MAY I personally thank Mr Orton for giving all your readers a fascinating account of his English noble heritage and his personal experiences in the vast industrial 'rip and tear', environmental disaster prone, monster opencast mines of Canada. Very interesting on a general basis, I agree; but unfortunately, totally irrelevant to the Forest of Dean and its centuries-old heritage of close-knit mining and quarrying communities, working mainly with hammer, pick and shovel.

Industrial scale open-cast mining in the Dean Forest has never been welcome, especially now that once again our beloved Forest is potentially under threat from the scions of privatisation, with the spectre of various opencast coal companies smacking their corporate lips in anticipation of a quick profit. Best not to mention it again, Mr Orton, awld butty.

I present, as a contrast to Mr Orton's nice photo, a photograph of a group of hard-working salt-of-the-earth Foresters near the Flourmill Colliery, Bream in 1938.

Back row: Mr Stevens, Mr Higgins, Bill Knightley (from the Midlands and future husband of Iris Rudge, who took the photo). Front row:- 'Buck' Yearsley, Maurice Lewis, Arthur Rudge, William (Billo) Nash.

– John Belcher. PS: Last letter on this subject.