Durham's Wicker Man

This is me snuggling up to Durham's Willow Coal Miner sculpture. He is such a friendly chap just sitting quietly on a bank enjoying a spectacular view of the countryside. He must appreciate it so much when used to spending so much time in the dark.

I'm not sure how long he has existed, but I only knew about him a couple of weeks ago. I'd seen him on blip, but had no idea how close to home he was! I set off with rough instructions for finding him, but ended up walking about 2.5 miles when I only needed to go a less than half a mile!!! Oh well, at least i found him , and I can sleep this evening to recover.

It is good that there are more and more tributes to the mining heritage of the NE now. It seems that when the mining ceased every attempt was made to erase all traces of it from the landscape, almost as if it never existed. Perhaps there were too many bad memories associated with mining - the hard life underground, the strikes and associated poverty, the eventual closures and resulting unemployment, etc.

Edit: A friend has just given me this link with more pics of him & his surroundings :)