High-street hero Nick Horler talks about his world cruises working aboard the QE2, his passion for catering and photography, and going back to his roots saving the Blaenavon post office.

“I was born in Birmingham. My mother Margaret Horler was from Solihull in Birmingham and my dad David is from Weston-super-Mare.

My mum and dad got together in 1959. He was in the RAF, doing national service at the time.

In the late Sixties, they bought a hotel in Weston-super-Mare. It was a small hotel with 25 bedrooms. It was called the Queenswood.

My background was catering. At 16 I went to sea. I joined the Merchant Navy and by the age of 17 I had already sailed around the world once.

The ship came to Newport after my birthday. I was 17 and two months old.

When I was 19, I join the QE2. I sailed for six years and I did five world cruises on it.

I went around the world seven times by the time I was 25.

I joined the QE2 as a vegetable cook, and I came out as a first baker.

It’s something that’s still very close to my heart.

It’s an experience not many people have.

There were a few celebrities on board over the years.

I then left the QE2 to set up a family in my thirties. I have got a son and daughter who are 31 and 27.

I got involved in the bakery trade. I worked as a bakery manager and then moved on to technical sales for large bakery companies in the UK. I was selling to supermarkets and people like that.

I then had a change of direction in my forties. I got back into cooking and started to do freelance cookery.

I then worked for the Probation Service as an area support manager.

I ran 12 bail hostels in the South West of England and Wales. I ran the catering contract for the Probation Service. I was responsible for the catering and all the cleaning staff.

I had about 90 staff working for me, seven days a week, 24/7.

It was a very stressful job and I had two mini strokes - Transient Ischemic Attacks.

Then I started chilling out a little bit, I did freelance cookery and freelance photography.

I enjoyed the creativity of it, being creative with it. I have had a camera ever since I was a child.

I also did some work for the Wye Valley News.

Being creative has always been part of my life. My mother was a very creative person.

While I was working for the Probation Service I moved to Chepstow.

I was offered some work for a building company which was doing a magazine.

I was approached by the manager of the company to produce images for the magazine to promote their business.

On the back of that, I was invited to do some photography for a company called Blaenavon Cheddar. That was my first visit to Blaenavon.

While I was in Blaenavon I fell in love with the area, Blaenavon and going down to Abergavenny. It’s a lovely area.

While doing the shoot, Sue Flander-Woodhouse, who owns Blaenavon Cheddar, said I would be suited for the area. It never left me.

I moved back to Weston-super-Mare. I retrained and became an NVQ assessor teaching cookery and bakery.

And during that time I met Wendy, my wife. We had a walk on the beach in Weston-super-Mare one day.

Wendy looked to me and I looked at her and she said that if she had the opportunity, she would like to move to Wales. It was two years ago last July.

Wendy and I came to Blaenavon. We started to look for premises. It was also because of what Sue said that I could do really well, over in Wales.

We were lucky enough to find a property in Commercial Street to set up a business called Artie Craftie.

Wendy’s got a creative background. She was a housing officer for 30 years but it’s all about customer service, in the way we run services.

My cousin in Australia messaged me and told me my grandfather was born in Abertillery, just over the hill.

My great grandfather owned the funeral directors in Abertillery in Hill Street, which is still in existence.

I’ve got nine relatives buried in the church yard in St Peter’s in Blaenavon, literally just across the road from where the shop is.

My grandfather moved to Wester-super-Mare in the 1920s to set up a garage business.

Originally, my family were from Somerset. They moved to Wales in the 1840s to work in the mines.

So we’ve done basically the same but about 150 years later and set up a business in Blaenavon.

At the end of the day, we’ve come back to our roots.

We only found out when we moved to Blaenavon they were there, though I knew my grandfather was form Abertillery. It’s made a more exciting place to be.

We opened the doors of Artie Craftie last June. Both of us work on committees that help the town.

When we set up the business up, we knew we had to work with the community.

We like to help as much as we can and help to promote the town.

Our ethos when we started the business was to promote the town as much as the business to bring people in.

Last October it was announced the post office was closing. A lot of people were unhappy the post office was going. We’ve got world heritage status in the town.

Next door to us became available. It was a space that could be used. It’s another coincidence.

We talked to Torfaen council and applied for the post office in October.

We had spoken to the post office. They came to look at the shop and agreed the site was possible.

It took a lot of time and we got a lot of support from Paul Murphy, the previous MP, and also Lynne Neagle AM.

We had full support from Torfaen council and went ahead and applied.

We applied and were turned down by the Post Office. We didn’t meet the criteria of the application.

We fought that because the needs of having a post office in Blaenavon is paramount.

I think it’s paramount for the community.

There’s no banking services in the town. An awful lot of people rely on banking services, so it was really disappointing we had been rejected.

In January, we re-applied and we got to the next stage for an interview. It was a three and a half hour interview where we put our case forward.

We were approved. We knew in January we’d passed that and then it went to public consultation.

I think it was about three months of public consultation. The public were very happy with it. It saved the post office.

We opened the doors on the 27th July – my 54th birthday. That’s another one of those.

It’s great, daily. We get people coming to our shop.

We won three national awards in February. We were voted the most loved business in Torfaen, the specialist shop of the year for the UK and one of the top 100 companies by the Best Of, the networking business website in Torfaen.

Last week, we were overall winner for the community service provider award at the High Street Hero Awards.

To receive this award by the Welsh Government and the people of this area is the pinnacle.

It’s just really special for us. It shows to me and Wendy all the hard work we've done in the last 14 to 16 months.

That shows the community have accepted us and love what we do. They’re actually saying it to us.

If we can do it anybody can do it, it’s a matter of hard work. If you put your mind to anything, you can do it. It can be achieved by anybody.

It’s all about being happy and being able to help the community out."