Note 44b — Chapter IV · THE JOURNEY BY COED GRONO AND ABERGEVENNI

The last chapter having been wholly digressive, we must now recur back to Brecknock, or rather, perhaps, to our author’s residence at Landeu, where we left him, and from thence accompany him to Abergavenny. It appears that from Landeu he took the road to Talgarth, a small village a little to the south east of the road leading from Brecknock to Hay; from whence, climbing up a steep ascent, now called Rhiw Cwnstabl, or the Constable’s ascent, he crossed the black mountains of Llaneliew to the source of the Gronwy-fawr river, which rises in that eminence, and pursues its rapid course into the Vale of Usk. From thence a rugged and uneven track descends suddenly into a narrow glen, formed by the torrent of the Gronwy, between steep, impending mountains; bleak and barren for the first four or five miles, but afterwards wooded to the very margin of the stream. A high ledge of grassy hills on the left hand, of which the principal is called the Bal, or Y Fal, divides this formidable pass (the “Malus passus” of Giraldus) from the vale of Ewyas, in which stands the noble monastery of Llanthoni, “montibus suis inclusum,” encircled by its mountains. The road at length emerging from this deep recess of Coed Grono, or Cwm Gronwy, the vale of the river Gronwy, crosses the river at a place called Pont Escob, or the Bishop’s bridge, probably so called from this very circumstance of its having been now passed by the archbishop and his suite, and is continued through the forest of Moel, till it joins the Hereford road, about two miles from Abergavenny. This formidable defile is at least nine miles in length.