Scotland - Lady Victoria Colliery

 June 30, 2024

Jimmy, our tour guide and former coal miner at lady Victoria Colliery

Traveling to-and-fro between our country cottage in Gorebridge frequently brought us past the sign 'National Mining Museum of Scotland.' This is the kind of sign that makes me think, 'I know we will end up here before it is all said and done.' And so it came to pass, that on our last full day in Scotland, we knew we would be touring the Lady Victoria in Newtongrange, just up the road from Gorebridge.

An unusually gray sky greeted us that last Sunday morning in Scotland. We pulled together some breakfast got set for our 10 AM tour of what was once the deepest coal pit in Scotland at 530m. 

Our small tour group that morning got a look at the surface works (the underground shaft was filled when it closed on 1984) of coal mine by a former collier, Jimmy. We got a great bunch of stories of work and life underground, the techniques and the evolution of Britain's coal industry over the last couple of hundred years. Coal fueled the Empire and has quite the ingrained impression on the societal fabric of parts of Great Britain. The Lady Victoria Colliery was shut down in 1984.

A mockup of the conditions underground at the Mining Museum

Jimmy guided us through the tunnel and introduced us to the heavy equipment employed to mine coal

Jimmy & Mark at the Winding Wheel, the headworks that lowered men and equipment deep underground.

The stories of the coal miner's life were often brutish in their Dickensian tales of hard child labor and the hard scrabble life of mining families. The museum featured the machinery of the once working pit, but also has modern displays showing the aspects of mining, the dangers, the political upheavals that came with the miners and this critical industry to the British Empire.

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After a morning of dark, dirty and dangerous tales of hard lives spent in the coal pits, we were ready for some sunshine and a walk in the fresh air.

Not only did we frequently drive past the National Mining Museum, but we also noted the Gorebridge Nature Reserve off our route as well. I took the short drive into the entrance to the nature Reserve and we were soon out and bout on our feet and walking among trees and streams in the Scottish countryside.

Sue and I stroll along a nature trail in Gorebridge 

A refreshing little walk after a tour of a dark colliery nearby

Our last evening in Scotland, I thought I'd be up for one more drive through the wonderful pastoral country of the Scottish Borderlands. We decided we'd have dinner about 20 miles south of Gorebridge in the lovely little town of Galashiel on the River Tweed. We mapped out the route to an Indian restaurant and had a large, spicy meal. Returning in the late evening light, satisfied in all that we had done for the past fortnight. We packer our bags and were ready for the next morning's commute back to Edinburgh to catch a plane back to Texas Time.