Try as you might, you just won’t be able to take in the full beauty of this incredible horse sculpture stretching over 650 feet (200 meters) across a grassy landscape in South Wales. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even be able to tell what it is. That’s where aerial photography comes in handy, showing the people who can see it in person and the rest of the world what the sculpture looks like from above.
Photographer Steve Brockett captured the breadth of the sculpture, named ‘Sultan the Pit Pony’ by its creator Mick Petts, from an airplane. The pony is the largest figurative earth sculpture in the United Kingdom, and you can climb it to access views of the surrounding woods, grasslands, marsh and trails.
The landscape around this area didn’t used to be so beautiful. As hinted by the sculpture’s name, Parc Penalta was once a coal mine. Sultan was constructed using 60,000 tons of coal shale along with stone and earth.
The pony is modeled on so-called ‘pit ponies’ that were commonly used to haul tubs of coal in underground mines from the mid-18th century until the mid-20th century. The last pit pony was retired in 1999.
Photos supplied by WENN.com