Ralph Collins has spent many years of his leisure time hill walking in South East Wales, and describes the area in this book with a passion. He has a sharp eye for detail of the landscape and topography.  His outline descriptions of its geology are those of a keen amateur and he describes them clearly in layman’s terms. He also has a very keen interest in local history along with industrial archaeology, and brings together many examples in this book, some are physical remnants, and others were past events which have been researched and brought to life in this book.  His purpose in the book is to share his pleasures and knowledge with the readers and encourage them to look deeper and closer at the countryside all around them.

He is now recently retired from working life, where during the last twenty five years he has worked in telecommunications and IT, as a project engineer and project manager at national and international level, as well as managing quality systems and writing and managing technical bid documents. In the period before IT, he worked on electrical and instrumentation projects in a supervisory capacity, right back to the 1960s

He lives in Newport with wife and have two grown up children, both in professional life with children of their own and is a great believer in family values.

Ralph is an active member of Oxford House Industrial History Society (OHIHS)

Phil Mortimore