This morning I decided to hunt through what photos are available to me (most still in the loft after my move from my marital home) to find a photo of my paternal grandmother to 'even things up' on my blog. I came across many photos past and present and very many from the days when I was married. I surprised myself I was not upset!
However, I found this one of a colliery wheel. As a girl growing up in the Welsh valleys this was the view from my bedroom window, as we lived just a mile or so from Ty-Tryst Colliery which was situated opposite my family home. It is the wheel that runs the mining cage that takes the miners to the bottom of the coal face to work and the same cage brings them back up at the end of their shift. Of course there are no mines left in Wales nowadays and you will not see sights like this in the Welsh valleys in 2008. This photograph was taken at the one remaining pit face which has been turned into a mining museum at Blaenavon and extremely popular with tourists.
Blaenavon is just fifteen miles from the City where I live and will be featured shortly on the new series on BBC Wales 'The Coal House'. This series, which followed modern families from 2007 living and working as they would have done in the 1930's, and was very popular in Wales. The new series will follow families in the same cottages (another museum in Blaenavon) working in the pits and coping with life during the second world war. Different families are taking part, as the first set of families declined the offer to do it again. Who could blame them?
This marvellous documentary takes months to make and will be shown shortly on BBC1 Wales. I was a big fan of the first series and will be watching the second series with as much avid interest as the first.
I still haven't found the photograph I was looking for this could be a long job!
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