Poet Pat Edwards says of her A470 poem, Apollo Over Merthyr,

In the mid 1990s I used to drive back and forth from Welshpool to Cardiff three times a week or more for work. In those days, the road took you right passed the old Hoover factory and, of course, the remains of the once mighty coal industry. It always struck me how much employment opportunities were rapidly evolving, perhaps never again to be as secure or physically demanding – a job for life something of a myth, like the notion of a space ship landing on the Gurnos.