Portal:South Wales

Welcome To The South Wales Portal

South Wales (Welsh: De Cymru) is an area of Wales bordered by England and the Bristol Channel to the east and south, and Mid Wales and West Wales to the north and west. The most densely populated and richest region in the South West of the U.K. home to around 2.1million people and includes the capital Cardiff home to 400,000 and 2 other major cities. Land covers several thosands of killometers squared. There is 1 national park in the region called the Brecon Beacons and covers about a third of South Wales, it is part of the cambrain mountain range and is home to the highest mountain south of Snowdon, North Wales in the U.K.

The extent of South Wales is loosely defined, but it is generally considered to be the area surrounding the M4 motorway, including the counties of Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire and sometimes extending westwards to include south Carmarthenshire and south Pembrokeshire. In the western extent local people would probably recognise that they lived in both South Wales and in West Wales - there is considerable overlap in these somewhat artificial boundaries. The northern border is particularly ill-defined, but the A40 may be a good approximation whilst others consider the more southerly Heads of the Valleys Road as the boundary.

About 1.9 million people live in South Wales (approximately 66% of the total population of Wales based on estimates from the 2001 census data).

South Wales incorporates the capital Cardiff, as well as Newport, Swansea and Bridgend. The area also includes Neath Port Talbot, the South Wales Valleys and the more rural settings of the Brecon Beacons National Park, Vale of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire.

South Wales' valleys and upland mountain ridges were once a very rural area of great natural beauty, noted for its river valleys and ancient forests and lauded by romantic poets such as William Wordsworth. This changed to a considerable extent during the early Industrial Revolution when the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire valley areas were exploited for coal and iron. By the 1830s, hundreds of tons of coal were being transported by barge to ports in Cardiff and Newport. In the 1870s, coal was transported by railway networks to Newport Docks, at the time the largest coal exporting docks in the world, and by the 1880s coal was being exported from Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan.

For More Information Visit the wikipedia pages for Gwent, Newport, Caerleon, Ponthir, Torfaen or Cwmbran.