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Many years ago, I got into trouble with a good friend when I was rash enough to refer to the mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in Snowdonia, which I drove through frequently. I pictured its cramped main road on a wet day, with mist swirling down valley; the mountains of slate waste glistened grey, and in an image of poetic melancholy they summoned up a hymn in a minor key being sung rather dolefully. My friend was not amused by the perceived slight on her native parish, and this week, the laugh is definitely on me. Blaenau Ffestiniog forms part of the slate quarrying landscape of Gwynedd just named as the UK’s nomination for Unesco World Heritage status. The area’s vast quarries and mines are said to have ‘roofed the world’ in the 19th century, and a greatly shrunken remnant is still producing. The tips of Blaenau up there with the Parthenon and the Taj Mahal?: unlikely maybe, but I shouldn’t have mocked. They’re not pretty, and they don’t shriek of power like their nearest listed neighbours, the ring of castles which Edward the First built to subdue the Welsh 700 years ago. But they tell a story it’s important not to forget. It’s a story of men required to work in spectacularly dangerous situations, with minimal protection, and sometimes carried home seriously maimed, if not killed. It’s about the desperation of those who broke ranks during a three year strike in the early 1900s, and bore for decades the damning label Traitor - while their employer looked on from his castle on the coast. It’s about an overwhelmingly nonconformist faith, which packed giant chapels, pointed to a hope beyond the struggle, and tried to serve people in acute poverty, and to handle some of the bitter community divisions. It’s right to remember all this, because it’s part of the heritage - just as Jewish people are required to look back on the exodus, and give thanks for their deliverance from captivity; and Christians to share tokens of Christ’s broken body broken and shed blood in response to his command, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ Such remembering is meant to be much more than a feat of memory. It’s about being reunited with the one at its heart, and receiving fresh energy for whatever faces us. Tourism is already serious business in the slate areas. You can take a train 500 feet into one of the deepest mines, trek through subterranean chambers, and watch the delicate art of slate splitting. I hope it continues to flourish - and that visitors will glimpse the heritage in the human stories…and also ask what’s still to be learned from them.