On a beautiful sunny morning, we met up at Cardiff Gate services where there were 6 cars. Three reds, two Whites and a Silver. A few of our “regulars” were missing, but still a reasonably good turnout.
On our drive from home to the services, we’d driven through a pretty heavy rain shower (it doesn’t hit you as long as you keep above 85mph) but the rest of the day was glorious.
First stop was the Big Pit mining museum for the guided tour.
This is an amazing experience for anybody who hasn’t been down a mine before. The guides are all ex-workers at the mine and the insight they give into the real conditions is marvellous. This is the only real coal mine that visitors can visit. There are others, but they are really mock-ups whereas this is a real pit which has been turned into a museum.
While it just isn’t possible to experience fully what it must be like, one does get an idea of just how small and awkward a place some of those people worked in. This included men, women and children at various stages of the life of the industry. We even saw the stables underground where the pit ponies were kept all of their working lives, with rarely even a glimpse of the sun.
Our guide Glynn was a real case. His commentary and comments were really entertaining. If you ever get to read this Glynn, thanks for an extremely entertaining visit.
We had lunch in the restaurant that they’ve put into the old pithead canteen building and then it was off on a drive. One of our number left us then to attend to some commitments.
Just as we were leaving, Julian Williams and co-driver turned up to say hello. They didn’t come on the drive as they’d just got back from a weekend in North Wales, but it was nice to see them (Hello to you if you read this) and we hope to see them on a future event.
After lunch at Big Pit, Mark and Chris Jones led the 5 remaining cars on a drive up to Llangorse lake near Brecon.
This was to provide the ice-cream that had been sadly missed when Mike and Michelle organised the West Wales drive. The route was excellent with loads of twisting roads and beautiful scenery.
We had our ice-cream at the Lakeside club next to the lake, watching a bunch of kids fish frogs out of the swimming pool!
Thanks goes to Mark and Chris for organising yet another great day.
Hi
Ho Silver