A visit to Stori Brymbo

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I went to Stori Brymbo, Wrexham, to see a 300-million-year-old fossil forest. The fossils are just one part of this heritage attraction, which is on the site of an old steelworks.

When looking around, I joked, “There’s something for everyone at Stori Brymbo.” It’s not entirely true. But if you’re interested in nature walks, industrial history, post-industrial communities, coal, fossils, or photography, you’ll be glad you visited.

The site isn’t fully wheelchair accessible. However, I saw online that Stori Brymbo can offer support for people who are able to ride in a 4×4 vehicle. You’ll need to contact them ahead of time to talk about arrangements.

I enjoyed photographing the ruins and looking at the wide variety of ferns. I also came away with a better appreciation of the relationship between industrial employers and small communities.

The site was an ironworks and then steelworks, in operation from 1796 to 1990. This means it was a multi-generational local employer. I can only imagine the emotional attachment I’d feel to a place that employed my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

Here are a few of the photos I took.

Matchbooks, a block of paper, a brochure covered with signatures, and a photograph wrapped in plastic.
A display of Brymbo steelworks souvenirs; it was common for companies to produce items like these for their employees and customers in the second half of the 20th century.
Museum display board. Text reads: "Then, in 1990, it all stopped. Despite receiving almost £50m of investment in 1976 (equivalent to almost £400m today), owners United Engineering Steels made the decision to close the works. On the 27th September 1990, Brymbo's furnaces were tapped for one last time and almost 200 years of operations came to an end."
Brymbo is in Wales, so the museum display boards are in Welsh and English. This is from a part of the exhibition that focuses on 20th-century workers at Brymbo Steelworks.
Two metal towers with the Sun behind them. High walls but no roof. The area looks like an open courtyard.
The two tall furnaces in the background were added in the 1970s. There used to be a roof above where I was standing.
The remains of a metal machine set into the wall. An arch of old brickwork and a buttress of brick.
There are lots of industrial remains to photograph at Stori Brymbo.
Metal frames, including a staircase. Once part of the steelwork's interior. Now these structures stand out in the open.
Remains of the old steelworks at Stori Brymbo
A very big green vehicle with patches of rust and vegetation growing around it.
This vehicle was used in the reclamation of the site.
A fossilised fern frond
Some of the fossils found at Brymbo Fossil Forest
Exposed bedrock inside a building. Small tree trunks poke up from the ground.
This is the fossil forest itself. I didn’t go on the guided tour offered by Stori Brymbo, but rather wished I had. Sites like these need experts to bring them alive. However, I did enjoy my visit and I found some interesting videos about Brymbo Fossil Forest on YouTube afterwards. The video below introduces a medieval mineshaft packed with fossils.

At the end of my visit, I bought a small piece of the fossil forest from Stori Brymbo’s shop. It’s 314 million years old, which is an inconceivable length of time. I’m boggled just thinking about it!

Communication in QA

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I’m a quality assurance proofreader for documents and publications. I’ve been learning about the quality assurance of software. The name of the course is Manual Testing and Defect Management.

It has shown me that software QA and my kind of QA have a lot in common. Clear and methodical communication is crucial in both.

Whether you’re testing a website or proofreading a magazine, you need to explain the problems accurately and clearly so that your client can find them and fix them.

You also need to be sensible about how you assess and communicate the severity of the problems you find. The boy who cried wolf comes to mind here.

In software QA, errors are graded by level of severity and urgency. If you mark everything as urgent, developers will struggle to prioritise the really important tasks and they’ll stop trusting you.

In QA proofreading, if you present every problem as deeply serious, you risk overwhelming your client. You’ll also make it much harder for them to locate your feedback about genuinely severe problems.

I’ve really enjoyed learning about a role that is so similar to my own. Software QA has given me a new way to think about my work.

The two fields aren’t identical, of course. A big difference is the degree to which communication has been formalised.

In software QA, there is an established common system of communication. Testers communicate through dashboards such as Jira, using click boxes, drop-down menus with agreed labelling, annotated screenshots, short videos, and clearly written notes that must contain certain points.

Depending on their job, some QA proofreaders do use Jira (I haven’t yet). But a lot of the time, we communicate with clients by leaving comments on the document itself. I’ve used the commenting features in Word, Google Docs, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Our approach to commenting is often tailored to the client’s unique needs. In other words, clients can ask me to change how I word my feedback and where I put it. If a company has its own particular workflow, I’m happy to learn it.

The comments we leave also have a strong interpersonal dimension. It’s important that the QA proofreader thinks about people’s feelings.

Depending on their team’s emotional makeup, a client may prefer longer or shorter comments. Compare these three:

  • “Rude double meaning in slang”
  • “This word has an unfortunate double meaning in slang.”
  • “Some readers may be aware that this word has a double meaning in slang. It could cause offence.”

A short feedback comment saves time but risks looking brusque or snippy. A lengthier feedback comment is politer and softer but can take longer to read. If a document has 100 to 200 comments, all that polite phrasing can become a snowdrift of woolly waffle that’s difficult to act upon.

The way we leave feedback in editorial QA has a significant impact on the people responsible for the next steps in the production process – particularly when the feedback fails or offends.

I think that’s why I admire the formalised approach used in software QA. It avoids some of the interpersonal risks that come with giving feedback outside a commonly agreed-upon system.

In both fields, the purpose of QA feedback is to enable other team members to take steps to improve things. How we deliver feedback to the people who make things better is just as important as our ability to spot errors.

Signs, colours, and a lovely carving

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In my previous blog post about photography, I wrote about heavily editing pictures with Snapseed. I wasn’t satisfied with the results and felt that I’d been too heavy handed.

Last weekend, I went out again with an iPhone camera. I cropped the photos but made very few edits this time. Overall, I’m much happier with the results. However, I’ve noticed that the pictures look far better on a phone screen than they do on a much larger computer screen. I guess that may be one of the limitations of camera phone photography.

I took this photo in Birmingham on a sunny day in September 2026. I’d remembered the scene slightly differently, so I was annoyed with myself when I saw it again.

I took the above photo in June 2026, towards the end of a heatwave. It wasn’t raining yet, but the sky was thick with clouds. I don’t think I appreciated how dark this picture is. I’m not sure if it’s because of overediting or simply the weather. I love the colours in this scene. The newer photo does a much better job of capturing them.

This time around, I tried to pay more attention to colour. This picture above shows a school in Essex. I love this building because of the repeated shapes and the colour on the panels. (September 2026)

“Tiredness can kill. Take a break.”

I love the blue used on motorway signs. I only noticed the dead bird on the ground after I looked at the photo on my phone. (September 2026)

These two photographs show the footbridge at Toddington Services on the M1 motorway. It’s quite unusual to see one without a covered walkway added. This bridge is historic because it dates from the construction of the M1 in the 1950s. I saw it with someone who remembered the M1 when it was new, so that made it quite special. (September 2026)

Motorway bridges can be quite beautiful. If you like lines and harmonious balance, they’re well worth looking at. I often think of the bridges in Japanese prints when I see them. (September 2026)

I saw this carving on a tomb in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul at Stondon Massey in Essex. I’ve edited this photo a little to bring out the lines. There is some orange lichen on this tombstone. I wish I’d taken a few more pictures to capture the lichen and the other carved details. (September 2026)

I love the shape of alpacas when they’re sitting down. These animals live at Mulberry House Hotel in Essex. (September 2026)

“Hello” and “Goodbye”

I’m fascinated by signage because taken out of context it can look quite odd. I took the above photo at Tesco’s in Harlow in Essex. (September 2026)

The word “End” has so many different connotations. In this case, it is the end of this blog post. (September 2026)