This place is the pits!

Yes, we’re talking about the small town of Blaenavon and Big Pit to be exact!  A former coal mine in the Welsh valleys is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was a fascinating insight into the whole mining industry and how so much of the Welsh culture & way of life had built up around it.

The highlight of the visit is a trip 90m underground to the remains of the actual mine itself.  Although 90m sounds like a long way down, by coal pit standards it was one of the shallower ones – many were around the 500m mark with the deepest ever pit shaft in the UK being 1400m deep!  Big Pit had 26 miles of tunnels when fully operational but these days all but approx 1 mile have been blocked off for safety reasons.  However the remaining tunnels provided an impressive insight into life below ground and how the men (and, before 1842, women and small boys) lived and worked.  Also, until 1972 the coal carts were pulled by horses and ponies who lived underground for 50 weeks per year, we were able to see their stables, feeding areas and the like.  There was a huge amount of equipment left behind when the mine closed and because our tour guide was an actual coal miner having worked in the industry from 1976-91 his insights and stories were from actual experience.  His father and grandfather were also coal miners, so he was able to give us many first-hand insights into the way the communities and families lived, as well as the actual work down the mine.  When the mines finally closed down between the mid 80's and early 90's there were around 20,000 redundancies, of which our tour guide was one.  There seemed to be a great deal of nostalgia amongst the old timers at Big Pit for the way things once were.  So if you’re ever in Blaenavon, it’s well worth a visit!!

(Due to safety reasons we were unable to take cameras down the pit so sadly there are no photos from underground.)

You may be wondering why we're still in South Wales rather than France?  A very astute question.  There is one final small modification we need on the motorhome, this to enable our BBQ to connect into the existing on-board LPG bottle rather than carrying an extra one which we don’t have the room for.  We found a company here in Newport who can do the modification however a part was needed with a 2-3 day delivery time.  So no problem, we’re just mooching around like one of those big fat snapper off the end of Tapeka Point 😊

The LPG mod should hopefully be sorted today and we’ll be heading, with a couple of overnight stops on the way, for Dover and a Saturday sailing to France.

We also had a very nice overnight stay on Saturday with our friends Chris & Patti here in Newport, otherwise we’ve been taking advantage of free camping opportunities around the local area.  We have an app (park4night) and a subscription (Britstops), both of which provide information on places you can stay and often for free.  You’ll see a couple of photos below of a church, pub and Harvey – these are typical of our overnight stops (along with one of an evening inside Harvey doing our research for the next day).  So long as you buy a pint or 2, many pubs are happy for you to stop overnight in their carpark.

Until next time from the travelling Woodies…