Clogau St David’s, once Britain’s richest goldmine, was considered exhausted. But miners are working there again

The workspace would not suit everyone. A soggy, gritty, cramped cavern 50 metres beneath a Welsh hillside accessible only by a series of ladders that drop through craggy holes into the darkness.

But a smile spread over Dai Jones’s grime-caked face as the miner described the challenge of hunting for gold in the hills of north-west Wales and the joy when he and his colleagues find a few specks.