away, home again. Itâs an extreme form of repatriation. Tomorrow morning he will stand and wave on the quay. And I, the only passenger on the chugging boat, will wave back at a receding figure with cropped white hair, head hunched into bony shoulders, elderly and stooping but somehow miraculously rejuvenated at nearly eighty on this rock first occupied by saintly Welshmen fifteen centuries ago.
3
Gweithio = Work
âThe minerâs employment is laborious, and dangerous; and his profits uncertain. Frequent injuries happen to him in blasting the rock, and digging the ore; and cold, damp, and vapour, united in destroying his health, and shortening his life â¦â
Revd Richard Warner,
A Walk Through Wales in August 1797
(1798)
SWITCH ON LAMP . Tighten helmet. Check belt with battery and self-rescuer. Enter hole in side of hill.
If youâre looking for Welshness, sooner or later you will be heading underground. In this case, the way leads into an arched tunnel maybe fifteen feet wide. The left half of the space is taken up by a raised conveyor belt which thrums along at a fair lick, carrying grainy black lumps up towards the light. The earth underneath is rutted and uneven, here hard, there powdery.
âBest keep your lamp on the floor,â says Brian as the gradient steepens and we start to plummet.
For one shift only, I am becoming a miner. OK, perhaps too self-aggrandising a claim. I am being shown into the clandestine underworld where that Welshest of activities has always taken place with nobody to watch: the mining of the coal which, once upon a time, powered the British Empireâs trains and ships and industrialfurnaces. There were always other pits in the United Kingdom, other coalfields. But in the worldâs imagination, nowhere is as indissolubly associated with coal as the South Wales Valleys have been for two centuries.
Not that there are many mines left anywhere in Britain, of course. The national tally of big pits is currently down to seven. Wales has two of them and they sit on opposite sides of the A465 â the Heads of the Valleys Road â as it hastens through the Vale of Neath. Over the way is Aberpergwm. Iâve come to the Unity mine in Cwmgwrach.
The valley is one of the least populated in the South Wales coalfield, which stretches from Llanelli to Pontypool. Cwm Rhondda, just over the mountain, is known as the Long Street. But here are no terraced villages running for miles along a deep narrow gulley carved by a river. When George Borrow walked through the Vale of Neath on his way to Merthyr Tydfil, he noted the valley âsoon became exceedingly beautiful; hills covered with woods on the tops were on either side of the daleâ. Pleasing emblems of the local status quo included a passing pack of hunting hounds and, across the valley, âa very fit mansion for a Glamorganshire squireâ. There was only one breach of the peace: âone of those detestable contrivances a railroad was on the farther side â along which trains were passing, rumbling and screaming.â
The railroad has gone. From the road, flanked on either side by mournful coniferous hills, youâd barely suspect that the embers of the old industry still burn.
I feel entirely fraudulent. I have never knowingly got my hands dirty in the course of work, let alone my face. I donât suppose they see many Jaspers at the coalface. Some Reeses, doubtless. There are no miners in my lineage that Iâm aware of, though statistically itâs likely that someone on my grandmotherâs side must once havequarried slate in the north, or on my grandfatherâs dug for coal in the south.
My guide underground is Brian Lewis, under-manager at Unity. In his smart blue shirt and formal trousers he has the look of someone whom office life hasnât quite succeeded in taming. He can talk the talk of business, figures, productivity, but that frame looks built for a more physical life.
Krystal Shannan, Camryn Rhys