JUST six miles beyond Abergavenny lies the World Heritage site of Blaenavon, offering a fascinating day packed with activities.

Start at the Blaenavon Heritage Centre where an imaginative exhibition, including interactive computer displays, demonstrates the enormous significance of South Wales in the early years of the Industrial Revolution.

Follow this with a visit to the Iron Works, the best preserved in the world and, in the adjoining workers’ cottages, the site for BBC Wales’ reality series, Coal House. You’ll also find the ‘truck shop’ here, where workers would have had to buy everything.

The jewel in the crown at Blaenavon is Big Pit, where you can descend the mine shaft to experience life underground. At the pithead, a great new museum has been created in the Pithead Bathhouse and a fabulous audio-visual recreation of the mines above ground.

Add walks exploring the industrial heritage of the area and there’s more to see and do in Blaenavon than you’ll be able to fit into a single day.

Visit the website at world-heritage-blaenavon.org.uk for details.