Wind turbine propellers revolve lazily on the mountain ridge above the village of Arigna in north Roscommon. They are a potent reminder of how times have changed for what was the main coal mining village of Ireland for generations.
Coal mining sustained the community for some 250 years, including the Famine years. With the mines closed since 1990, the community has been seeking to develop a new formula for economic regeneration.
In the next few weeks, a planning application will be lodged for the first phase of an ambitious project which aims to preserve and build on Arigna's social and industrial heritage.
The Energy Valley project hopes to create an overground mining museum and to develop an "underground experience" as a major tourist attraction. An energy museum, which will examine past, present and future energy sources, is also planned.
Arigna thus hopes to capitalise on its mining past. The community has already built an Enterprise Centre and developed a network of walks in the surrounding hills, based on routes taken by the miners walking to work each day in an era preceding the motor car.
A stylish map guide to the Miners' Way and Historical Trail has been produced, and the new project will be a giant step forward on this concept.
A detailed feasibility study was carried out, funded by the Arigna LEADER Group. The Energy Valley scheme will be the flagship project of the LEADER company, which is to provide grant aid of £250,000 towards its realisation.
A drive to raise matching funding is being led by the Arigna Community Development Company and it is hoped to attract both private and public money.
An important part of the project will be the collection of the folklore and the local recollections of the mining era.
"We want to get the social history documented," says the chairman of the Community Development Company, Mr Seamus Rynn, whose own father, now aged 81, worked for over half a century in the coal mines.
"When the mines were going in Arigna there was always `much and plenty' in the area," he points out. "There may have been hazards in the work, but there was great lifestyle in it."
Mr Pat Daly, of Arigna LEADER, points out that the locality is unique, in the sense that it was a rural area with an industrial society.
Over the long history of the mines, there were no major disasters - probably because the tunnels were driven horizontally into the hills, sometimes to a distance of three miles.
A section of one of these pits will be opened up to develop the "underground experience", providing visitors with a half-hour tour to see what life was like for the workers underground.
The guide to the Miners' Way notes that "this post-industrial landscape of slag heaps, rusting mining machinery and buildings is a vivid testimony to the enterprise so recently carried on here".
Yet the centuries of mining have left relatively few scars on the landscape, and the project promoters cherish the slagheaps as part of their industrial heritage. The walking route also touches on many megalithic sites, historic buildings and natural habitats.
The tourism potential is considerable, especially as the nearby waterways and lakes, Lough Allen, Lough Arrow, Lough Key and the River Shannon, have been opened up to water-based recreation.
Today, although many millions of tonnes of low-grade, or "crow", coal remain unexploited in the hills, the only active continuation of the coal tradition lies in the production locally of high-grade smokeless briquettes by the Arigna Fuels factory.
Ironically, this enterprise imports its raw material, coal, then much of the output is exported to Wales - a classic double case of "bringing coals to Newcastle".
The local Kilronan Ramblers walking club holds several organised walks annually over the Miners' Way. For details, tel. 078-46702.