Coal Mines and a castle in Wales

So here we are in the beautiful country of Wales. A little misty, off and on, but not bad. After breakfast today, we loaded up and headed to THE BIG PIT. Yep, that's the name of it...and it's definitely a big pit. It's a coal mine in a town called Blaenafon - or on the outskirts of it. Our driver today was a man named Carrie who had an awesome accent, very different from those from England.

We had our orientation...got our hardhats on with our head lanterns, strapped our battery packs and oxygen masks to our waists, turned in all our cell phones/cameras/anything with batteries (they didn't want our batteries to ignite a spark to blow up the coal mine) and we stepped into a cage and were lowered 300 feet into the earth.
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Now, don't be too alarmed... People to People is definitely into safety..but the mine isn't operational for coal anymore, and it wouldn't have blown up ... but they still have to follow mine rules. Apparently the mine is still checked twice a day by a fire marshall - or something like that - for safety.

It was amazing down there...the tunnels were so narrow and so short in some places. Tyler was in my group and the poor guy hit his head probably half a dozen times on the ceiling. All the equipment from mining were still in place... and you could see the exposed coal and the boards where the miners had covered up areas that had been mined. It was also so very damp. You could see how disease and injury could be a huge issue.

From the mine we drove to Cardiff. Awesome city... I think it's the capital of Wales. We had about an hour to roam around the city and do some shopping or site seeing... then we met and had a tour of Cardiff Castle. OH MY GOSH! What a place that is! Extravagant, posh, eccentric, elaborate, ... all could be used to describe. I'm sure 100's of photos were taken - and we could take no photos inside the castle, but there was plenty of things to take photos of outside.BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.


We had dinner back at the hotel... the delegates are all into games and hanging out again. They have certainly formed some sweet friendships. I love it when I see different groups of people together. It reassures me that they're getting to know everyone.

Breakfast is at 8:15 a.m., loading the coach at 8:45 and taking off for our next stop. Hopefully I'll be able to post tomorrow night, but as before, I have no idea what the computer/internet situation will be at the next stop. We'll only be at the next hotel for one night...

All are well... so as our delegation manager Sam says, "Cheers!"