Our group got to tour the mine last Thursday, led by a former miner named Jake :) We got big leather belts with the following attached: batteries for our headlamps and rescue oxygen masks. You would think with only two items on the belts it would be an easy load. But you’d be wrong. They were really heavy. Safety measures were such that batteries – those in cell phones, watches, ipods, and of course cameras – were not allowed down the shaft, so I unfortunately do not have pictures of this outing. We got into a big elevator and descended to 300 feet below the ground, which is very shallow. Some mines go over 2,000 feet down, so I was glad we weren’t that far. I almost expected to panic at being so far underground, but the air was freezing, so I was concentrating more on staying warm than the idea that I might be claustrophobic. We got a really interesting tour, and Jake told us all about mining conditions and workers in different eras, all the way up to present day. Some children as young as six were called “trappers” and basically opened and closed doors throughout the mine, but often their parents were too poor to afford candles for them, so they had to do it in the dark. Then Jake had us all turn out our head lamps to show us what that would be like. And because I’m sure he wanted to hear all our girlish screams, he explained that rats often infested the mine, and would run over the children’s bare feet. We were quick to turn the head lamps back on.
In general I actually enjoyed the tour. How many people get to hear Eucharist in a cathedral, sit on Stonehenge, and climb through a coal mine, all in a 24 hour period?
After the mine tour, we went across the town to where the ironworks had been, the place that processed the limestone, iron, and coal from the mine. That was a decidedly chilling tour. There are a few sparse remains of the brick buildings and big furnaces, but the audio tour was intent on telling us some gruesome death that regularly occurred in each spot we stopped. I was happy to leave.
The stones in front of the big furnace got so hot they actually melted. Freaky.
To end the day we went to Caerleon, another Roman hillfort, and saw the baths and barracks that had been there. My camera batteries died, so when we got a chance to dress up in Roman armor, I had to rely on someone else getting a picture. They had a pretty cool museum filled with all the things they found in the drains of the baths when they were excavating them in the 70s. There were tons of gemstones and pottery shards and coins and such. It was a neat site, but I was kinda burnt out on Roman forts by that point. It started raining on us when we were touring the barracks, so we had to run back to the van and had a very wet ride back to Cardiff.
So ended Thursday.
After the mine tour, we went across the town to where the ironworks had been, the place that processed the limestone, iron, and coal from the mine. That was a decidedly chilling tour. There are a few sparse remains of the brick buildings and big furnaces, but the audio tour was intent on telling us some gruesome death that regularly occurred in each spot we stopped. I was happy to leave.
The stones in front of the big furnace got so hot they actually melted. Freaky.To end the day we went to Caerleon, another Roman hillfort, and saw the baths and barracks that had been there. My camera batteries died, so when we got a chance to dress up in Roman armor, I had to rely on someone else getting a picture. They had a pretty cool museum filled with all the things they found in the drains of the baths when they were excavating them in the 70s. There were tons of gemstones and pottery shards and coins and such. It was a neat site, but I was kinda burnt out on Roman forts by that point. It started raining on us when we were touring the barracks, so we had to run back to the van and had a very wet ride back to Cardiff.
So ended Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment