UK 2013 Day 10 Big Pit

Day 10 - Monday, June 17 2013: Bit Pit and Chepstow, Wales
We got a burst of energy today, and as a result we accomplished a lot.  Our original tour plan had called for us to tour Raglan Castle and Big Pit Mining Museum today, but having missed Chepstow Castle and Tintern Abbey we still were trying to figure out how to fit those in.  In discussion with Brian, he suggested that we got to Big Pit in the morning (rather than the afternooon as we had originally planned), then do just a drive-by at Raglan on our way to Chepstow and Tintern - so that's what we did!

After breakfast we loaded up and drove to Big Pit.  This mining museum offers free tours underground, and this was really interesting.  You have to get outfitted with a helmet w/integrated light and then down you go via a big mining elevator.  The thing that first grabs you are the closed-in dark spaces.  They talk about how they'd use horses to pull carts underground, and that these horse were born and raised in the mines, never seeing the light of day.  Young boys would be responsible for horse care.  They also demonstrated how they'd actually work the coal seams laying on their backs, usually in damp, cramped, watery spaces.  The guides were all retired miners and the thing that is striking is that it truly is "in the blood".  They'd describe what sounded to us like absolutely miserable working conditions but then follow up by saying how much they missed it!  The above-ground stuff wasn't too memorable.  We did eat lunch at their cafeteria, and that's the only place where we actually found something approximating a Sunday Roast, in that they had roast beef and (I think) Yorkshire Pudding.

Outside Big Pit Mining Museum.  I'm actually having my picture taken in order to be able to submit it and get credit for having found a geocache here.  I'm surreptitiously holding my geocaching GPS as instructed by the requirements of this particularly cache...

Here we're waiting for admittance to the mines.  They took groups of about 20-25 people at a time.  Here we're sitting watching an informational video while waiting our turn.

Following Brian's suggestion, we did do a quick drive-by at Raglan, parking just long enough to take some pictures of the exterior.  This is a surprisingly intact ruin, and I suspect that a full tour would have been rewarding, but we were still intent on going to Chepstow, which we knew offered a good set of ruins.  So Raglan was only a 10-15 minute detour before we made our way to Chepstow.

This was the view from the carpark at Raglan.  The ruins are pretty impressive.

As we moved around to the front of the castle the gatehouses and tower to the right were surprisingly intact.

We paused for a quick "we were here" photo.  As can be seen from the t-shirt attire we had a pretty nice day today!

But first, we stopped at Tintern Abbey for another set of photos.  Tintern was a real highlight for us in 1998 and both Eileen and I would have been quite happy to stop and take the boys on a walk-through, but we weren't going to have time for both Tintern and Chepstow so we made the call to focus or time on Chepstow.  So Tintern was just another 15-20 minute stop to see the exterior and take some photos.  We might have gotten a snack while in the village, but at this point I'm not certain.  One really great thing came from this stop: Andrew took a photo of Eileen and I outside Tintern that became a personal favorite for both of us.  We both had a copy of this at our desks at work!

Tintern Abbey's magnificent remains.  The cows are unimpressed.

Our favorite photo of the trip.  Eileen and I both kept a copy of this on our desks at work.

We finally made it to Chepstow about 3PM and bought our tickets to enter.  Again, the fact that they were no longer selling the great Cadw tour guides was sorely missed, but we still have a great time touring.  Chepstow is perched on a cliff and has tremendous views of the surrounding countryside.  Between the (limited) signage and our own memories from our prior tour we were able to point out some of the more interesting features to the boys.  Based upon our prior trip, we'd definitely put Caernavon Castle (in North Wales) as our #1 place to tour, followed by Chepstow.  We had also toured Conwy Castle in 1998, which was good but not great.  Would Raglan have been in our top list?  Hard to say, although Brian was certainly of the opinion that Raglan wasn't better than Chepstow, which is why he'd suggested the drive-by rather than the full tour.

The approach to the entry of Chepstow Castle.

The remains of the Great Hall.  If I recall correctly, the Great Hall was on the 2nd floor of this structure.  The square holes midway up the left wall show where the floor beams would have been.  The lower (basement) floor was like storage.  I don't recall whether the niches on the back wall were once windows in the Great Hall, or perhaps alcoves or fireplaces.

Andrew guards the wall.

The inner grounds at Chepstow Castle.  The white things were part of some kind of shade structure (kind of looked like ship sails) that were part of some kind of exterior meeting or performance space they had set up on the grounds.

No castle tour is complete without taking a picture of the toilet.  The hole simply vented to the outside of the castle.

We finished up at Chepstow around 5PM and then...????  None of us can remember what we did about dinner this evening.  Based on photo timestamps it is clear that we got back to The Granary about 8:45P, as we had taken some photos of the gardens around then.  So we'd obviously had dinner somewhere prior to that, but none of us can recall whether we ate somewhere in the vicitiny of Chepstow, the B&B, or somewhere in between.

A better picture of The Granary, showing the very pretty setting.  Also of note is that this photo was taken right around 9PM in mid-June, so you can see how much light is still present this far north.