John North: A perfect pitstop

US Shildon lads - that is to say, we fine fellows from Shildon - are long accustomed to coming second. Getting beat, as they say in the Dean Street clubhouse.

Thus it was no great surprise when the much vaunted National Railway Museum sub-station last month lost its bid to land the Gulbenkian award as Britain's museum of the year to a place called The Big Pit at Blaenavon.

Big pits? Never afraid to get its hands dirty, the column dug deep whilst homeward from holiday.

Blaenavon's at the head of the South Wales valleys, a town long scarred by mining and iron making and where the population halved to 6,000 when finally they closed the coal house door.

While the biblical assertion that every valley shall be exalted may yet be open to question, this one's risen remarkably.

The whole area around Blaenavon is now a World Heritage Site, a distinction it shares with the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, the Great Barrier Reef and - among just 22 British locations - Durham Cathedral.

The valley is green again, the mood vibrant, the Big Pit - officially the National Mining Museum of Wales - a necessary and a compelling history lesson.

Let it at once be said, therefore, that as a vivid, brocken-backed, sometimes grim reminder of the way things really were, it knocks Shildon's railway museum into a dandy cart.

Like Shildon, like the best things in life, it's free.

The main attraction, simultaneously the highlight and the low point, is the 294ft descent by cramped, cheek by jowl cage to some of the Big Pit's original workings, where everything seems just as it seamed.

It's much sanitised, of course, from the days when bairns of seven would work six 12 hour shifts each week, innocently unaware that if the rats didn't get them, the pneumo probably would.

It's also sanitised from the only previous occasion that the column had been down a pit, a 1970s visit to Horden with a motley crew from County Durham's adopted ship - several proving that they'd never make submariners by regurgitating the previous night's grog before even alighting the manrider.

The Big Pit, named in 1880 and closed a century later, was one of 34 shafts and 162 drifts which served Blaenavon iron works, said at the turn of the 18th century to have been the most advanced in the world.

At its peak, 1,300 men and boys and 72 half-blind horses served the colliery, the oldest working pit in Wales when it closed.

Now the valley is verdant again, the site many splendoured, the museum entrance guarded by a couple of steam engines which may no longer give a hoot but which have a sound track which does it for them.

A male voice choir Cwm Rhonddas stereophonically around the reception area, press button technology - multimedia meets muck and misery - is available in the waiting room.

Colin, our underground guide, proves a cross between Max Boyce and Windsor Davies, so totally brilliant he could have won the Gulbenkian award single- handed.

All the guides are ex-miners - "real" miners, says one of the brochures - another expectorating a hacking cough from somewhere near his pit boots as if to underscore his authenticity.

Perhaps it's half a lifetime in a three foot seam, perhaps 20 years Senior Service.

Next to the contraband zone, an original sign prohibits smoking and spitting in turn, though it failed to deter poor Albert Coles who in 1901, was found with a pipe in his pocket and obliged not only to donate ten shillings to the town library but to pay for the printing of the most grovelling public apology since they got it wrong about Roger Rabbit.

Another sign warns that there are no toilets underground. How on earth did they manage in the Durham coalfield?

Last Saturday there were bairns down there again, bairns in designer T-shirts designed for nothing like 90 metres below ground, all issued with hard hat, lamp and respirator.

The Davy lamp, it was explained, used to be hung on the front of the belt and thus became known as a bollock burner. Though almost all the Big Pit's information is in both English and Welsh, it was the one phrase which appeared resistant to translation.

Colin talked, tantalising, of downcast shafts and upcast shafts, of ore and awful, of ponies like Ponty, Prince and Precious. In the way of the Valleys, the suffix "Isn't it" was shackled without question to every other sentence, like a pony to two dozen tubs.

"Ah," whispered one of the party, "the price of coal."

Underground tours last almost an hour. Back in the blessed sunshine, there's much else to explore - not least the pit head baths, built in 1939 as part of the industry's "social reforms" and now a Grade II listed building with canteen, imaginative exhibitions and little bits of carbolic still intact in the lockers.

They didn't need soap, those poor putters, they needed a hydraulic hose.

There were memories of AJ Cook, still particularly recalled at Shotton Colliery, who led the miners in the 1926 General Strike and died a broken man five years later; of Isaac James Hayward who cut coal down Blaenavon at 12 and became leader of London County Council 25 years later; of Ann Land, a 1960s canteen lady, who once found the manager working naked in his office and is also blessed for saving telephone directories, in order to wrap the miners' chips.

Memories, too, of Mad Mac MacDonald, who rose from pit lad to manager and whose achievements were diminished only by the fact that he hated everyone taller than he was - "especially surveyors and electrical engineers". Mad Mac stood five feet and half an inch. There weren't very many on his Christmas card list.

Nearby are the restored ironworks, an operational standard gauge railway, the Brecon Beacons and much else. The day was magnificent.

The National Railway Museum satellite, of course, is still at the start of its nostalgic journey. The time will come when it, too, will win national and international awards and none will be happier than here. For the moment, however, the correct score remains Blaenavon: 1, Shildon: 0. The Big Pit just got bigger.

BLAENAVON'S other claim to recent fame is that it's officially a Booktown, ten bookshops opened simultaneously - and amid worldwide publicity - two years ago this week.

Most specialise; one's closed already. Another, called Serendipity, is said to major in spiritualism and the occult, sundry skulls in the window and the Baptist Church frowning phrenologically next door.

None seemed busy, owners standing impatiently in the doorways as if hoping, like so many literary Micawbers, that something might turn up.

We'd mentioned Blaenavon's Booktown adventure in March 2004, with the footnote that American entrepreneur James Hanna - the man who markets the concept - was hoping to develop another in the North-East.

We'd been asked not to reveal the rest of the plot. The MP with whom Mr Hanna was speaking has this week been unavailable. As possibly they say in Booktown, the end of the story must wait.

HOLIDAY allows time for the small print. Thus from the "Appointments in clergy" column of the Daily Telegraph, we learn that the Rev Dr Rob Innes, Vicar of Belmont near Durham, is to become "Sen Ch and Chanc" of the pro-cathedral church of the Holy Trinity, Brussels (Europe).

Dr Innes was once said in the At Your Service column not only to look like a young Bamber Gascoigne but to be - at the time - the next Bishop of Durham but two. At least he has his pro-cathedral.

FAMILIAR flight path, the column noted two weeks ago that Teesside Airport railway station has just 25 passengers a year - England's least busy - and that the new bus s ervice from Darlington railway station to the airport seems no more crowded. We omitted to mention that the bus is service 737. They may have lost their passengers, but not their sense of humour.

...and finally, the flower festival season continues in full bloom, the latest this weekend at St Paul's in Hunwick, between Bishop Auckland and Willington.

The church also stages a concert by Fishburn Brass Band on Saturday at 7.30pm - tickets are £7.50 from Fr Stewart Irwin (01388) 604456 or on the door - a festival Mass sung by Carillon at 10am on Sunday and a songs of praise service at 6pm.

The flower festival has 32 displays on the theme of Saints and Sacraments, will be opened by north west Durham MP Hilary Armstrong at 7.30pm tomorrow and continues between 10am and 6pm on Saturday and 11am and 5pm on Sunday.

St Paul's folk being the splendid bunch they are, rest and recuperation will doubtless be taken thereafter in the Joiners.