Blaenafon Heritage Railway

"When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn’t it?”
― Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

Thought the thread was worth pursuing as I called in to WH Smiths early this morning and found myself detoured down an aisle to suddenly see a BBC publication called "Focus" with the cover story "Take Control of Your Dreams". Following hot on the heels of yesterdays reference to "What Dreams May Come" this was just irresistible for me so I grabbed it to read. As anticipated the subject was Lucid Dreaming, which I only discovered in the last decade.

Today, our wedding anniversary, was as good a reason as I could think of for having a day off. An early walk with Rocco was about as strenuous as it got.

By early afternoon I was in need of inspiration for a photo for the day, so I called in to see Dad and enlisted his company in a little "pilgrimage" to Blaenafon.

First stop the Ironworks where I grabbed a few shots as the place was closing up for the day. Still keen to get a cloudscape of some sort I headed higher up, to big Pit. While I was there I noticed a steam trains plume above the trees, and remembered the nearby railway. A short drive back to the main road and left towards Brynmawr brought us to the turning off the main road, past Garn Lakes and straight to the railway station.

Although things were starting to close up for the day we decided to have a quick look around anyway. As I walked in through the station entrance doorway I saw RC coming in from the platform side. Haven't seen him for, oh, twenty years maybe? Lovely surprise and I got the full lowdown and a mini guided tour of the station and the restoration work they are undertaking, so many thanks R. After such an enthusiastic guided tour todays photo has to be of the railway. For those who may be interested in a visit to this part of the World Heritage Site at Blaenafon here's a link :
http://www.pontypool-and-blaenavon.co.uk/default.aspx

We'd arranged a meal out and headed off to meet our company, only to get a phone call when we were half way there to say the pub wasn't serving food tonight, so it was plan B - the place we'd tried to visit this time last year which was unexpectedly closed for the night by a power cut. Someone trying to tell us something.... We did get our meal and enjoyed the rest of the evening in conversation, before it was time for K to get back to take the dog for its 10pm constitutional. Then it was to sleep: perchance to dream