The Car Mine

In this part of Wales, Niall and I were absolutely spoilt for choice when it came to abandoned mines. But it was one in particular that we were after. This was the so-called "Cavern of Lost Souls," named as such because... you know what? I don't even know. I don't understand the logic behind urbex codenames. Whatever rakes in the clicks, I guess. 

 

The mine became infamous because back in the 1970s the locals got into the habit of dropping all of their old cars down a mine shaft, and this has gradually caused a huge underground mountain of scrap to protrude from a big underground lake. No lost souls involved. Leave it to the urbex community to romanticise fly-tipping for Youtube ad revenue. The underground mountain, or undergrountain (much better name than cavern of lost souls), consists of dead automobiles, refrigerators, televisions and other household appliances, and it genuinely looks quite pretty, sticking out of a lake with just a stream of light shining on them from the mine shaft above.

Naturally I wanted to see it for myself, but getting down there was going to be an adventure.

The entrance to the mine was pretty easy to find. Some of the lazier fly-tippers can't even be arsed to lug their rubbish a few more feet to the shaft, and have just left it all piled up next to it. The entrance tunnel is behind a big pile of litter, and it's a little bit flooded.

An old TV is bobbing up and down in the water, which is a few feet deep and pretty damn murky. As we waded through the tunnel, I could feel other rubbish brushing against my legs. I couldn't even see half of it. I'd lift my foot and there would be bin bags coming up with it. I have no idea what I'm walking in.

 

Eventually the tunnel opens up into a cavern, and if you look closely, the old narrow-gauge track rails are still on the ground! See, I know that car graveyards are popular, but I don't understand why more people don't point out that the mine tracks are still here. That's history right there!

 

 

As for the history of the mine, it was established in 1820 for the purpose of mining slate, although I read that black shale was also found here. Now prior to writing this, I had no idea what black shale was. Shale itself is apparently the most common sedimentary rock, and it can be found in various different colours depending on what minerals are present in it. Black shale apparently contains trapped organic matter that can be converted into petroleum. That's pretty cool.

I guess there's almost a poetic aspect in that cars containing fuel were returned to the Earth from which the petroleum came, but let's face it, that was probably lost on whoever had the bright idea to drop cars down here in the first place. I imagine the train of thought was more along the lines of "Hey, I can just drop my old car down this hole and nobody will ever know.... Whoa!!!! That was a big splash! Let's do it again! Brian, how much do you like that pinto?"

So allegedly the mine was struggling in 1848, due to financial mismanagement from the slate company. This resulted in its initial closure, but the area was still full of minerals and the mine was reopened in 1859. By 1873, two hundred people worked here and eventually its growth, along with a spectacular tramway, allowed it to amalgamate with other mines in the area in 1884, although one source says 1901. 

Apparently it closed initially in 1906 when nobody wanted slate anymore, but it opened again at some point after the first world war, before closing for good in 1971. It became a car dumping ground very soon after. The Who and Why of the situation has been widely speculated with the finger often pointed at the local council, but I think after all these decades we'll never know for sure. Someone somewhere probably knows but given the environmental impact of this place being a potential scandal, I imagine they're remaining tight lipped.

 

 

Here's a closer look at the rails still leading into the mine.

 

 

And if you look closely, you can see where the tracks separate to go up onto two different tiers on the side of a great big void. It was here that things were going to get interesting.

 

 

In the ceiling there are still bits of metal that probably would have been used to haul stuff up back in the day, and load them into the old mine carts that ran along these ledges.

 

 

Ultimately we had to descend down these ledges to get to the car mountain. It was a task I wasn't going to shy away from, but I do have dyspraxia that blesses me with terrible depth perception along with all the physical co-ordination and grace of a satsuma. I'm not one for letting it impair my life too much. There are plenty who would say "I would do that, but...," before dropping an excuse that prevents them from doing what they really want to do. I try to replace "I would, but..." with "I could, if...," meanng that whatevers in my way is an obstacle rather than an obstruction. An obstacle can be dealt with.

 

But let's not forget that it was also pitch black in here too!

To climb down we'd be relying entirely on head torches, so we wouldn't be able to even see the bottom until we were there. 

Heights aren't really an issue for me. As any long-time reader of the blog will know, I absolutely love rooftopping, and this is probably no higher than most of the stuff I've climbed. But for some reason being underground in the dark makes it all the more disconcerting. One wrong move here and things could get very ugly.

 

 

Fortunately those who have come before us have left their ropes still here and dangling over the edge. That was quite convenient. Suddenly the descent was looking a little more doable. 

While Niall checked the integrity of the rope, I added the final touches to my will, and then we were off to meet our splattery end.

 

Down below in the depths we can just about make out some graffiti. It's not even good graffiti. It's my-parents-are-siblings graffiti. I mean, if you are going to lug cans of spray paint down a mine, at least do something creative. I would love to climb down a mine and find that someone had painted a brilliant piece of art that would only be appreciated by others who make the effort to see it. That would be amazing! But instead we have this/

 

On the bright side, I guess if semi-evolved Jeremy Kyle guests can make the climb then so can I. 

On the other hand, they probably just dived off the edge and survived because of their super dense neanderthal brow.

Nevertheless, we made our way down. It was easier than I'd heard it was, but I absolutely recommend bringing a friend for this sort of thing.

 

I'm not a big fan of the graffiti, but it is interesting that these are urbexers, given that whenever people are reluctant to share where locations are, due to high publicity leading to places getting ruined, the standard response is "It's not people in the urbex world who ruin places, it's local kids." 

In this case the vandals certainly seem to be immersed enough in the urbex crowd to namedrop specific websites, but hey-ho. Everyone knows that once a location gets shared out and starts trending among the urbex scene, it's all downhill from there, and this place is no different. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either naive or a total moron.

 

We're very much late to the party with this place, the so-called cavern of lost souls. It's been smeared across the internet, gained its silly nickname, and it's reached the point that the mere presence of an underground car graveyard just doesn't incite as much sensation as it used to, and youtubers are doing silly things like planting "mystical" artefacts that only they somehow manage to find, just to have something new to say about it.

I was expecting it to be a little bit littered. The graffiti doesn't surprise me. 

 

 

The tunnel continues from this chamber, back in the same direction that the original entry tunnel had come from, albeit considerably deeper.

 

But then the tunnel double backs on itself, so I decided to have a mooch down there.

 

There are horizontal grooves in the floor here that show where the old trackbed used to be. This is so awesome and really drives home the history of the place. A hundred years ago carts would have come up here carrying all the slate to be hauled up to the surface. It's a shame the tracks aren't still there.

 

It looks like it was going to fork again, but in this case the tunnel on the right looks like it was never started, while the tunnel on the left looks like it has collapsed. 

It was back to the main passage for me.

 

There was one passage left before we got what we came for.

 

And here it is:

 

It's sort of like that scene from The Simpsons where Homer tries to build a barbecue, and we have a shot of the completed product with Homer saying "That's one fine looking barbecue," before the camera pans out, we realise it's just the picture on the packaging, and Homer lowers it to reveal his pile of trash, crying out "Why doesn't mine look like that???"

 

You see, there are plenty of photos of this chamber that show the undergrountain sticking out of clean, unlittered water, and beautifully reflected on its clear surface, but those images are old and the sight is now completely different. Hundreds of people have come here since then, and none of them have cleaned up after themselves. Some have seemingly brought entire picnics and left the litter behind. Others have brought rubber boats and just abandoned them, leaving them floating in the water. Many urbexers now refer to it as the Cavern of Lost Dinghies, which is absolutely more accurate than the cavern of lost souls.

It's pretty sad. If any area proves the point of why locations shouldn't be shared around, it's this place. 

Even so, it was still amazing to be here, in such a large underground chamber, with sunlight streaming down the mine shaft onto a pile of several hundred cars. These photos don't capture the scale of the place. It was huge.

 

Zooming in, we can make out the cars a bit better. And just think, this pile continues far below water level. There are videos online of underwater drone footage that shows that the bottom of the lake is absolutely littered with dead automobiles. What we're seeing here is just the top of the car pile. 

It's a total abuse of the local environment but still, it was a sight to behold.  

I always try to put myself into the shoes of the people that a location mattered to before it was abandoned. 

Once long ago an innocent mine explorers jaw hit the floor when they first discovered this, thinking that they'd just be exploring a regular mine. 

And then years before that someone once pushed the first car down that mine shaft, not even sure what would happen, hearing silence for a moment before a massive weirdly satisfying splash as it hit the lake. That must have been pretty cool, let's be honest.

And then before that, these cars were owned by real people and families in the 1960s and 1970s. If it's true that these were mostly all dropped down here in the 1970s then there are adults alive today who will have sat in the back seats of these specific cars when they were children. 

And then before that, the mining industry was once the beating heart of a thriving economy. This mine once mattered to two hundred people who wanted to put food on the table for their families.This entire area with the shaft up to the surface would have been a hive of activity as thousands of tons of slate was hauled to the surface. And if the mine closed in 1971 then there could well be retired miners still alive today who will remember it as it was.

 It doesn't need clickbait. It doesn't need youtubers to pretend to find magical swords for clicks and views. It doesn't need a lame nickname. The truth is enough.

 

And doesn't it just play with the imagination? This is as far down as we can go but that doesn't mean it's the end of the mine. There could be other tunnels leading off from this chamber below the waters surface. There could still be tracks and even mine carts sealed away by a heap of water mixed with rusty metal, antifreeze, petrol, broken glass and probably urine, and it will all go unexplored for as long as the water is here.

Only one thing was left to do. I picked the least deflated dinghie and started to blow it back up. I was going to set foot on the undergroundtain.

(Photo credit: Niall)

 

Wooo!!! Look at me go! Pirate hat and everything. I actually gave it a pretty serious attempt.

Alas, it was not to be. I don't know if the boat scraped any junk below the surface or if it was always a bit naff, but suddenly I had water on board, accompanied by a quiet but noticable hissing sound. I was totally Albert-Alexandering this shit! Fuck! 

Luckily Niall had a grappling hook on a rope and he saved my soggy ass. 

Having narrowly avoided hypothermia as well as swimming in highly contaminated water full of rusty pointy things, we decided to call it a day and head for the surface.

 

But before we conclude, there are surface features that deserve a mention!

 

This contraption would have lowered the slate from the mines down the mountain, where it would have then been loaded into trains.

 

 

It seems to be in surprisingly good condition, still retaining most of the wooden panels, the metal wheels and even the metal cable hanging limply on the incline.

 

 

I think that this could actually be restored with a little TLC, although with the mine closed there would be little point.  

It was as we were leaving that we bumped into some mine explorers. These guys were serious, all decked out in proper mining gear that made us look like amateurs. Sexy amateurs, but amateurs nonetheless. They somehow saw through this, or maybe they wanted us to die a horrible death, because they told us about a much larger mine, much more amazing than this one, which still had some great stuff left behind. The adventure continues... in the next blog.

 

To conclude, the car mine is pretty cool, and definitely one to tick off the list for novelty reasons more than anything. On a serious note, it is a major fly-tipping dump, and ideally it should be cleaned up. But until that happens, if you want to visit it then bring friends who are at least semi-competent climbers. Head torches and gloves are also ideal. It's not an overly challenging climb but it is still a step up from a lot of other places, and caution is advised. I personally think that there's enough idiots in the urbex game now that it's a shame amazing nobody has died here already. If you're not a climber, there's no shame in sitting this one out. There's plenty of other things to see in the area, like hiking routes and wild swimming spots, so if you're the wussy one in your friend group, you can wait for them to be finished checking out the mine and still have a good day.

That's all I've got. My next blog is another mine, and then after that I'm returning to the Shropshire blog to look at some military base and publish some photos from a shoot I did last summer. In the meantime, I'm active on the social media hellscapes that are Instagram, Vero and Reddit, as well as the ones everyone hates, Facebook and Twitter. Give me a follow if you want to catch future blogs. 

Thanks for reading!

The Waterwheel Mine

 

A little while ago, I joined Niall and his friend Carly to check out a mine that I'd wanted to do for some time. The mine had first come onto my radar when someone had posted it on a Facebook group with some comments along the lines of "Ooooooh only three people know about this mine. It's our little secret."

I kinda feel like the person might have been lied to by whoever tipped him off, because the mine is nobodys secret, and thousands of people know about it. Whoopsie. The surface ruins are open to the public and the area is a popular dog walking spot. There's even stairs leading up to a capped mine shaft where people can stand on the metal grate and gaze down into the depths. 

But to actually get down there, people need to have a bit more of a mooch. But once we found it, it was all fairly straight forward.

 

 

Slipping inside was pretty easy. The entire entry passage is flooded but that wasn't a problem. We explored this in the midst of a heat wave, and being somewhere underground and shin-deep in water was actually quite refreshing. However the contrast was such that upon emerging from the mine at the end of the adventure, it felt like my legs were on fire, soaking wet and freezing as they were, suddenly exposed to the heat once again. I did a bit of a comedic dance out there.

 

 

Following its closure in 1900, the mine itself was abandoned and dormant, save for some scrap theft in 1910 when the bearings of the titular water wheel were removed.  It wasn't until 1971, over half a century later, that a chap heard a rumour from a former miner that there was a huge underground water wheel somewhere in the area. He went out to see if there was any truth behind such a story, and discovered this tunnel.

 

The passage drys up before opening into a reasonably larger chamber, where we found the wheel in question.

 

Isn't this cool??? What my pictures don't convey is the size of the thing. It's about five metres in diameter. That's quite large. You could lie two of me in a line across the circumference of that, and still have space left over for about three Alices. 

Imagine being the chap who discovered this in 1971, hearing a rumour and wading deep into the unpredictable and dangerous underground only to find that it was true, and that this thing had been sat down here for a hundred years. He must have felt so amazed.

And just think, it would have had to have been constructed down here, with the workers operating under candle light. That's pretty impressive. 

While some say that this water wheel is unique in its survival, one more does exist in an abandoned mine in Cumbria. The two are said to be the only water wheels currently accessible in abandoned mines, which is a rather hopeful description that highlights their rarity while also saying "Maybe there's more still out there."

 

 

 

It was in 1870 that a chap called Adam Mason leased the land for the purpose of mining copper, silver, lead and zinc. And he must have been pretty damn confident he'd get results too, because he put about £3000 into equipping the mine with modern machinery. According to a calculator on the bank of Englands website, that's about £250,000 by todays standards.

Initially only able to get the mine about twelve fathoms deep in 1871, it was the installation of this water wheel operating a drainage pump that allowed additional depth, eventually peaking at four levels over some fifty fathoms. That's about 300 feet.

 

This is the winding and pumping shaft from which the water wheel pumped out any flood water from the tunnels below. As you can see, it's been a while since it was put to use. The shaft is now flooded, and the water itself is no doubt contiminated by rust and minerals from its surroundings. I did see a video online of someone placing an underwater drone in here. It went down for quite some time before eventually coming to some old trackbed, still preserved with the rails on it, unlike the trackbed in the dry areas. That's the part about abandoned mines that intrigues me the most. There's so much more that we don't see.

Still, it is possible to see where the tracks used to be. These horizontal lines are where the wooden sleepers used to sit.

 

While Adam Mason was ambitious and certainly thought this area could fetch him some dosh, he had not been the first to take a interest here. The mining of precious metals was taking place here as far back as 1700, although initial work dried up and the mines were abandoned in 1760. In 1853, two guys, Charles Kirkpatrick and T A Readwin, took an interest in the place. A little research shows that these two had their fingers in a lot of pies when it came to mines. Numerous documents alude to legal squabbles between them and other mine owners over who owns what. However they abandoned this one within a year.

Two brothers started working here but even they gave up on it in 1869.

 

So one has to wonder what Adam Mason was thinking. After a string of failed attempts to mine this place for metal, why did he think he was going to fare any better? Sure, he probably thought that throwing his money around like STDs at a house party in Telford might give him better chances of reaching the stuff that everyone else had missed, but even he must have realised that the expenditure was a massive gamble.

 

 

Another notable feature of the mine is this wooden walkway over a massive flooded drop. It's only a matter of time before the wood rots and the pathway plunges into the water below. But I was determined to cross it, and Niall was also determined to cross it. Carly needed some persuading, but she wasn't about to stay on the boring side of the bridge by herself, so she was in. 

 

Excellent. It's nice when we're all on the same page. 

Just a shame it's the last page of a book called "We're going to die."

 

 

As you can see, we made it. In all seriousness, if I was to fall, I can swim so it wouldn't be a massive drop. Success would depend on whether I whacked my head on the way down, or if help could be reached before I froze to death. But the fall itself? That would be a doddle. 

 

 

Up on the surface there was quite a sexy factory. Water was the main source of power, so a nifty series of wooden troughs re-routed it to the factory from the river. 

Rocks were pulled out of the mine shaft and placed into storage bins. Water was poured through these to remove mud from the rocks, which were then sorted through to see if any contained the precious metals. Records from 1891 show that this job was carried out by a thirteen year old and an eighteen year old boy while the men worked down below.

 

From there, water wheels powered the stone breaker and crushing machine that broke the rocks down into manageable chunks, eventually to the consistency of gravel. From there a machine called a jigger, also powered by a water wheel, separated the waste rock from the metal.

Then there was another water-powered thingie called the Bundle which went over even the waste rock for trace amounts of anything valuable so that absolutely nothing would go to waste. Even waste water from the rock-washing process went through the bundles just to make sure nothing had been accidentally caught up in that. The waste water was then purified of any poisons it might have obtained, before being fed back into the river. 

Far different from the tranquil countryside of today, it would have been a hive of activity, with the constant sound of machinery. It must have been quite the sight to behold back in its glory days.  Unfortunately the glory days were short lived.

 

 

This part of the tunnel has had a bit of collapse, but it's still possible to slip through this hole and continue the journey.

 

 

There's another area where the flood water continues, and one has to scramble over a pile of rubble in order to continue.

 

 

The top of the rubble pile looking down into the water. 

 

 

And for the sake of scale, here's Niall and Carly sat on the rubble pile. None of us were wearing protective equipment, which I'm just going to say for the sake of a mini disclaimer, is a health & safety no-no. Mines are probably one of the most dangerous things anyone can explore. Bits of the ceiling can fall. Sometimes the floor is false. Often they build walkways over shafts like we saw back there. They aren't to be taken lightly. There's no signal here. If anything bad happens, you're pretty fucked. 

 

So we're setting a terrible example. 

I mean, I don't take my own mortality too seriously and neither should you. My existence is ridiculous. But anyone else should probably at least wear a helmet and gloves.

 

 

When I'm adventuring, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the people who a location mattered to, and the mine is no different. This isn't just a random cave. This is a workplace. And while modern camera technology lets us see the details, people would have been working down here in near total darkness. Just imagine the length of your shift at work, and imagine it spent down here. It's pretty incredible.

 

 

Records from 1891 show that only nine men worked down here, but by then morale must have been low. Much to Adam Masons disappointment, the mine was described as spectacularly unprofitable.

In 1883 a report from the mine read "No ore sold this quarter." Later on in 1885, they reported "We have not made any returns whatsover during the last year."

So it seemed the money pit had dried up. People were working all day, and carts of rock were whizzing along these tunnels for the goods to be hauled up to the surface, containing absolutely nothing profitable. It must have been soul draining for those who spent their working day down here and not seeing any results.

In 1891, records show that they produced some five tons of silver and lead, worth about £37, ten tons of zinc worth about £15, and five tons of copper worth about £7. By todays standards that totals at about £5000, which doesn't sound so bad. I'm sure quite a few of us would be happy to sell £5000 worth of silver. But consider that as a years work from a business perspective. It's not brilliant. It's certainly not sustainable.

A report from 1897 reported nine tons of lead, ten tons of zinc and 45 tons of copper, but it was still pretty low, and the mine closed around 1900. Eager to make some money out of the place, most of the machinery was sold. The mine was abandoned. 

 

Once the area had renewed interest, plans were made in the 1980s to remove the water wheel for a museum, but it was decided instead to preserve it and make the area safe. The whole area was landscaped, and the main shaft was capped in 1993 to stop people falling in, but also to allow people to stand over it and gaze down into the depths. As for the tunnel, that was gated off, but curiously not locked. 

 

Either it was but someone broke the lock, or a level of trust has been placed in the general public to use common sense. That's a bold move.

 

There's a bit of machinery on the floor here.

 

Finally we emerged at the bottom of the engine shaft. Over a hundred years ago, workers would have hauled the rocks up here to be retrieved by those working on the surface.

Now water is pouring down constantly, meaning I was getting pretty wet taking these pictures, and as you can see, there's a grate on the top so it is possible to smile and wave at tourists. Apparently this is about eighty feet to the surface.

 

The water gathers at the bottom. Records show that this shaft is actually 300 feet deep, and here we are just eighty feet from the surface. So clearly the shaft is blocked. I did some checking online and apparently it's not known if the blockage fills right down to the bottom of the shaft or not.

 

It would have been nice to have known that before I went wading out into it. Yikes!

So that's it for me, but disapointingly, I later learned that about ten feet up the shaft from here, accessible via the rope just visible in the background, there is another tunnel that goes on for a bit. It still has the rails attached to the ground, so I'm a little miffed that I missed it. It also apparently has another wooden board over a shaft, this one invisible due to the flood water exceeding the hole amd covering the floor. That sounds exciting!

But alas, we missed it.

To summarise, as far as mines go this one is perfect for beginners. Anyone can just stroll on in, providing they have suitable footwear or dont mind getting their feet wet. The main attraction, the water wheel, is fairly close to the entrance, so some of the more daring aspects of the mine aren't necessary if you just want to see that chunk of history. I do advise wearing some sort of head protection if you are going to come into a mine though.

As for the surrounding area, it's beautiful and great for wild swimming, dog walking and hiking. Even if you're the cowardly one in your friend group, you can wait outside the mine and still have a great day with your friends once they've checked it out.

That's it for me! My next two blogs will also be mines, but they're each unique in their own little way, and there's a gradual incline in risk, and a decline in my common sense, just when you thought I couldn't get any stupider. In the meantime, social media is an algorithmic hellscape and if you like the blog and want to see more, then can get updates on my Instagram, my Vero, my Reddit, and the ones I don't like, Facebook and Twatter. 

Thanks for reading!