Blaenavon

Miners' Lamps and Pub Tables

The Whistle Inn keeps its miners' lamps behind the bar, dozens of them, alongside the rest of the mining memorabilia that has accumulated over three centuries. It is the highest pub in Wales, and it looks the part: open fires, oil lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and a fifty-seat conservatory looking out across the valleys. One Tripadvisor reviewer settled on "phenomenal." Outside there is enclosed seating for around 150 and a large children's play area, and the pub sits directly beside Whistle Inn Halt, the northern terminus of the Pontypool & Blaenavon heritage railway and, at 1,307 feet, its highest point.

Down in the town, the Rifleman's Arms is one of the oldest pubs in Blaenavon, renovated with a hotel and restaurant that can seat up to a hundred. The kitchen does roasts, chicken supreme, scampi and chips, with cheesecake and apple pie to follow.

Cheddar, Books and Moorland Walks

On Broad Street, the Blaenafon Cheddar Company makes hand-made cheddars and a hard goat's cheese, several flavoured with local drinks that run from whisky to cider. Its signature cheddar, Pwll Mawr, is matured 300 feet below ground at the bottom of the Big Pit mine shaft, and won a bronze medal at the British Cheese Awards. The shop also carries Welsh produce, local ales and speciality spirits. The high street once tried to reinvent itself as a book town, launched in 2003 to rival Hay-on-Wye; it lasted a few years and faded, the last bookshop closing in 2021.

The town sits at the head of the Afon Lwyd, about 420 metres up on the slope of the Blorenge, which makes it one of the highest towns in Wales. Arriving, you see a compact stone town ringed by bare moorland, the hills scarred with trench mines, tramways and spoil tips. Most of the walking starts from the Keeper's Pond car park above the town. The Iron Mountain Trail is a demanding 18-kilometre circuit around the Blorenge along former tramroads and canal, and splits into two halves if that is too much in one go. The Coity Tip Trail, next to Big Pit, is a fifteen-minute loop around an old waste tip now given over to wildlife.

Big Pit and an Iron-Built Church

Big Pit is the reason many people come. The colliery worked from 1860 to 1980 and reopened as a museum in 1983; the underground tours are free and led by former miners. St Peter's Church is worth the detour for its ironwork alone — a cast-iron font, cast-iron pillars holding up the balcony, and five iron-topped tombs in the churchyard. It was built by the ironmasters Thomas Hill and Samuel Hopkins in 1804, and consecrated before a crowd of more than two thousand.

Thomas, Gilchrist and New Steel

It was here, in 1878, that Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and his cousin Percy worked out how to make steel from phosphoric ore. Andrew Carnegie reckoned the two of them "did more for Britain's greatness than all the Kings and Queens put together." Thomas died seven years later, aged 34.

Steam Links and a Reclaimed Landscape

There is no mainline station in town; the steam trains run from Furnace Sidings, where the Fireman's Shovel tearoom has toilets and free parking. Buses go down the valley to Pontypool and on to Newport. The whole landscape is loss turned into heritage, and the moor has quietly taken most of it back.