and passes this little road again:
ABOVE: Lonely and isolated - the stop at Bryngolau Mountain View
Having completed the circuit, he continues round to what would have been the first exit from where he joined. Did he miss his turning the first time round? What's going on?
The answer comes from a look at the map of this route on BusTimes.org. It shows that the lonely, isolated bus stop is actually served by the 150. It's a double-run to a stop called Bryngolau Mountain View, and all buses on route 150 are scheduled to stop there. So our one-and-a-bit times round the roundabout was so that the driver could call in at that stop if necessary (which it wasn't - no-one waiting or wanting to get off). All explained! It was less obvious that this was part of the route on the outward journey as the bus just navigated past the turning (again, no-one waiting or wanting to get off).
We get stuck in a traffic jam on the outskirts of Porth, which probably adds five or so minutes to the journey. This is due to what appears to be someone setting up lights for roadworks. They have blocked one lane but have yet to switch on the lights, which means that traffic going into town has to squeeze in when there's a gap in the outward flow - which there isn't often!
The journey back into Porth, which becomes steadily busier as we go, takes a final detour via the Llwyncelin area to the east of the town, which seems to only be served on route 150 by buses in this direction. This seems to help to bring buses back into Porth facing in the right direction to go straight out again on the next journey. My bus arrives back at Morrison's at 1309 - about 11 minutes late but still (just) in time for a punctual departure on the next trip, at 1315.
ABOVE: 37467 again, at the Morrison's stop in Porth, preparing for the next departure to Gilfach Goch. I took this picture from the supermarket car park, on the opposite bank of the river. The "Pontypridd Circular" branding is visible from here.
And that's the 150 trip that I decided to make to mark my 150th article. It's a lovely ride, and I've really enjoyed 'discovering' Gilfach Goch and the bus route that services it.
It strikes me as one of those services that I would never have stumbled across in normal circumstances and I feel happy for having done so - that's part of the joy of doing what I do! And the other part is sharing it with you. Here's to the next 150 articles!
BELOW: An approximation of today's journey:
FOOTNOTE [1]: I know BusTimes.org lists 24 routes when you search for route 150, but eight of the ones on the list are not actually numbered 150, one is a National Express service ("out-of-scope" of my blog) and two are in Ireland (also "out-of-scope")!