I set the alarm for 10:30am today. We got up and had some of our French toast for breakfast. Then we headed for the Big Pit Iron Mine (Free) and Blaenavon Ironworks (Free). We arrived at Big Pit around 12:30pm. First we went on the underground tour. We were all given a hard hat and head lamp. Then we were told we had to leave anything with a battery at the surface. This was to prevent the dry cell batteries from igniting any pockets of gas we might encounter in the mine... A one in a million chance. Still, considering the repercussions, I guess its good to not take any unnecessary risks!
We descended 300ft down the mine shaft. Then we walked around and were told about life as a minor. Long story short, it sucked. It was interesting to see the stables where the pit ponies lived. They lived and worked for 10 to 15 years underground, until they became too ill from coal dust inhalation to work anymore. Then they were brought to the surface and destroyed. What a life for a horse! There was some good news for the pit ponies in the 1940s when coal mining was nationalized. Then they had two weeks of vacation a year when they were brought to the surface to enjoy the sunshine... Anyway, pretty much the conclusion I came to is that pretty much the only thing worse than being a miner was being a pit pony! At least the miners could come to the surface after their 12 hour shifts.
Back on the surface we walked through the Pit Head Baths. In this former shower and locker area (also only installed after Nationalization, before that miners went home dirty), we enjoyed looking at artifacts from mining life and reading the exhibit information.
When we finished reading all the historical information, we headed back down the hill to the last exhibit. It turned out to be a 20 minute multimedia tour of life as a modern day miner. The underground tour focused on the life of a miner up until Nationalization. This exhibit was about how mining changed with the introduction of massive mining machinery. It was a fun exhibit. The “tour” guide was a man on a TV screen who followed you through the five different areas. He was quite humourous. Anyway, the British REALLY love using multimedia presentations in their museums. They use lighting, film, audio, pretty much any technology they can think of, to enhance the learning experience. I continue to be impressed. In this exhibit for example, they used lighting effects to simulate the headlamps of miners working in the area, and to make it seem like the lifeless machines were active. They used darkness followed by audio effects and sudden light to simulate the detonation of dynamite. Lots of little things to make the exhibit feel more real and to keep your interest.
Our next stop was the Blaenavon Ironworks just down the road from Big Pit. “The ironworks began operation in 1789 and is the most complete blast furnace complex of its period and type anywhere in the world.” At this sight, your eyes are immediately drawn to the huge water balance tower which was used to raise full carts of pig iron for transport via tramway to forges nearby. One full cart was raised as one empty cart on a platform filled with water was lowered. The water helped counterbalance the weight of the cart full of iron. The audio point informed us that once a 19 year old worker was killed by one of the lowering carts, and quite unnecessarily rammed home the story with the sound of a falling cart (really drawn out) and finally the inevitable squelch of tissues and bones being crushed. *Shudder*
Overall, the ironworks was interesting to see. It didn’t take us long to listen to each of the five audio points. We learned how the impurities of the iron ore was burned off in kilns on the hill before being added, along with coke and limestone, to one of the four blast furnaces. Each blast furnace had a cast house and the liquid iron flowed from the blast furnaces into channels contained in these buildings. The metal then cooled and hardened. The finished product was called ‘pig iron’ because the channels branched off a main line and the workers thought it resembled suckling piglets. Full carts of pig iron were then taken to the water balance tower for transport.
Satisfied with our visit to this World Heritage mining site, we headed back to our hotel. Since we finished early for a change (4:30pm) we were unfortunate enough to hit traffic, but in the end it wasn’t too bad. We stopped at Tesco for our daily ice and filled up our gas tank.
Back at the hotel, I watched three episodes of Voyager (I was putting off packing and writing blog updates). Then Davin and I tried out two cans of ravioli (one beef and one cheese). They were mediocre at best!
We watched Ramsay’s Best Restaurant while we ate. We tried to make grilled cheese sandwiches next. This ended in disaster. For some reason the bread we bought refused to brown. Regardless of being buttered, and later even adding some oil, the bread was determined to glue itself to the bottom of the stainless steel pan. I’m still not 100% sure why this happened, but I suspect it had something to do with this particular type of bread. Heat seemed to make it gooey. Perhaps it wasn’t fully cooked in the first place? Anyway, I ate the edges of our one semi-successful attempt, and Davin settled for a normal sandwich.
Then we packed our bags for the most part, and I enjoyed one last bath before going to bed around 1am.
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