I must apologise for my absence from Steemit this last week and a bit. Being in my final year at university means I have assignments coming out of my eyeballs as the year goes on. Just a month to go then I will be back to writing up my adventures daily!!!
For this adventure, we return to the glorious and fascinating mountain region of Snowdonia, Wales for this explore. Home to the largest slate mine in the world, we find ourselves trying our luck at obtaining a key to visit inside without a tour guide!
Did we succeed? You'll have to carry on reading to find out!
I picked @stefglazby up at 7am on a cold, wet Saturday morning and we hopped on to the 'M1 southbound' motorway to meet the “Corona Boy’s” from Leicester. 45 minutes later we arrived at Mick's house, he was our designated Corona van driver, as always.
We loaded up the van and waited for the rest of the group to arrive. Attending the monthly adventure was Luke, Mick, Stew, Matt, myself and Stef. Crates of Corona loaded with the wellies, boots, waterproofs and torches; we began our journey into North Wales.
"Where are we heading today then, Luke?" I asked as Mick filled the van with fuel. "Hendre Spar Mine and then, if we get time, you are going to go and get the key for Cwmorthin!"
"Me? Why me?" I replied.
"Because we've been before and aren't allowed to go again!" Luke laughed.
It turns out that they had obtained the key on their last visit before my time venturing underground. They had entered without any safety equipment and some tour guide's inside had clocked them and gave them a good bollocking, essentially banning them from visiting again!
"Ok mate, I'll give it a try, sure we need insurance though!" I replied reluctantly.
We turned our attention to the first destination, Hendre Spar Mine, situated just inside North Wales, near Mold. We had wanted to visit this mine for almost a year, due to photographs and reports we had read on various social media and urban exploration forums. The place was a proper hidden gem, with many ladders and levels to explore. We had rough coordinates and knew that the access point was via a set of ladders sticking out of a hole, in the in ground, in the middle of a wooded hillside!
We arrived at the coordinates and Mick spent 10 minutes driving up and down the A541 trying to find a suitable 'low key' place to park the van. Eventually we were parked and ready to start scouring the wooded hillside for our entrance point!
We spent the next 20 minutes or so scouring the hillside, checking every rut and depression in the ground for a hole with ladders poking out. We split up into 2 groups, Luke and Mick taking the high path and the rest of us on the lower path. It was my group that found the hole, "OVER HERE!" I shouted to Luke and Mick, they were some distance ahead and above us, so far in fact I had to repeatedly shout to grab their attention and get them to regroup with us...
Excitement was buzzing around the group, we only had pictures of what to look for, no maps, and no idea of what waited for us in the area's not photographed. We headed down the ladders one at a time, disappearing below the surface into the darkness.
We followed the obvious tunnel route, delving deeper into the underworld. Passing through ankle deep water and ducking under the old rotting wooden ‘stemples’. We soon came to a fork and decided to scout out the right hand passage then return after to do the left. Soon enough, we came to a dead end; well I say dead end but there was a small tubular tunnel which you could crawl, following an old fire hose somebody had managed to haul down with them. After a quick look into the tight passage, we saw that it quickly came to a shear drop with no sign of where the bottom was…
“Let’s go back and do the left route” Luke suggested, the rest of us not taking much persuasion.
We arrived back at the fork and followed the left passage until entering a large spacious cavern. Just like we had seen from the surface, a hole with ladders poking out the top awaited us.
“Holy shit boys, check out this hole!” I shouted with pure excitement and joy.
The group ran over to join me and with our six head torches and a couple of hand torches, we revealed an array of ladders and chains to reach the bottom of a good 100ft high cavern. I frantically began snapping every angle with my camera, getting different lighting to try and do the huge drop some justice.
We began to descend the ladders, not knowing exactly how many awaited us or if the bottom we had seen from the top, actually was the bottom! In minutes the first ladder was done and I was onto the next, “Ladder clear” I shouted up to the next man. Sure enough the second ladder lead onto a third, which had a slope and old rusty heavy chain fixed to the bottom rung ready to descend a slope to next ladder.
The fourth ladder played absolute hell with the nerves; this ladder wasn’t as vertical and was leant against the rock face almost acting like a bridge with a gradient. As I approached the middle of the ladder it began to sag and creak, my legs began shaking as the nerves kicked in, but like every nervous moment it was soon done and I was relieved to finally reach the bottom level.
At the bottom we were rewarded well, a large chamber with a flood shaft gave us a chance for a breather and to play around tying glow sticks to rocks and throwing them into the blue depths of the shaft. This proved to be for fun only as the glow quickly disappeared into the darkness.
Once regaining our breath and nerves, we continued through into the next and final chamber; the chamber of infamous photo’s. A two tier chamber awaited, hibernating bats hung from the underside of the second level, and we dropped the bags and scurried up the spoil pile to back of the room, gaining us access to the ‘balcony’ which overlooked back to where we had come from.
After a celebratory bottle of Corona, we left our marks and future mine relics in the most visited chamber and returned to tackle to ladders we had descended earlier. I took this opportunity to go last so that I could take photographs of the lads on each ladder to show the array of climbs and heights involved. I still didn’t do this place justice with my trusty Samsung S8+, but I will let you guys judge that for yourselves…
After about 20 minutes of constant upward ladder climbing we finally arrived at the final tunnel, daylight intruding down the shaft from above. We welcomed the fresh breeze as we neared the final ladder to surface.
“So many feet you reckon we’ve done in ladders today?” Luke asked.
“I’d say a good 200 feet at least, probably more” I replied as we headed back down the wooded hillside to van.
“Let’s go get this key sorted then and we’ll do Cwmorthin Slate mine” Luke suggested, looking at me all the time, knowing he meant it for me going to get the key and nobody else!
We travelled for about an hour covering over 30 miles to the Conwy Falls Café where the key’s to enter Cwmorthin were held. I jumped out the van and headed to the reception and stated that I wished to rent the key for £20. Everything was going smoothly, money was exchanged, details filled out and key was on the desk looking at me. I stood in the reception trying to act sincere and keep my childish grin at bay.
“What is the registration number of the vehicle you will be parking at the site?” the receptionist asked.
“Erm… Now you’ve got me, it’s not my van!”
I rang @stefglazby from reception and asked him for the registration plate, he said he would let me know in a few minutes. I waited in reception, stood in awkward silence, when all of a sudden Stef entered the reception with the whole bloody number plate in his hand!
“Here mate, thought it would be easier.” He laughed.
We exchanged a few puzzled looks in reception but undeterred by this behaviour, the key was handed over and we could finally head out to the world’s largest slate mine!
We punched in the coordinates of the parking spot for the mine, another 13 miles and half hour on the road! We drove through a rain storm and suddenly the sun began to shine over the mountains of North Wales. We finally arrived at our parking point, the base of a huge mountain of slate spoil. The scales of these piles similar to the hill formations we are used to in the Peak District.
FUN FACT
Wales is covered in these huge slate spoil heaps, and according to the forums and information centres scattered around the country, every single piece of slate has been touched by a human!
google map extract, showing the lake and huge slate spoil mountains.
We began our ascent up the steep incline ramp leading to the lake at the top of the quarry. We passed many epic views and slate structures, made simply because of the shear amount of slate in the area. Everything around was slate, the houses, walls, and even garden sheds!
We passed a group of ‘official’ tour guides and they’re entourage, they gave us the usual funny look of where are you harnesses and PPE… We ignored them and continued past them around the large man-made lake, filled with drainage water from the inside of the slate workings.
“Where’s this gate mate? I’m knackered!” Mick moaned from the back of the group.
“On the other side of that building” Luke pointed to the old manager’s office, recently refurbished for the tour guides and regular mine visitors to take shelter in. The weather up here could change in an instant and can be quite dangerous!
Sure enough a river of water was seen coming from a large gated adit, we waded through the almost knee deep freezing water, unlocked the gate and entered into the unknown…
Nothing could prepare us for the adventure unfolding before us. We followed the adit to a shear drop off, various routes lay before us, to the left an actual in-situ zip line, running from the top of the drop off running out of sight of the torch beams to an unknown level (or two) below us.
We gave this a miss, not having the suitable experience or equipment with us. We instead headed for the incline ramp that would take us down to each level and allow us to explore across each level before returning to the incline ramp to head deep and complete the next level below.
We couldn’t believe that for £20 and no insurance we could visit this absolute gem of a mine. Known to be the largest underground slate mine in the world, Cwmorthin is an adult caver’s playground. We headed across the next level before coming to a bridge much like the one we first discovered in Moel Fferna (post can be read here).
Not fancying the traverse over this rotting wooden beam bridge, we turned around and headed back to the incline, we took a route just off the landing of the ramp, half of us headed down the smoke flue tunnel (an emergency escape route when the mine was open), whilst the rest of us scoped out the passage to the left. This lead us to a very nerve racking traverse, using steel pins driven into the slate face and heavy timber planks cantilevered, creating a very high ledge to walk around.
“Not a chance!” I muttered and we headed down the flue to regroup.
Once at the bottom, madness awaited. A huge slate face with slats of slate pinned into the face to act as a vertical staircase, lead us back up to where we had just come from. @stefglazby and Luke began to climb it whilst the rest of us waited at the bottom to find out if the top was a dead end. The only way back from the top would be back down the mental slate steps or by travelling about 100m around the timber traverse we had just investigated before coming down the flue.
Sure enough the route was a dead end, meant only for the traverse. Luke and Stef had no choice but the nerve rackingly crawl along the 2 planks of wood supported by unknown rusting metal pins! Safe at the bottom, we began to video record this moment, laughing with a Corona as sheer stupidity unfolded above us.
We returned back up the flue to meet Luke and Stef before heading back to the incline ramp to drop down another level. It became wet very quickly and in a moment we found ourselves knee deep again, using a convenient pipe and modern chain link (which was pinned into the wall face as support), we hugged the slate face to keep the water at an acceptable ankle level.
We emerged into a huge cavern, so big it had buildings and cranes assembled within it. Behind the buildings, another slate step climb up to the previous level but further along past an unpassable bridge.
“We’re going up there” Luke informed us.
“What if it’s another dead end?” I asked.
“Then we come back down the same way!” He smiled and lead the way forwards.
Some of the slate slats were loose and in between flights a traverse from one side to the other using a rusty chain to hold on to brought the man out the best of us! Nerves, bollocks and common sense all battling each other with contradictory preferences of how best to climb the shear slate face safely.
We finally reached the top, and guess what… You got it! DEAD END! Either side of us was shut off by a broken bridge and huge fall. We had climbed and risked it for nothing! Looking back down from where we had just climbed was nothing less than terrifying; we had free climbed on century old slate slat steps, fastened with century old steel pins for over 100 feet.
“One at a time then lads, nice and easy” Mick said trying to encourage the group that we weren’t about to meet our end…
All of a sudden @stefglazby sat on the edge and began to slide down the steep sloped slate face.
“Glasby!!! You absolute nutter! Don’t go damaging the surface for the rest us!” We all took it in turns to hurl abuse and concerns and the ex-army nutter. Within a few seconds he was at the bottom, laughing with a huge smile on his face.
“That was awesome!” he shouted up, and no more than a minute later the rest of us followed his lead and slid on our arses one by one to the bottom as if taking part in some crazy Indiana Jones film scene.
By now, time was getting on; we had the huge incline to climb back up as well as the long walk back down the quarry to the van. Then to top that all off, we had to drive back to Leicester to collect my car to drive back up to the shire. It was already past 5pm and we had missed the final calling to return the key and receive our deposit back.
“If we post it and leave an address, they said they would post the deposit back.” I informed the group.
“Well that’s sorted then, no need to rush back to the van then, we can take our time climbing back out and split the money later.” Luke replied.
We began our trek back to the surface, traversing back across the water and to the bottom the incline ramp. We hadn’t realised just how far down this ramp we had travelled; the upwards ramp just kept going and going and going… By the time we reached the top we needed 20 minutes rest to continue forwards to the gate and back out in the harsh Welsh mountainous climate.
We expected to see daylight as we neared the adit gate, but time had ran away from us and it was well past 6pm in the middle of winter. Darkness has consumed the mountain and visibility was very low. The rain was sideways and played havoc with our head torches; making it seem like you were entering light speed on the USS Enterprise… We finally arrived back at the van, drained mentally and physically after one of the longest days exploring since starting this absurd hobby! Within minutes I was asleep with most of the group in the back of the van, waking up on Micks drive In Melton.
“Jesus, Mick sorry for the brilliant company mate on way back!” I groaned as I packed my car ready for my share of driving back home.
“No problem mate, I’m used to everyone falling asleep on me!” he joked back, and we went our separate ways once again, ready for the next adventure!
As always, if you enjoyed this explore, then please head over to my other blogs.
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