TUNNEL VISION ON HIS ‘MOST
OVER the last few years BBC’s Homes Under The Hammer’s popular presenter and property expert Martin Roberts has been falling head over heels in love with Wales.
Now he is on a mission to help a community in the Valleys bring a unique and important part of its heritage back to life, including reopening the pub, by ploughing at least half a million pounds of his own money into a project that he admits is his most worrying to date.
Martin says: “I won’t lie, it’s the most challenging project I’ve ever undertaken, it’s the most daunting project I’ve ever undertaken but it’s one that I feel I’ve been given as a bit of a gift and I’ve got to make the most of it.”
How Martin ended up with the keys to the Hendrewen Hotel in Blaencwm at the top of the Rhondda Fawr valley, without even telling his wife Kirsty so she couldn’t talk him out it, and as patron of the Rhondda Tunnel Society is due to a unique set of circumstances that Martin feels was somehow destined to happen, and it began with an affinity for Wales that he, until recently, found hard to explain.
Martin says: “It’s been a bit spiritual for me in lots of ways, I can’t really explain it. I just feel it and I felt it when I started to come to Wales in recent times, I just felt this sense of being at home, at peace and happy.
“I’m a Roberts, so obviously somewhere in my deep and distant past I obviously have some Welsh ancestry. My grandmother and grandad moved to Anglesey, they bought a bungalow and I spent lots of my happy childhood visiting them.
“And as a child I used to go cycling in Snowdonia with my mates and so know it very well, but I didn’t really explore South Wales until Homes Under The Hammer, where I’ve been going particularly to the Valleys because that’s where an awful lot of the auction properties tend to come up.”
Regularly visiting the Valleys and getting to know the communities started to resonate with Martin’s upbringing in Warrington in a working class area when times were hard but where the community were unshakeable in their support for each other.
But Martin’s love affair with the Valleys went into overdrive after a trip with his son Scott to BikePark Wales.
He says: “It was the first time I’d been to the area as a sort of tourist, I think. We’d been to St David’s and it’s beautiful, we’ve popped into Cardiff and thought it was an amazing, vibrant place, but never up to the Heads of the Valleys area much, and when we went to BikePark Wales I thought ‘this is absolutely world class’.
“I’m a late fifties bloke and I’m there on my mountain bike screaming like a child, absolutely loving it – but having to spend a lot of money then with my chiropractor, but loving every second of it. And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have a base in this lovely part of the world that is absolutely gorgeous?’”
So when the oldest farmhouse in the Rhondda was for sale, he felt it calling to him.
Martin and Kirsty renovated the farmhouse to create a character-packed Airbnb that can sleep up to 17 people.
Martin says: “During the renovation I spent a lot of time there, a lot of time with the community, and I fell in love with the place that is just off the scale – the area around there, just at the top of the Rhondda Valley – mountains,
waterfalls, but more importantly the people, I’ve never come across a community that immediately felt so supportive.
“I almost feel like, you know, if I was in trouble or if I was ill, that is the only place I’d want to be because they just gather round and support each other, and I guess that goes back to my childhood.”
As the farmhouse renovations continued the community began to become accustomed to seeing Martin Roberts “off the telly” wandering into the shop for a pint of milk for the builders or supping a pint in the pub.
As he became a regular face in the community, he became aware of a particular aspect of the area that intrigued him.
Martin says: “I heard about the Rhondda Tunnel, and obviously it’s this incredible tourism project waiting to happen that’s just got to be taken out of this stupid red tape that has stopped it happening so far.
“I went down the tunnel, saw it for myself and thought ‘this is absolutely extraordinary, why the hell hasn’t this been reopened?’ – it’s not going to cost that much in the whole scheme of things and it would revolutionise the tourism of the area, because the top end of this Rhondda Valley is in danger of losing out.”
The visit down the tunnel combined with Martin’s growing connection to the area has led to the Rhondda Tunnel Society making him patron of the group, and he couldn’t be more thrilled and more motivated to help them in any way he can.
He says: “I think it was like a new set of eyes coming in and helping to tell the story of what it’s all about, and I was very proud that they made me patron of the Rhondda Tunnel Society – that was a huge honour.
“The society is run by a wonderfully enthusiastic bunch of people, a lot of them ex-miners and exengineers, who just passionately want to get this amazing piece of industrial architecture reopened. I’m just trying to help to bring people together who we need to get together – to get it done, whatever it takes.”
But things have now moved on in a rather unexpected direction as Martin has somehow found himself buying the pub in Blaencwm, which had closed down during lockdown.
Martin says: “The Hendrewen Hotel was a much-loved pub, famous in the area for its Sunday lunches. But they lost the heart of their little village and that’s heart-breaking, so I thought I would buy the Hendrewen inn, especially as it’s only about 500 metres from one of the tunnel openings.
“I often act a bit on gut instinct, and possibly don’t always tell my wife because sometimes I think there’s a danger I will be talked out of things because they appear daft on the surface; I only sort of mention it when it’s too late! I’ve never run a pub, I’ve never run a restaurant, and I’ve never run a hotel so, hey, what could possibly go wrong?”
But even before the pub deal was done the local gossip that Martin Roberts from Homes Under The Hammer was going to be the new landlord of the Hendrewen had flowed down the valley faster than any text, phone call or WhatsApp message.
Martin saw in action how news travels fast in the Valleys, and he was very amused.
He says: “One thing you learn here pretty quickly is you can’t keep a secret, and that is also very funny. I wasn’t telling anybody that I was buying it, not until I had actually bought it, but then somehow everybody knows.
“My cleaner rang me up one day, she cleans the farmhouse, and she said, ‘Have you bought the Hendrewen? My aunty was in the queue down Asda and the woman behind was saying, ‘That Martin Roberts has bought the Hendrewen.’
“It’s just hysterical because as far as I was concerned I hadn’t told anybody, but it was being discussed in Asda. But I’ve never denied it, why would I? I’m proud of it, I’m really excited and I’m proud to be part of it. I am English but I’ve been so welcomed in and I haven’t felt any animosity.
“I do try and involve the community, like we put on a Christmas party and gave out presents for kids and had a live band and Santa’s grotto because I wanted people to realise that I support the community and also to tell them what we are hoping to do.”
One of the events Martin and the Rhondda Tunnel Society have planned to engage with the community is a presentation in Blaencwm on Saturday from 2.30pm, when there will be a presentation unveiling the developments regarding the Rhondda Tunnel Project and the refurbishment and enhancement of the Hendrewen Hotel.
Martin is very serious indeed about what he is hoping to bring to the area in conjunction with local partners, and how he thinks the community is a vital part of the plans.
He says: “I want people to know that I’m not some sort of person who wants to turn up and make a quick buck. I want to do something for the community, of course it has to be commercially viable, but I want to do something that supports the local community and supports tourism as well.”
Martin is so positive about the area and keen to catalyse further investment that he is putting over half a million pounds of his own money into the redevelopment and refurbishment of the Hendrewen.
He hopes that grants and development loans will enable him to achieve his vision of an additional accommodation block with disabled access rooms, a supporting, all-inclusive infrastructure for all terrain wheelchairs and three-wheel mountain bike hire, a bike hire and outdoor activity hub, a restaurant expansion and a village shop stocking additional visitor supplies, plus a tourist and tunnel information centre.
However he says: “There couldn’t be a worse time to be going into the hospitality trade, so you’ve got to cover your costs but I’m also aware that I need to recognise that it was a community pub so I’ll probably do a discount card that everyone in the local village can get, because it needs to continue to be a centre for the community.
“I’m hoping that I will be allowed to, and I’ve put in a pre-application and that’s been favourably received but we haven’t got planning permission yet, we’ve talked to the planners and they seem very supportive as there’s a huge lack of accommodation in the top end of the valleys.”
But it’s Martin’s extreme enthusiasm for the tunnel being reopened that is the driving force behind his big vision, with the Hendrewen at the very heart of it.
He says: “These days people don’t trust people’s reasons but I want people to know why I’m doing this – I genuinely think I can make a massive difference here with the tunnel, with the pub, and I’m going to do my best to help reopen it, create something the community can be proud of.”
And a recent chat with his father has revealed another possible source of his affection for Wales.
Martin says: “I did randomly say to my dad about a month ago, ‘Do we have any Welsh in our family?’ – and he goes, ‘Ummm, well your greatgreat-grandad was a sea captain out of Conwy and he married a woman from Cardiff’.
“I was like, ‘Dad, did it not occur to you that this might be vaguely significant at the moment while I try and work out why I have this mindboggling affinity with Wales and the Welsh Valleys?’ Seems if you go three or four generations back, I am completely Welsh.”