As to rugby, it is the national sport. Girls and boys pick up the game early in instructional leagues, and the great players are national folk heroes. Wales proudly hosted the quadrennial Rugby World Cup in 1999. In the sprawling valley towns, signs of economic depression and need may abound next to an immaculately maintained, flood-lit rugby pitch. Life in the valleys is still hard. The pit closures through the ’80s brought massive unemployment to an already depressed region. Vast amounts of investment capital poured into the region from elsewhere in Britain, the European Community, the United States, and Japan. Though new factories have risen along the Head of the Valleys Road and across the jagged southern end, unemployment remains very high in some places.

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Despite this story of hard industrial life and general economic depression, the people of the valleys are warm, good-humoured, resilient, and hospitable. Visitors fortunate enough to discover the valleys find an open welcome, a unique culture, and a great deal of interest.

As Wales is a bilingual principality, of course, that friendly greeting could come in either English or Welsh. The only living Celtic language, and the oldest living European language, Welsh is visible on highway signs, in shop windows, and in print. Many schoolchildren in the Rhondda area attend schools where Welsh is the language of instruction.

The market town of Pontypridd lies in the centre of the region and calls itself ‘Gateway to the Valleys.’ The Historical Centre in the heart of Pontypridd exhibits the social and cultural history of the town, and doubles as the Tourist Information Centre. It is located in a former chapel. The magnificent pipe organ, still used for recitals, is the one feature that remains of the building’s chapel years. It was once the instrument of John Hughes, who composed the classic hymn Cym Rhondda, still sung throughout the world as Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.

Just a few miles up the road at Trehafod, the Lewis Merthyr Colliery has found new life as the Rhondda Heritage Park. Here among the rusting relics of busier days, the unique industrial heritage and way of life is kept alive. In multimedia and reconstructions of village life, the Heritage Park tells the history of the Rhondda. Former colliers, who worked these pits for years, lead visitors underground to experience working life in the mine during the 1950s.

As dramatic and dominating as the story of coal may be, of course, the region’s history goes back long before commercial mining. At Nelson, Llancaiach Fawr is a 17th-century manor house. This award-winning living history museum brings to life the Civil War in Wales, as the servants of Colonel Edward Prichard await a visit from King Charles in 1645. Costumed interpreters do a superb job of introducing gentry life in 17th-century Wales as well as the grim history of conflict between the King and Parliament of the 1640s.

Half a dozen miles to the south, the prosperous market town of Caerphilly had already been around for centuries. It sprang up in the shadow of Caerphilly Castle, the largest castle in Wales. Built in the 13th century by the Norman lord ‘Red Gilbert’ de Clare, the fortress stands on three artificial islands in a 30-acre lake. Its usefulness as a fortification is long past, but the castle still dominates the town. Local folks take the mammoth castle and its unique display of medieval siege engines quite for granted. Their greater interest is fishing in the lake.

Just across the street, the Caerphilly Visitor Centre not only provides tourist information, but exhibits local history and offers Welsh crafts, gifts, and a ready source for the famous white Caerphilly cheese.

The hills are greener now around here than they were when Richard Llewellyn described them in his famous, heart-warming novel of the coal fields, How Green Was My Valley. They are greener than they were a generation ago. The mountains of coal slag are now swaddled with vegetation. Stands of farmed evergreens run along many of the ridges. Still, there is no pretending that the valleys are a beautiful place, or that they will ever rival the Yorkshire Dales or the Cotswolds for the devotion of visitors, infusion of tourist spending, and creeping gentrification. Unfortunately, those seeking the pastoral Britain of popular imagination will have to look elsewhere.

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