The smell was what took me by surprise at Welbeck Colliery. I didn’t think there would be a smell for some reason, but there was a not unpleasant one for an industrial site. I suppose it smelt, to my nose, a bit like a steam railway, perhaps not surprising with the great piles of coal. But like the steam railways, this place will soon be as much a piece of history as they are, as the final coal will be won here in the next few months, and yet another Nottinghamshire pit village will be without a pit, and the peaks, troughs and diaganol geometry of this man made landscape will be level once more.