And now the game's over: Kellingley miners finish final shift

Mining is dangerous, arduous work but people doing this job love it. Now, as one union rep says, the industry has 'thrown them on the scrapheap'

The lobby of the Kellingley colliery is thick with cameras as the last shift at the country's last deep coalmine comes to an end. A man in hi-vis orange walks through, his trousers cut down to shorts, a few inches of coal-dusted thigh showing over the thickest boots; goggled, gloved, protected and unprotected. The coal clogs the miners' eyes like eyeliner, so that they look incongruously showbiz.

Mining is an industry full of contradictions - it's dangerous, arduous work but people love it. The heat and the humidity take an entire career to get used to, but what everyone talks about is their relationship with their colleagues. Most started straight from school.