Pontypridd is known as the gateway to the valleys and as "a town with no history but one hell of a past".

It certainly wears the bumps and bruises of a bygone industrial age with a swaggering sense of pride and a defiant self belief.

There is no obvious tourist trail but it's clear that it's always had a streetlife that bristles with colour and character.

Much of this is centred around its main shopping drag, Taff Street, flanked on one side by a bustling multicultural market and the other by the impressive but neglected River Taff and the magnificent and not so neglected Ynysyngharad Park.

If on a wet, windswept Wednesday it can sometimes bear the hangdog look of a town that has seen better times, refuge can always be sought in its unpretentious array of lively cafes and boisterous bars where the town can show off its greatest asset - the people, always welcoming with a ready and disarming wit and a beguiling lack of formality.

And when the sun does shine, the market shows its colours and the whole town bulges and bustles with day trippers from the valleys, the atmosphere is positively continental.

For a broader view take any one of the precipitous roads that rear up out of the town for panoramic views from the Beacons to the Bristol Channel.

You'll see that Ponty is more than Tom Jones and the Old Bridge.

Pontypridd Sights