An over cap to this weekend is Thursday excursion to South Wales, my weekend in Ireland, Snow Patrol concert and St. Patrick’s day. Phew!
So it made most logical sense to split it up into 4 blogs.
Our excursion on Thursday, March 12th was to Southern Wales. We boarded Arleen
and set off to the Big Pit. The Big Pit is a coalmine that used to be a working one, but is now a museum. When I say museum, I don’t mean galleries of pictures, but this was a tour through the actual underground coal mine.
Like Mari, our trip organizer, said, it was important for us to see a very different side of England. So far we’ve seen all the history having to do with education – like Oxford, Christianity – all the cathedrals, and royalty/parliament. This was very different because this was a tour of a coalmine. This tour told us about what it was like to live life as a coal miner. A coal miner had a very poor life.
Our Big Pit tour guide took us down underground in one of those metal-gate elevators. And explained the different parts of how the mine worked, as well as the life of the people who were miners.
There were interesting things about how it worked down there, like how they used horses, who lived down there and almost never saw sunlight.
The miner life was the thing that struck me the most. Someone who was born into a mining family was basically stuck there for life. As a child, at the age of 6… SIX!.. they would be put to work in the mine. Six year olds would have the door job. They would open and close doors inside the mine to let people through and not let air though. They would work 12-hour shifts, and if their family could not afford a candle, they would be in total darkness most of the time. They would also be attached to their door, as to not stray away and get lost in the dark.
As a miner, a family would live in a house owned by the mine owner and pay rent to him. They would get paid in vouchers for the mine store, so they would buy all their food and supplies there, of course being ripped off, since they could not shop anywhere else with these vouchers. And of course, the only skills they had were how to mine. This was a life that was pretty much impossible to leave. Miners had to follow the rules of the mine owner because if they were fired, they would have nowhere to go. They would not have a house, a job, or any skills to find a different job.
So they were forever stuck to live poor, to work 12 hour shifts, with no difference to being a man, woman, or child. It is really sad that even the horses in the mines were treated better than the people, because they were always well fed.
Also it was very dangerous down there. If there were nitrogen in the air, (which I guess happens if water leaks in), people would die without even knowing that they are dying. They would just keep breathing it for a few minutes until they just fell over dead. If you saw someone fall over dead in front of you, you RUN, because you are also breathing this air. If there was an explosion, they were stuck there to burn. (And explosions did happen from the way they used electricity down there). If the ceiling collapsed, they would have no way to get out.
Really, it is very sad. We are so lucky today to live in a time with laws against this kind of thing, in many parts of the world, anyway. So this trip was more depressing than anything else..
I found the tour guide’s accent cool because it was very different from the English accent I keep hearing. Actually, I hear differences in different English accents now. When I got here, there was only one, English. .. but now, I hear so many different ones, like how Californians sound different from Texans, different from Minnesotans, New Yorkers, etc. Well, I could not hear it before, but I hear them now. I love it J
We couldn’t take pictures down there because we were not allowed to bring anything electronic down there, including our watches. So sorry, no pictures.
Then we went to a Castle, the Chepstow Castle to be specific. It was pretty cool. It’s amazing to me that castles are real! They seem like such fairy tale things, that I have a hard time believing that they actually exist. (Or remnants of them, anyway.) I decided to do back handsprings and stuff on the grass in the castle. T’was a good time.
Back Handspring at Chepstow Castle
Here is a view off the side of the Castle:
That was all for our excursion.
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