(But don't go too soon - they're on strike)

It's a mining museum now – the National Coal Mining Museum, in fact. And it's bloody value, what with it being free. You get down and back on the manriding cage (“lift”, to you) and an underground tour to the coalface, as well as the opportunity to view its many surface exhibits, all accompanied and supervised by former miners still working as tour guides.

These are in short supply these days; most pits closed in the 1990's and the workforce, like me, made redundant. There'd been a recruitment freeze for some years prior to this as the industry contracted, so the youngest miners in the 1990's would have been in their 30's. That would make them 60+ now.

My own experience predates this as it was a working mine when I was a “working” man. Along with Emley Moor (“ I was up Emily More last night”. Ha ha) it was one of the last pits hand-filling rather than getting coal with machinery (shearers). Under this method the coal would be bored and fired on one shift with the following shift hand filling the dislodged coal onto a conveyor taking it out of the mine.

I remember my boss going to interview the mine manager over a suspicious practice we had uncovered involving one hand filler being paid twice the normal wage for his shift's work. “That's Big Mario” the manager said. “He takes two pogs”, ie he shovelled not only his own 10 yard stint of coal onto the conveyor but the next one as well. That's around 15 tons of coal, laid on his side in a 30” seam, shovelling over his shoulder for over 7 hours.

“Carry on” said my boss.

It's on the Wakefield-Huddersfield road and, I repeat, it's a blood good day out – especially at that price.