The countryside along the road between Bruay la Buissière and Douvrin in Nord Pas de Calais is littered with slag heaps from coal mines that once turned night and day in this industrial region of France.

“My mother used to have to go out and test the wind before doing the laundry,” says Stephane Forestier, who was brought up in a village in the heart of the old mining basin. “There was a grey dust that would float through the air and if she got the wind direction wrong she would have to do the laundry all over again.”