Cwm Rydal Mines when we walked into bad air and were lucky to get out

ah i thought i had to clik the img thingy above the post,the tilberthwaite pic is the quarry up the hill if i remember right,the copper addit at the bottom collapsed a few years ago part way in,has anyone met the guy that lives in that little hut outside the copper adit yet.....hell of a holiday home.

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ah i thought i had to clik the img thingy above the post,the tilberthwaite pic is the quarry up the hill if i remember right,the copper addit at the bottom collapsed a few years ago part way in,has anyone met the guy that lives in that little hut outside the copper adit yet.....hell of a holiday home.

Not yet, I've seen his car parked there last time I visited, and there was a fire going inside.

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ok heres a view of the entrance from afar ive ringed it...
🔗Personal-Album-252-Image-004[linkphoto]Personal-Album-252-Image-004[/linkphoto][/link]

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Hi there, this is most definatly Penny Rigg Quarry - Alastair Cameron describes the level in your pic as being in extremely bad state, and that it shouldn't be entered on any account... I think it's now collapsed anyway...
do you have any more pics of slate workings in this general area?

regards

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not really we were heading over the top to wetherlam and the open stopes over the hill..of course i sat on my camera and the cover popped open so i lost most of the pics that day,so do you know what that level was for,was it a higher level of the copper mine below as it seemed to turn towards solid rock where it had collapsed about 30 ft it.

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not really we were heading over the top to wetherlam and the open stopes over the hill..of course i sat on my camera and the cover popped open so i lost most of the pics that day,so do you know what that level was for,was it a higher level of the copper mine below as it seemed to turn towards solid rock where it had collapsed about 30 ft it.

The copper workings aren't in this area, they're on both sides of Tilberthwaite Gill. However, an extremely long adit called Horse Crag Level was constructed quite some distance from the copper workings. This is the level that beside which is the building, and the Penny Rigg copper mill. The copper workings are nolonger accessible from Horse Crag level, though after it had closed as a drainage adit for the copper mine, slate was extracted here in a small close-head (chamber). This was re-opened in the 1980s and closed a few years ago I think, it was one of England's last working slate mines. This is why there's slate tippings mixed in with the copper. Also at Penny Rigg copper mill - there is a small copper level, and a long tunnel leading to the very bottom of Penny Rigg Quarry. This is now blocked on the Penny Rigg side.
The level in your photo has nothing to do with the copper mines, and lead to a chamber I think. I thought at 1st it might have been the adit to drain the quarry, but it seems to be too high up and in the wrong position and area of quarry.
As for the copper drainage level with a slate working inside...type in "Tilberthwaite" in the mine search box, I can't seem to paste the link into here...

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How many of you have been lying in bed in the dark thinking of the day's underground exploration.
And you say to yourself 'NEVER AGAIN'!!
Then you do it again in a couple of weeks.

Then how many times has my wife said to me 'you are not going to anywhere dangerous are you'?
And I say 'no not dangerous at all'

I think the secret to not abandoning the interest of mine exploration is to never look up and study the condition of the roof. And pretend that a large piece of rock that is waiting to come down is not there at all.

Know exactly what you mean,"hymac", I help out on a dig in an old underground quarry most weekends, and often wake up at night thinking about the state of the roof in there 😢

Then next weekend I'm back as usual, don't really know why? :confused:


Underground places, despite the dangers, are certainly addictive 🙂

And remember, try not to look up! On second throughts it's only sensible to take notice of all the potential dangers: - Just waiting for the day when it will actually put me right off 😉

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The B.o.D. on the CRTT is always a bit of "sphincter twicher" for me, Last time I went, I was first over, rigging that fecking pulley on the other side of the main beam!

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Digging a trapped associate out of the bottom of a collapsed stope in Greenlaws Middle Level whilst the roof above you disintagrates around your ears is good for the heart muscles, but not the underwear !!! :lol:

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I was reminded by reading of someone else's trip report recently up Cromford Sough of when I was a novice caver... We ran out of air big time up there and had to make a panicked hasty and very breathless retreat! The other was due to a guy who decided to run down an underground scree bank which followed him..... 😮

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Thw worst place invariably is stuck behind those cretins who don't wear belts with their trousers. Bad air & shi++y holes! 😠

I dont dig all this talk about nearly pooing oneself.

I have been 'there' as in "think I am going to die" quite a few times and that is certainly not my reaction.

I once read in a book about "the copper taste of fear", well yes, a taste as though I had a penny in my mouth.

I am sure that there must be a medical explanation for this.

But, I'm not like normal people anyway.

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Nothing spectacular really.

On a college trip to the coal face in Florence Colliery in Staffordshire - a VERY long way underground.

The scary bit was riding back on the conveyor belt to get to the cage to take us back to the real world - about an inch of clearance above my head and 2-inch steel frames whizzing past, a hell of a speed and a hell of a racket - I was really glad to be off it and topside again and enjoying a pint mug of sweet tea. Really not the life for me 🙂

Not so much places, rather stupid situations I've managed to get myself in.

Hanging upside down over an intimidating void in Devon Great Consols wishing that I had remembered to hang the rather heavy drill I was carrying below me rather than leaving it on my back.

Crossing a winze in Great Rock on a rather manky rail which started to buckle when I was half way across with no protection.

The bottom of Pearces Shaft in Gawton with nowhere to hide, listening to a dislodged rock rattling down the shaft towards me.

Dogdy places include:

Wheal Crowndale Deep Adit - very sketchy place. A few years ago Tin Miner and I braved it, neither of us wanting to do it but neither wanting to be the first to bottle out.

Possibly the most worrying place I spent a huge amount of time in was a Tamar Valley dig through a backfilled stope. Huge lumps of hanging wall would peel away with no notice. The final straw came when I was putting in a timber set and the whole stope ran; If I hadn't had a good man behind me at the time I would have been buried.

Worst for me had to be a certain Iron Stone Mine up north



First real experience of prolonged low oxygen and was rather unpleasant but a very interesting trip 🙂

Have had a few "close" moments digging a certain shaft at Alderley. Prodding a back filled shaft from underneath lead to some rather interesting indiana jones moments being chased by rather large boulders out of a hole :lol:

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When I was hanging off my mate's hand in a winze at South Caradon I didn't have time to worry so it has to be when I got temporarily stuck in a vugh at Smallcleugh. Not counting working mines of course, they're an even bigger nightmare. I'm surprised I'm still alive to be honest. Much more careful these days.

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Edit:- Probably wisest to delete this.

The most worrying place that I have been in was Plodder 6s face at Cronton Colliery Lancashire in 1968. I was doing my face training at the time. There was a bad roof fall on the face blocking the way up the face. I was at the face control pannels with a fitting apprentice, we where the only ones on the intake air side of the fall. About 2am the telephone rang and we where told that there was a conveyor belt fire furthere out in the intake airway. We raised the alarm up the face via the tanoy system, the men up the face went up the return airway out. The two of us in the intake put on our self-rescuers (gas masks for carbon monoxide) and started out, we where soon met by thick smoke. We where lucky that we had only started carrying self-rescuers a couple of months previously.
As we walked out water started running down the tunnel, this was coming from fire hoses being used to fight the fire. As we got to near the top of the roadway the smoke cleared, The fast action of the men working near the top of the tunnel quickly put out the fire. The fire was caused by fine coaldust that had built up around the conveyors break drum ignighting.

Hanging upside down over an intimidating void in Devon Great Consols wishing that I had remembered to hang the rather heavy drill I was carrying below me rather than leaving it on my back.

I cant believe this Rick!

Instead of Devon Great substitute Brewery Shaft on a 10mm rope. The view was 'interesting'

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