Elan Village

A couple were taking a stroll across the footbridge below the Caban Coch dam in the Elan Valley, Mid Wales, and very conveniently for me they choose to stop right in the middle of the bridge to look at the wall of water thundering down a few yards away from them.

If there is one thing you have to admire our Victorian ancestors for it is the sheer scale and vision in their infrastructure projects, many of which we still rely on today. One such is the Elan Valley dam system, which supplies pure Welsh water to Birmingham. This is the Caban Coch dam which is the lowest dam on the system, and it is 120ft high by 610 ft wide. As you can see it was designed to turn into a giant waterfall when the reservoir behind it is full, and the experience of standing in front of it is a pure assault on the senses. I was fortunate that there were only a few people about when I visited, and one chap in a bright red coat was very obliging in standing in the very centre of the bridge over the River Elan just downstream from the dam.

Following on from last week's image, having escaped the weather on nearby Gorllwyn, the next stop was the Elan valley dams. This is a spectacular place to be when the dams are full and overflowing, even if you have to dodge the snowshowers. It was so grey and dark that there was hardly any colour to be had, so I went B&W with this.