Where did he go? Deep down below

Well, here we are once more, sitting in McDonalds, hunched over a chicken sandwich, accessing the blog. You will remember that our present B&B doesn't have wireless, a mistake I won't make again. Originally, I chose this particular house because the hosts said that they could arrange for doing our laundry, a pressing necessity at this stage of the trip. But being away from the Internet is just too inconvenient when we always need to locate our next destination, usually based on the postal code that we feed into the GPS. But as the English say, never mind. Tomorrow we're off to Salisbury (where Stonehenge is found) and the B&B there is guaranteed to have the Internet.

This morning Concetta and I had an absolutely marvelous time touring, of all things, a coal mine. Before you throw up your hands in horror, let me tell you that seldom have we enjoyed such a professionally-run tour. First, we had to hand over anything on our person that might cause a spark, including cameras, cell phones, watches, and (believe it or not) the automatic key lock for the car. Then they gave us carbide lamps and hard hats. Finally they herded about a dozen of us into a cage suspended on the end of a wire cable and dropped us 300 feet into the bowels of the earth.

Then, for the next hour, we learned everything there is to know about coal-mining in the last century and before. Did you know that in Wales, the country that produced the finest coal on earth for decades, you could start working in the mines at age five -- boys or girls? Did you know that a five-year-old child would often be working in complete darkness, on a twelve-hour shift, and have a devilish job keeping the rats away from his/her lunch? Incredible!!!

Our guide in the mine, a twenty-five-year veteran of the mine, as were his father and grandfather before him, told us that if you got a working space of four to six feet headroom, you were in clover. If you got three feet of headroom, you were still okay. But sometimes you got as little as seventeen inches and had to work lying on your side with a pick. And, throughout most of the history of coal mining, you only got paid for coal you sent to the surface. You didn't get paid for just showing up. As an added bonus, you often had to walk as many as four miles to the coal face, something for which you didn't get paid. And, if you got hurt, as hundreds did, your fellow coal miners carried you out of the mine. No paramedics showed up. Not until modern times was there a hospital on the property. Here's the bombshell: Women as well as men worked in the mine, often on their hands and knees pulling or pushing loaded cars of coal. Everyone had to work or the family often had not enough to eat.

In the afternoon, once we'd had our usual tea, we visited castles. One, was an 11th century ruin of a Norman castle which was restored by a wealthy industrialist in the mid 1800s. In fact, at the time, he was considered to be the most wealthy man in the world, mostly due to the industrial revolution that had made him rich. He owned, among other things, the dock area where all the coal and iron was shipped to other countries. He restored the castle we visited purely to use as a hunting lodge. The entire interior was magnificently gilded in bright colors and decorated with impressive artwork.

Our second castle of the day was in the town of Caerphilly and looked the most like a real castle with a moat, draw bridges, and huge towering gates. The same rich man who restored the first castle also started restoration on the second, much larger castle, and restoration has been ongoing every since. It is the largest castle in Wales, the second-largest in Britain (second to Windsor castle) and is one of the largest fortresses in Europe. It was built mainly between 1268 and 1271, it is an early example of a concentric castle, meaning that there is a castle wall within the outer wall.