Blaenavon is a town on a hill that ought to be a mountain, with a shape and a story that suit the mountain. It stands high at the head of a valley in south Wales, at the edge of the Brecon Beacons, and in the late eighteenth century it became one of the great ironmaking centres of the world. The ironworks, built in 1789 and now preserved, shows how the furnaces, the casting house and the workers' cottages fitted together, and Stack Square, where the ironworkers lived, is still a place you can walk through. The whole landscape, with its quarries, tramroads, reservoirs and spoil heaps, was listed by UNESCO in 2000.
Nearby Big Pit is the best-known part. It is a real coal mine that closed in 1980 and now runs as a national museum, with free entry, and the tour takes you roughly ninety metres underground in a cage with a helmet and a lamp. The guides are former miners, and they know how to tell a story. It is cold and damp down there, whatever the weather outside, and the experience is a good deal more affecting than a display case.
For motorcyclists, the roads around Blaenavon are some of the best in south Wales. The mountain road to Abergavenny climbs over open moorland, with huge views, sheep on the verge and quick, flowing bends. The ridge of the Blorenge, a mountain of about five hundred and sixty metres, stands over the town, and the road along its flank is a favourite. Surfaces are variable, with potholes after the winter, and cattle grids and unfenced animals demand care. Wind and cloud can come from nowhere, so a waterproof is a sensible companion.
Blaenavon has five and a half thousand people and a petrol station, with more choice at Pontypool and Abergavenny. The town has a few cafes and pubs, and the famous Welsh cakes are on sale at the bakery. In Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, whose process for making steel from phosphoric iron was first tried here, the town has a local hero who changed world industry.
Spring and autumn offer the best of the light. Summer weekends are busy with riders, and winter brings snow and ice.