Port Talbot

Baglan is a large village in Wales, adjoining Port Talbot, named after Saint Baglan. Baglan is also a community and ward in the Neath Port Talbot county borough. In 2001, the population was 6,654. rising to 6,819 in 2011.

A holy well or sacred spring is a well, spring or small pool of water revered either in a Christian or pagan context, sometimes both. The water of holy wells is often thought to have healing qualities, through the numinous presence of its guardian spirit or Christian saint. They often have local legends associated with them; for example in Christian legends, the water is often said to have been made to flow by the action of a saint. Holy wells are often also places of ritual and pilgrimage, where people pray and leave votive offerings. In Celtic regions, strips of cloth are often tied to trees at holy wells, known as clootie wells.

Illtud, also known as Illtud Farchog or Illtud the Knight, is venerated as the abbot teacher of the divinity school, Bangor Illtyd, located in Llanilltud Fawr in Glamorgan, Wales. He founded the monastery and college in the 6th century, and the school is believed to be Britain's earliest centre of learning. At its height, it had over a thousand pupils and schooled many of the great saints of the age, such as David, Samson of Dol, and the historian Gildas.

John Leland or Leyland was an English poet and antiquary.

Margam Castle, Margam, Port Talbot, Wales, is a late Georgian country house built for Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot. Designed by Thomas Hopper, the castle was constructed in a Tudor Revival style over a five-year period, from 1830 to 1835. The site had been occupied for some 4,000 years. A Grade I listed building, the castle is now in the care of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council.

Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot FRS was a Welsh landowner, industrialist and Liberal politician. He developed his estate at Margam near Swansea as an extensive ironworks, served by railways and a port, which was renamed Port Talbot. He served as a Member of Parliament for Glamorgan constituencies from 1830 until his death in 1890, a sixty-year tenure which made him the second longest serving MP in the nineteenth century. He was Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan, from 1848 to 1890.

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election.

An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ironworks is ironworks.

Chain Home Low (CHL) was the name of a British early warning radar system operated by the RAF during World War II. The name refers to CHL's ability to detect aircraft flying at altitudes below the capabilities of the original Chain Home (CH) radars, where most CHL radars were co-located. CHL could reliably detect aircraft flying as low as 500 feet (150 m). The official name was AMES Type 2, referring to the Air Ministry Experimental Station at Bawdsey Manor where it was developed, but this name was almost never used in practice.

Margam Country Park is a country park estate in Wales, of around 850 acres (3.4 km²). It is situated in Margam, about 2 miles (3 km) from Port Talbot in south Wales. It was once owned by the Mansel Talbot family and is now owned and administered by the local council, Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council. Situated within the park are three notable buildings: Margam Abbey, a Cistercian monastery; Margam Castle, a neo-Gothic country house that was once the seat of the Mansel Talbot family; and the 18th-century Orangery. The park is designated Grade I on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

Cwmafan, sometimes known as Cwmavon in English, is a large village and community in the Afan valley in Wales, lying within Neath Port Talbot County Borough. It had a population of 5,603 in 2001, increasing slightly to 5,615 at the 2011 Census. Cwmafan is known for having a high percentage of Welsh speakers. In many ways it is a suburb of the nearby town of Port Talbot which is less than 2 miles (3 km) to the south. The literal translation of Cwmafan from Welsh to English is complex, Cwm means valley with Afan as the name of the river flowing through, hence the village residing within the Afan Valley. It could be a version of Afon which means river, so literally the "River Valley", this is common in Wales and the UK with many rivers being called Afon or Avon. There is also a Saint Afan, which it is possible the river was named after. There have been other suggestions but none accepted locally.

Glamorgan, or sometimes Glamorganshire, is one of the thirteen historic counties of Wales and a former administrative county of Wales. Originally an early medieval petty kingdom of varying boundaries known in Welsh as the Kingdom of Morgannwg, which was then invaded and taken over by the Normans as the Lordship of Glamorgan. The area that became known as Glamorgan was both a rural, pastoral area, and a conflict point between the Norman lords and the Welsh princes. It was defined by a large concentration of castles.

West Glamorgan is a former administrative county in South Wales. It is now a preserved county.

Neath is a market town and community situated in the Neath Port Talbot County Borough, Wales. The town had a population of 50,658 in 2011. The community of the parish of Neath had a population of 19,258 in 2011. Historically in Glamorgan, the town is located on the River Neath, seven miles east-northeast of Swansea.

Lliw Valley was a local government district with borough status in West Glamorgan, Wales from 1974 to 1996.

Neath Port Talbot is a county borough in the south-west of Wales. Its principal towns are Neath, Port Talbot, Briton Ferry and Pontardawe. The county borough borders Bridgend County Borough and Rhondda Cynon Taf to the east, Powys and Carmarthenshire to the north; and Swansea to the west.

Margam Castle, Margam, Port Talbot, Wales, is a late Georgian country house built for Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot. Designed by Thomas Hopper, the castle was constructed in a Tudor Revival style over a five-year period, from 1830 to 1835. The site had been occupied for some 4,000 years. A Grade I listed building, the castle is now in the care of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council.

Margam Abbey was a Cistercian monastery, located in the village of Margam, a suburb of modern Port Talbot in Wales.

Aberavon Beach, also known as Aberavon Sands, is a three-mile (5 km) stretch of sandy beach on the north-eastern edge of Swansea Bay in Port Talbot, Wales. With its high breaker waves, it is popular with surfers. Aberavon Beach was awarded Blue Flag status in December 2007 and features in the Good Beach Guide published by the Marine Conservation Society.

River Neath is a river in south Wales running south west from the point at which its headwaters arising in the Brecon Beacons National Park converge to its mouth at Baglan Bay below Briton Ferry on the east side of Swansea Bay.

Port Talbot Steelworks is an integrated steel production plant in Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales, capable of producing nearly 5 million tonnes of steel slab per annum. This makes it the larger of the two major steel plants in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. Over 4,000 people work at the plant. The majority of the slab is rolled on-site at Port Talbot and at the Newport Llanwern site to make a variety of steel strip products. The remainder is processed at other Tata Steel plants or sold in slab form. The works covers a large area of land which dominates the east of the town. Its two blast furnaces and steel production plant buildings are major landmarks visible from both the M4 motorway and the South Wales Main Line when passing through the town.

Particulates – also known as atmospheric aerosol particles, atmospheric particulate matter, particulate matter (PM) or suspended particulate matter (SPM) – are microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air. The term aerosol commonly refers to the particulate/air mixture, as opposed to the particulate matter alone. Sources of particulate matter can be natural or anthropogenic. They have impacts on climate and precipitation that adversely affect human health, in ways additional to direct inhalation.

Neath Port Talbot is a county borough in the south-west of Wales. Its principal towns are Neath, Port Talbot, Briton Ferry and Pontardawe. The county borough borders Bridgend County Borough and Rhondda Cynon Taf to the east, Powys and Carmarthenshire to the north; and Swansea to the west.

Margam Abbey was a Cistercian monastery, located in the village of Margam, a suburb of modern Port Talbot in Wales.

Aeolian processes, also spelled eolian, pertain to wind activity in the study of geology and weather and specifically to the wind's ability to shape the surface of the Earth. Winds may erode, transport, and deposit materials and are effective agents in regions with sparse vegetation, a lack of soil moisture and a large supply of unconsolidated sediments. Although water is a much more powerful eroding force than wind, aeolian processes are important in arid environments such as deserts.

In geography and geology, fluvial processes are associated with rivers and streams and the deposits and landforms created by them. When the stream or rivers are associated with glaciers, ice sheets, or ice caps, the term glaciofluvial or fluvioglacial is used.

Boulder clay is an unsorted agglomeration of clastic sediment that is unstratified and structureless and contains gravel of various sizes, shapes, and compositions distributed at random in a fine-grained matrix. The fine-grained matrix consists of stiff, hard, pulverized clay or rock flour. Boulder clay is also known as either known as drift clay; till; unstratified drift, geschiebelehm (German); argile á blocaux (French); and keileem (Dutch).

Alluvium is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluvium is also sometimes called alluvial deposit. Alluvium is typically geologically young and is not consolidated into solid rock. Sediments deposited underwater, in seas, estuaries, lakes, or ponds, are not described as alluvium.

Glaciofluvial deposits or Glacio-fluvial sediments consist of boulders, gravel, sand, silt and clay from ice sheets or glaciers. They are transported, sorted and deposited by streams of water. The deposits are formed beside, below or downstream from the ice. They include kames, kame terraces and eskers formed in ice contact and outwash fans and outwash plains below the ice margin. Typically the outwash sediment is carried by fast and turbulent fluvio-glacial meltwater streams, but occasionally it is carried by catastrophic outburst floods. Larger elements such as boulders and gravel are deposited nearer to the ice margin, while finer elements are carried farther, sometimes into lakes or the ocean. The sediments are sorted by fluvial processes. They differ from glacial till, which is moved and deposited by the ice of the glacier, and is unsorted.

Meltwater is water released by the melting of snow or ice, including glacial ice, tabular icebergs and ice shelves over oceans. Meltwater is often found during early spring when snow packs and frozen rivers melt with rising temperatures, and in the ablation zone of glaciers where the rate of snow cover is reducing. Meltwater can be produced during volcanic eruptions, in a similar way in which the more dangerous lahars form.

In geology, drift is a name for all sediment transported by a glacier and deposited directly by or from the ice, or by glacial meltwater. Drift is often subdivided into unstratified drift that forms moraines and stratified drift that accumulates as stratified and sorted sediments in the form of outwash plains, eskers, kames, varves, and so forth. The term drift clay is a synonym for boulder clay. Both are archaic terms for glacial tills with a fine-grained matrix.

Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, shallow or deep-seated slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, characterized by either steep or gentle slope gradients, from mountain ranges to coastal cliffs or even underwater, in which case they are called submarine landslides.

Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock become completely saturated with water is called the water table. Groundwater is recharged from the surface; it may discharge from the surface naturally at springs and seeps, and can form oases or wetlands. Groundwater is also often withdrawn for agricultural, municipal, and industrial use by constructing and operating extraction wells. The study of the distribution and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology, also called groundwater hydrology.

Mumbles Lighthouse, completed in 1794, is a lighthouse located in Mumbles, near Swansea. The structure, which sits on the outer of two islands off Mumbles Head, is clearly visible from any point along the five mile sweep of Swansea Bay. Along with the nearby lifeboat station, it is the most photographed landmark in the village.

Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another.

A tide-predicting machine was a special-purpose mechanical analog computer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, constructed and set up to predict the ebb and flow of sea tides and the irregular variations in their heights – which change in mixtures of rhythms, that never repeat themselves exactly. Its purpose was to shorten the laborious and error-prone computations of tide-prediction. Such machines usually provided predictions valid from hour to hour and day to day for a year or more ahead.

Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations, and comes from Latin constructio and Old French construction. To construct is the verb: the act of building, and the noun is construction: how something is built, the nature of its structure.

A cargo ship or freighter is a merchant ship that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year, handling the bulk of international trade. Cargo ships are usually specially designed for the task, often being equipped with cranes and other mechanisms to load and unload, and come in all sizes. Today, they are almost always built of welded steel, and with some exceptions generally have a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years before being scrapped.

A comprehensive school typically is a secondary school for pupils aged approximately 11–18, that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, in contrast to a selective school system where admission is restricted on the basis of selection criteria, usually academic performance. The term is commonly used in relation to England and Wales, where comprehensive schools were introduced as state schools on an experimental basis in the 1940s and became more widespread from 1965. They may be part of a local education authority or be a self governing academy or part of a multi-academy trust.

Ysgol Gymraeg Ystalyfera Bro Dur is a Welsh-medium comprehensive school in Neath Port Talbot, Wales. The school provides education to three to eighteen-year-old pupils in Neath Port Talbot and south Powys from three campuses in Ystalyfera and Port Talbot.

Glan Afan Comprehensive School was a mixed comprehensive school which served the town of Port Talbot, Wales, and its surrounding areas for 120 years. It was opened in 1896 as Port Talbot Intermediate School under the provisions of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889. The school closed in July 2016 to facilitate the merger of Glan Afan itself, Cwrt Sart Comprehensive, Sandfields Comprehensive and Traethmelyn Primary School into the ultra-modern £40millon 'super-school', Ysgol Bae Baglan.

The University of South Wales is a public university in Wales, with campuses in Cardiff, Newport and Pontypridd. It was formed on 11 April 2013 from the merger of the University of Glamorgan and the University of Wales, Newport. The university is the second largest university in Wales in terms of its student numbers, and offers around 500 undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The university has three main faculties across its campuses in South Wales.

Margam Stones Museum is a small Victorian schoolhouse near Port Talbot, South Wales, which now provides a home for one of the most important collections of Celtic stone crosses in Britain. All originally found within the locality of Margam, and mostly assembled as a collection in the 19th century, they provide enduring testimony to a Welsh Christian culture between the 6th and 16th centuries. The striking Cross of Conbelin is the most celebrated example. From around 1000 AD, it is a huge disc cross with Celtic interlace and plaitwork patterns, figurative scenes including a hunting scene, and inscriptions telling us who made it and who erected it. There are 17 early Christian stones, plus 11 memorials and other stones from the post-Norman periods. The museum is run by Cadw, the Welsh historic sites agency, and is close to Margam Abbey Church and the ruins of the Abbey buildings.

Cadw is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and part of the Tourism and Culture group. Cadwcode: cym promoted to code: cy works to protect the historic buildings and structures, the landscapes and heritage sites of Wales, to make them available for the public to visit, enjoy, and understand their significance. Cadwcode: cym promoted to code: cy manages 127 state-owned properties and sites. It arranges events at its managed properties, provides lectures and teaching sessions, offers heritage walks, and hosts an online shop. Members of the public can become members of Cadwcode: cym promoted to code: cy to gain membership privileges.

A private museum is a collection, usually on a very limited topic and operated by individual enthusiasts, collectors, clubs or companies.

Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have appeared on streets, walls and bridges throughout the world. Banksy's work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist and founding member of the musical group Massive Attack.

A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.

Michael Christopher Sheen is a Welsh actor, film director, television producer, narrator, and political activist. After training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he worked mainly in theatre throughout the 1990s with stage roles in Romeo and Juliet (1992), Don't Fool with Love (1993), Peer Gynt (1994), The Seagull (1995), The Homecoming (1997), and Henry V (1997). His performances in Amadeus at the Old Vic and Look Back in Anger at the National Theatre were nominated for Olivier Awards in 1998 and 1999, respectively. In 2003, he was nominated for a third Olivier Award for his performance in Caligula at the Donmar Warehouse.

Good Friday is a Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary. It is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum. It is also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Great and Holy Friday, and Black Friday.

Aberavon Beach, also known as Aberavon Sands, is a three-mile (5 km) stretch of sandy beach on the north-eastern edge of Swansea Bay in Port Talbot, Wales. With its high breaker waves, it is popular with surfers. Aberavon Beach was awarded Blue Flag status in December 2007 and features in the Good Beach Guide published by the Marine Conservation Society.

Heart South Wales is an regional radio station that broadcasts to South and West Wales from studios in Cardiff Bay. The station is owned and operated by Global Radio and forms part of the expanded Heart radio network of stations.

Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) is a digital radio standard for broadcasting digital audio radio services in many countries around the world, defined, supported, marketed and promoted by the WorldDAB organisation. The standard is dominant in Europe and is also used in Australia, and in parts of Africa and Asia.

Neath Port Talbot Hospital is a general hospital located in Port Talbot, Wales. It is managed by Swansea Bay University Health Board.

Baglan is a large village in Wales, adjoining Port Talbot, named after Saint Baglan. Baglan is also a community and ward in the Neath Port Talbot county borough. In 2001, the population was 6,654. rising to 6,819 in 2011.

The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.

Aberavon Beach, also known as Aberavon Sands, is a three-mile (5 km) stretch of sandy beach on the north-eastern edge of Swansea Bay in Port Talbot, Wales. With its high breaker waves, it is popular with surfers. Aberavon Beach was awarded Blue Flag status in December 2007 and features in the Good Beach Guide published by the Marine Conservation Society.

Media Wales Ltd. is a publishing company based in Cardiff, Wales. As of 2009 it was owned by Reach plc. It was previously known as the Western Mail & Echo Ltd.

Cân i Gymru is a Welsh television show broadcast on S4C annually. It was first introduced in 1969 when BBC Cymru wanted to enter the Eurovision Song Contest. The winner of the contest represents Wales at the annual Pan Celtic Festival held in Ireland and is also awarded a cash prize.

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the universe in a time-travelling space ship called the TARDIS. The TARDIS exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. With various companions, the Doctor combats foes, works to save civilisations, and helps people in need.

Port Talbot Parkway railway station is a railway station in Port Talbot, Wales. The station is located at street level near Station Road in Port Talbot town centre.

Great Western Railway (GWR) is a British train operating company owned by FirstGroup that operates the Greater Western passenger railway franchise. It manages 197 stations and its trains call at over 270. GWR operates long-distance inter-city services along the Great Western Main Line to and from the West of England and South Wales, inter-city services from London to the West Country via the Reading–Taunton line, and the Night Riviera sleeper service between London and Penzance. It also provides commuter and outer-suburban services from its London terminus at Paddington to West London, the Thames Valley region including parts of Berkshire, parts of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire; and regional services throughout the West of England and South Wales to the South coast of England. Great Western Railway also provides and maintains the Electrostar Class 387 fleet for Heathrow Express.

Neath railway station is a main line railway station serving the town of Neath, south Wales. Managed by Transport for Wales, the station is located at street level on Windsor Road, situated back from the street fronting a small car park. It is 208 miles 20 chains (335 km) from London Paddington.

Bridgend railway station is a main line station serving the town of Bridgend, south Wales. It is located approximately halfway between Cardiff Central and Swansea stations, at the point where the Maesteg Line diverges from the South Wales Main Line; it is also the western terminus of the Vale of Glamorgan Line from Cardiff. It is 165 miles (266 km) measured from London Paddington.

Cardiff Central railway station is a major station on the South Wales Main Line, located in the capital of Wales, Cardiff. It is one of the city's two urban rail network hubs, along with Cardiff Queen Street. Opened in 1850 as Cardiff station, it was renamed Cardiff General in 1924, and then Cardiff Central in 1973.

Hereford railway station serves the city of Hereford, England. Managed by Transport for Wales, it lies on the Welsh Marches Line between Leominster and Abergavenny, is the western terminus of the Cotswold Line and also has an hourly West Midlands Trains service from Birmingham New Street. The station has four platforms for passenger trains and two additional relief lines for goods services.

Shrewsbury railway station is in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. Built in 1848, it was designated a grade II listed building in 1969.

Crewe railway station is a railway station in Crewe, Cheshire, England. It opened in 1837 and is one of the most historically significant railway stations in the world.

A bus station or a bus interchange is a structure where city or intercity buses stop to pick up and drop off passengers. While the term bus depot can also be used to refer to a bus station, it generally refers to a bus garage. A bus station is larger than a bus stop, which is usually simply a place on the roadside, where buses can stop. It may be intended as a terminal station for a number of routes, or as a transfer station where the routes continue.

National Express is an intercity and Inter-regional coach operator providing services throughout Great Britain. It is a subsidiary of National Express Group. Most services are subcontracted to local coach companies. The company's head office is in offices above Birmingham Coach Station.

First Cymru is an operator of bus services in South West Wales. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup with its headquarters in Swansea.

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. Blast refers to the combustion air being supplied above atmospheric pressure.

Port Talbot Steelworks is an integrated steel production plant in Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales, capable of producing nearly 5 million tonnes of steel slab per annum. This makes it the larger of the two major steel plants in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. Over 4,000 people work at the plant. The majority of the slab is rolled on-site at Port Talbot and at the Newport Llanwern site to make a variety of steel strip products. The remainder is processed at other Tata Steel plants or sold in slab form. The works covers a large area of land which dominates the east of the town. Its two blast furnaces and steel production plant buildings are major landmarks visible from both the M4 motorway and the South Wales Main Line when passing through the town.

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) was a United Kingdom government department. The department was created on 28 June 2007 on the disbanding of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and was itself disbanded on 6 June 2009 on the creation of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The A4241 Port Talbot Peripheral Distributor Road is a distributor road serving Port Talbot, Wales.

Margam Country Park is a country park estate in Wales, of around 850 acres (3.4 km²). It is situated in Margam, about 2 miles (3 km) from Port Talbot in south Wales. It was once owned by the Mansel Talbot family and is now owned and administered by the local council, Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council. Situated within the park are three notable buildings: Margam Abbey, a Cistercian monastery; Margam Castle, a neo-Gothic country house that was once the seat of the Mansel Talbot family; and the 18th-century Orangery. The park is designated Grade I on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council is the local authority for the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, one of the 22 principal areas of Wales. The council was controlled by the Labour Party from its creation in 1996 until 2022, when Plaid Cymru and a group of independent councillors agreed to share power.

The Ospreys, formerly the Neath-Swansea Ospreys is one of the four professional rugby union teams from Wales. They compete in the United Rugby Championship and the European Rugby Champions Cup. The team formed as a result of Neath RFC and Swansea RFC combining to create a new merged entity, as part of the new regional structure of Welsh rugby, that began in 2003. They are also affiliated with a number of local semi-professional and amateur clubs, including Welsh Premier Division sides Aberavon RFC, Bridgend Ravens, and original founding clubs Neath and Swansea. The regional area represented by the team has widely become known for rugby purposes as 'Ospreylia'.

Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. Rugby is simply based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is played between two teams of 15 players each, using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field called a pitch. The field has H-shaped goalposts at both ends.

The Cymru South is a regional football league in Wales, covering the southern half of the country. It has clubs with semi-professional status and together with the Cymru North, it forms the second tier of the Welsh football league system.

Afan Lido Football Club is a football team based in Port Talbot, Wales, playing in the Cymru South.

Baglan Dragons Association Football Club is a Welsh football team based in Baglan, Port Talbot, Wales. They play in the Ardal SW, which is in the third tier of the Welsh football league system.

The Ardal Leagues are a football league in Wales. The word "ardal" translates as "district" in English, with Wales split into four regions at this level. They have clubs with amateur/semi-professional status and sit at the third level of the Welsh football league system. The first year of their operation would have been 2020–21 but the 2020–21 Ardal North East season, 2020–21 Ardal North West season, 2020–21 Ardal South East season and 2020–21 Ardal South West season were all cancelled. The inaugural season was moved to 2021–22. The creation of the leagues mark the first time the Football Association of Wales owns and is administering tier 3 of the Welsh league system. These changes follow from a review of the Welsh football pyramid. To be eligible clubs need to meet the criteria for FAW tier 3 certification.

Llanwern steelworks is located in Llanwern, east of the City of Newport, South Wales.

Martyn Ashton is a former British and World Champion mountain bike trials rider, stunt rider and team manager. He had been riding professional trials since 1993, and has been described as a mountain biking legend, and credited with turning trials riding into one of the fast-growing areas of the sport of mountain biking. Ashton was paralysed in an accident in 2013, during a bike trials demo at the British Moto GP.

Baglan is a large village in Wales, adjoining Port Talbot, named after Saint Baglan. Baglan is also a community and ward in the Neath Port Talbot county borough. In 2001, the population was 6,654. rising to 6,819 in 2011.

Philip Henry Burton, MBE was a Welsh teacher who became an acclaimed radio producer and theatre director. In his later life, he emigrated to the United States where he helped found the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. Despite Burton's successes in many fields, it is for his role in helping Richard Burton to pursue his career as an actor, that he is best remembered.

Bars and Melody are a British R&B and rap duo consisting of rapper Leondre Devries and singer Charlie Lenehan, who took part in the eighth series of Britain's Got Talent in 2014. During their audition, they were automatically sent into the semifinals of the competition after the head judge, Simon Cowell, pressed the golden buzzer. They ultimately finished in third place in the series. Their first single after the show, "Shining Star", was released on 30 July 2014, accompanied by the acoustic version of their song "Hopeful".

The eighth series of British talent competition programme Britain's Got Talent was broadcast on ITV, from 12 April to 7 June 2014; because of England's international friendly with Peru, the show took a break on 30 May to avoid clashing with live coverage of the match. Auditions were held in Northern Ireland instead of Scotland for this series, with hosts Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly having to stand in for Simon Cowell, after illness forced him to be absent during a day of auditions. This series was the first in the programme's history to introduce the "Golden Buzzer" format to the competition – an element that was being introduced to the Got Talent franchise since it was first introduced on Germany's Got Talent in 2012.

Ivor Lewis Emmanuel was a Welsh musical theatre and television singer and actor. He is probably best remembered, however, for his appearance as "Private Owen" in the 1964 film Zulu, in which his character rallies outnumbered British soldiers by leading them in the stirring Welsh battle hymn "Men of Harlech" to counter the Zulu war chants.

A Ramsar site is a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, also known as "The Convention on Wetlands", an intergovernmental environmental treaty established on 2nd February 1971 in Ramsar, Iran by UNESCO, which came into force from 21st December,1975. It provides for national action and international cooperation regarding the conservation of wetlands, and wise sustainable use of their resources. Ramsar identifies wetlands of international importance, especially those providing waterfowl habitat.

The northern lapwing, also known as the peewit or pewit, tuit or tew-it, green plover, or pyewipe or just lapwing, is a bird in the lapwing subfamily. It is common through temperate Eurosiberia.