Riding with Bruce at the helm and Pam navigating is always an adventure. Add a strange country, narrow busy roads with most signs in two languages, Welsh/English, and you get an escapade. We did find the "Big Pit" and were in one piece
The museum featured four distinct areas: the tour into the mine itself, the support buildings for the mine operations, a place called the bathhouse, and a simulator of some of the mine conditions. B&P and I took the tour down, and since Nancy doesn't do caves or mines, she waited upstairs with a cuppa tea and her knitting. UK laws require anyone going into a mine to wear a hardhat, carry a light and a re-breather (a carbon monoxide safety mask). We were all required to surrender any contraband (spark devices) including cameras, flashlights, battery devices of any kind including cell phones, I-pods, and electronic watches. We were then issued hardhats and a belt containing an approved battery pack and a re-breather. The battery was connected via a stout cable to a light that clicked into the helmet. The belt had the added quality that it got heavier as the tour progressed. Since I have never had any hips, by tour's end I was holding the belt and pants up with both hands. (Nancy note - Jerry needs suspenders!)
A tour group consisted of about twenty people, enough to crowd into the one elevator car. The trip down was about 300 feet (90 meters) at a much more leisurely pace than the miners used. Conditions in the mine had changed continuously over the last 50-100 years, so it was a little hard to get a clear picture of the conditions at any one time, but the period they were trying to display was the 1950?s.
We have had the opportunity to visit several "hard rock" mines in the past and so the shoring was a bit of a surprise. Coal is mined in fairly soft ground (sedimentary rock), so gravel size pieces continue to fall from the ceilings and walls - roofs tend to sag with time and I'm told the floor rises. To combat these problems steel frames are installed about every three-four feet. The frame is an I-beam about five by two inches shaped in a "U", with the opening at the floor. Between the I-beams are split logs (about 6-8 inches in diameter) with their bark still in place. The I-beams and logs completely cover the walls and ceilings with some of the walls left open of the split logs so that you could see the tunnel walls. The guide said that originally the shafts were 9 feet high and 6 feet wide. The shafts we traveled had shrunk to between 5 to 6.5 feet high - thus the need for the hardhats. I have a pretty good idea where the top of my head is, but with a hardhat and a lamp, I was constantly bumping my head on the ceiling. At one time coal was hauled by horses and prior to that by women and children. This is where it got confusing as various times in history were displayed. Later, a central winch pulled the coal carts. The guide spent a considerable time talking about the women and children employed in the mines. At one time boys as young as six were used to tend the safety doors (draft directing doors). These boys were not supplied with candles (had to buy their own) and sat in the dark for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week. To illustrate this the guide had us turn out our lamps - you couldn't see your fingers.
The tour convinced us that the mines were cold, damp, dirty, dark, and noisy places to work - an absolutely horrible working environment. However, the guide and the various museum exhibits emphasized that the camaraderie engendered by the danger and close working conditions, as well as the ability to make a living, made it worthwhile and left nearly all the miners with fond memories and angry when the mines closed.
I was just as happy to surface and rejoin Nancy. We poked around some of the support buildings - the weather had set in and it was misty, cold and damp. Walked up the hill to a building listed as "the showers" and were surprised to find not only a building set up to allow the miners to clean up before going home but an entire museum showing the impact the showers had on the wives and families of the miners. The showers weren't added until the late '50's. Before the showers were installed at the mines, the infant mortality among miners' children was as high as 20% due to scalding. Hot water, heated on an open hearth, was needed to wash the miners, their clothes and the house, and children were falling into the hot washtubs. The conditions at the home were such that the miner's wives had a higher death rate than the miners.
Finally, an area called the "Gallery" showed some of the more modern tools for mining, and some of the conditions in the mines were simulated with lights, sound tracks and dioramas - very Disneyland!
By this time we were all ready for lunch, so we headed down the hill, through several small towns, to find something to eat. We didn't find anything until we got to a freeway service area with a McDonald's and very nice "sit-down" restaurant. The sit-down place was jammed - a good sign (and we didn't really want McDonald's). We ended up eating in the bar. The place had a nice menu at reasonable prices. We all had delicious fish-n-chips with unlimited access to the fresh salad bar.
Pam had organized today's outing and reminded us that we were still scheduled to visit the Roman Ruins at Caerleon. It was getting close to 3:00 pm (or 15:00 local time - I think everybody thinks 3:00). Pam was able to steer Bruce to Caerleon and once there the tourist street signs lead to the Museum. We parked near the ruins (just foundations) but hurried to the Museum about a block away. The ruins were wide open fields but the Museum closed at 4:00 o?clock
We were eased out of the museum at quitting time and went to look at the outside museums, the barracks area and the amphitheater where soldiers trained and were entertained. The amphitheater, invaded while we were there by those French teenagers we saw at Big Pit, has been reduced by time and weather to a hole in the middle of a large grassy field with the walls stone lined and some evidence of what must have been stairs and/or ramps entrances. This is billed as the largest amphitheater in the British Isles and one can only imagine the forms of entertainment presented.
The barracks, the only surviving in Europe, had originally been wood but fortunately the foundations were stone. The stone foundation helps one visualize the buildings that once stood on this site.
The good news was that by the time we got home the sun had broken though and put Bristol at her best.