Another week gone by already, half way through summer and my feet haven't touched the ground yet. Our local weather here in the Uk and Wales in particular is warmish, cloudy with rain. It always rains in the valleys of Wales, it's why they are so lush and green. we grow good lamb here as well as the rare Black Beef. There is a local butcher who butchers his own cattle, and we get wonderful fresh meat from him. along with a variety of beef sausage that he makes to his own recipe ummyum.
From here at home we have a view over the Amman Valley and over the otherside of the mountain we have the Towy Valley, We live at the highest point around these here immediate parts. How do I know this, well the signal mast for the whole of West and South Wales is just at the top of the road. You can see that mast for miles and miles away.
On a note for scrapbooking, we went to the BigPit coal mining museum. It was up until recently a working mine, but went the way of most of the mines in Wales. Redundant.!! However they spruced it up added bits for a visitor centre and opened it up to the public.
You get a film show giving you the history of the pit and mining in general, then you get kitted out with hard hat and lantern and you are taken down the mine shaft in a cage and taken round the tunnels. Absolutely fascinating.
You can see where they stabled the pit ponies, who never saw light of day and went blind because of the darkness, saw the medical room where sick or injured miners would go and take a lie down.
Young children had worked down there too, in this darkness, they would open and shut the doors for the miners to come through with the coal trucks. This would be there job all day, if they had a candle or light there they would be lucky and if it blew out they were in total and I mean total darkness.
When we got to the end of the tour they turned out the lights to show us how dark it is down there. Really it is total darkness, you cannot tell up from down and your sense of balance is disturbed. You have nothing to orientate yourself with. Truly you cannot see your hand in front of your face.
It was a very fascinating place to visit, I wanted to take photos to scrap, but we were not allowed to use cameras i n the mine tunnels for fear of explosive gases. When we came out it was predictably dark and raining cats and dogs so not even a photo of the outside.
I hope to go back there and take photos of everything outside, Go and see where the miners had baths when they finished. Most would go home in the 'black' as they call it.
This has been a very successful enterprise for the mine. It gave the miners chance to retrain, so instead of being out of work they had the opportunity to become keepers and tour guides of the mines. Brilliant tour guides too as there is nothing they don't know about the way things were there.
All of this and it's FREE. All museums are free to visit in Wales.
Hope you have enjoyed this slightly different take on the saturday blogpost. Will be back next Saturday with some new kits being released soon as well as highlights form around the forums and
Galleries at
ScrapstreetFor a little treat for you here is a
small gift from Sue Wood Designs at Scrapstreet
