Abandonned Coal Mine ~ Some Pic's .....

Here we go then. I've finally managed to man handle some shots up here, to better illustrate Dean O' and I's little sniff around the old coal mine.

Having told ye the story, a bit lower down, I'll just say a bit about these shots as I put them up here. This isn't all I took. But I intend to ~ one day ~ get round to showing the full lot on my dedicated " Explores " photo site. Bit of a back burner, that one. Behind enough other back burners round here to thrust a rocket to the fucking moon!

Anyway, here we are:

Dynamite Store

Probably looks a lot bigger than it really is, actually. Don't be fooled by the little door though. Whole structure's only tall enough for a man to walk in and the door's half sized. See the hole, right top corner? I could comfortably stand there, looking in through that. Not a big thing then. That's where Dean O' got in through.

Track To The Mine

Can ye just see it? Well over to the left of the picture. Central on the vertical plane. The track is that little, lighter scar which runs from the mid ground back towards the darkness of what's actually a belt of fir trees.

Dean actually got the rough location of this place from a bloke who used to work here, back in the 70 / 80's. That, of course, implies motorised transport for all. I never realised that at the time, of course. And so I was constantly carrying on, in complete awe, about the sort of people who must have worked here. I pointed out how it must have been, to have trudged up this ghastly, ankle breaking track, every day.

Get to the top and what happens? Ye have to go down into a fucking Coal Mine and hack coal all day. Then come back out and trudge all the way back down. And to where? There's barely a cottage for miles around, even at the foot of this mountain.

Here's what it was all about though. Coal. I must say, it seems strange to me now. I've been here long enough that I've burned coal, wood, turf (what you'd, perhaps know as 'Peat'. Only in raw cut, block form) and various combinations and derivatives. I can't honestly say as I find any great advantage to coal, over turf. Maybe there's simply no Bog around this mountain? Certainly enough fucking coal though! Here's some. Just sitting there. Exposed.

External Coal Seam

I suppose one could soon enough chase that in though. It's likely just the skin of it. Think about it and there's likely half a fucking mountains width of coal behind there? But, not very high, is it? (Oh. Sorry! This belt was probably about two foot high) So, now we see why they had to dig in after it. And dig they did!

But, here I'd like to digress for a moment, better to explain and finish this little story. See, there's a marble plague down in the lay by. I ~ regrettably! ~ never thought to grab a photo of it. Too distracted by that girl, I suppose.

It's marked as having been put there, back in the eighties? Maybe even this century? What ever. It commemorates what I can best remember as something very much like the " Ulsternachs ".

Again, for my sins, I never really gave it the due attention. But I seem to recall it said something about these were Roman Catholics who left Ulster ~ one may be forgiven for suspecting their Protestant neighbours may have had something to do with it. I'm not sure if the inscription mentions this?

But, these people appear to have left Ulster and come here, to this god awful fucking mountain, to settle. Hardly any sort of Promised Land. But, there we are.

My point is though, that I imagine it must have been those people who discovered and started mining the coal up here. Ancestors of our Jet Legged Shepherd of my earlier piece on this place. Tough as fucking wild goats, after a generation or so. I wonder if it were they that made holes, some far smaller than the one below, and simply dug into them. Following that glistening, black stuff. As far and wide beneath the mountain cap as it went?

'Mine' Entrance

Again, with precious little to guide the eyes scale ..... But, ye'd need to crouch, doubled up, and scuttle away inside there. As Dean did. I'm that much older and more fucking circumspect!

Most mind boggling, heart rending thing of it all is though, that apparent little patch of light. See it up the back there? Now, get this; We've driven for fucking Miles. Come from the sparsely populated to the barely populated.

We've driven up a fucking mountain side! Up a track that any 4X4 would find 'Interesting'. We've then left the 'track' and scrabbled about where only the sheep should go. Found a hole. Peered deep inside it, with flashes and flash lights. What have we found?

That apparent spot of light, way back there. Deep inside an old mine working, so fucking treacherous that No Way was I going in there. And Dean O' freely admitted to shitting himself every moment He was in there ..... It's a very modern, totally ubiquitous, now to be found in even the deepest of seeming Wilderness ..... Plastic sack of household fucking rubbish!!!!

Words absolutely fucking fail me! £3.50 and the licensed 'Bin Man' would have plucked that shit from their gate. But, no ..... FFS!

And, finally; Here's a shot of what I saw ~ with my camera ~ inside the 'foxes hole' I mentioned in the earlier piece. People used to work in there. Day in. Day out. Digging. Thus making it even less stable. The white, latex glove ~ middle right (Don't fucking ask Me!) gives some idea of scale. Ye'd need to creep around on ye haunches in there)

But, never mind; They had a few logs to hold the entire fucking mountain top off their backs!

How Lousey's Your Job ....?

The Old Irish? Tough fukkas!