Jock the Coalman

Apologies for starting this entry with a dirty joke... (I'm telling you, that slayed them in the primary school playgrounds back in the day)

There was a coal mining theme to this afternoon's wanderings as we popped along to Fallin, one of Stirling's eastern villages that has a rich mining heritage attached to it. We headed up the old pit bing that was produced when the Polmaise Colliery was operating. This place had a reputation as one of the country's most militant and was the first pit to go out on strike in 1984's year long and nationwide miner's strike. There's an interesting TV interview with the union leader and the pit manager that gives a good insight to what was going on around that time.

The bing itself has been landscaped into a quiet little park come nature reserve that has excellent views over the Central Belt and seems to be well used by the locals (lots of 2 litre Lambrini bottles scattered around). Apart from the memorial garden that has various items of equipment from the industry there's little other evidence of the mining activities that were central to the community back then. The mine itself eventually succumbed to Maggie Thatcher's wildly swinging hatchet in 1987, despite it still being a viable source of coal.

Euan collected some lumps of the stuff and, as he had absolutely no concept of why we'd want to burn rocks, as we walked down off the bing Samantha filled him in on some of the history. We set the coal alight in the chiminea when we got home (eventually; forgot how hard it was to get a coal fire going) and this was just perfect for melting some marshmallows on sticks. Yum.