Tharbad was a ruined town and river-crossing on the Greyflood, the Gwathlo, at the meeting of the old roads that ran between Arnor in the north and Gondor in the south. In the great days of the Dunedain it was a busy port and a fortified bridge-town kept jointly by the two kingdoms; but plague, flood, and the slow desertion of Eriador left it derelict, its bridge broken and its causeways drowned, a haunt of ruin by the time of the War of the Ring.