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!

Visited An Abandoned Coal Mine Today .....

I've got some photo's. But, I can't show ye shit just yet. Because my fucking modem's at it's tricks again and I can barely get a page open on the entire net. 404 Fest. Never mind. I have a head full of imagery and anecdotes. Should yet be something in this for just about everyone.

Anyway, Dean O's got wind of this place, so off we went to explore it. Seems it's on top of the mountain I can see from here. The one the rains come down off of and flush my ditch. Only, unless ye actually used to Real mountains, ye won't have the vaguest clue of what I'm talking about here. People who've spent their lives in cities and have never experienced a Mountain could barely start to comprehend one.

I mean; This fucker's known as Coal Mountain, funnily enough. There. So now ye maybe thinking ye have me pinned down, eh? Get a map. Lookup Coal Mountain. Ditch lives somewhere beneath it, eh? Fucking try me! This bastard divides Counties. And, from where we got to today, we could look over into Ulster and out across various other places for miles and miles around. Seems my place was somewhere on a far horizon.

Anyway, we drove up there and the first stop was what I'd already explained, from Dean O's earlier description, must have been the Dynamite Store. Todays closer examination bore me out on that. Completely isolated. Small, steel door. Odd, angled vents in the sides and a reinforced concrete roof.

Inside, through the long ago seized up steel door, was a wooden door. That led into a wood lined chamber. Here they'd have stored the dynamite. Nice and dry, see? And, someone having smashed a small hole in a top corner, I gleefully encouraged Dean to get in there. Which he did. Unfortunately, without any nasty little accidents, which I was hoping to capture on film.

But, it was the 'Mad Shepherd' who really stole the early part of the show for us. We'd pulled up in a lay by, high on this mountain side. Got out, to stretch our legs and have a look round. Spotted this figure approaching up the hill road about 150 yards away and decided ~ 100 yards away ~ to give him a minute to ..... " Mornin'. Not a bad day ..... "

Fuck Me! How did he Do That?! Fucking guy was late sixties, if he was a day. Slim little bloke. Wearing an old pair of turned down gum boots. And ye'd think he was an Olympic 'Walking Race' merchant! Fucker came up that hill like he was motorised and virtually flashed past us to step out onto the mountainside and vanish, along with his little collie Dog.

In my youth, I was a notoriously fast walker. But, I couldn't have walked that fast, that far, on a flat pavement! This cunt was steaming up a fucking Mountain Side like he was breaking his neck and there was a loo at the top!

Wasn't just me either. Dean was completely fucked up by it. And when, moments later, we followed the human jet out towards the dynamite shed, I almost screamed when I made him out, down the bottom of the fucking mountain, rounding up sheep and moving across the ankle snapping, roughest of all terrain almost as fast as his damn Collie!

Freaked us out completely. But, there we are. Born and raised to it, no doubt. Probably been doing that since he could walk. Every fucking day of his life. Rain, wind, sun or snow.


Anyway, having given the store the once over, we wandered back to the van and were a bit slow about actually getting into it. This was because a motor had pulled in behind us and out had got a young couple. And, to say She was a bit fucking tasty would be a right understatement! So, Dean kicked his tyres a bit, whilst I fiddled with my jacket until they'd turned and wandered off in the other direction.

Then we took a drive further along the mountainside. Heart breaking, as it happens. I mean, here we were, up on what should be one of the most desolate places in Eire. Barely a dwelling visible in the panoramic views beneath us. Yet there was fucking Litter all over the road sides!

Honestly; I've long harboured this fantasy about secreting myself along some country roadway, shouldering a Rocket Propelled Grenade. Watching for passing motors. Let me see a bottle, crisp packet or coffee cup fly out that fucking window and ..... Bastards.

Amazing thing is, we'd gone a mile or two along this god forsaken track when we ran smack into a Garda patrol motor, coming the other way! You have Never seen two seat belts go on so bloody fast! What the hell he was doing up there, we couldn't fathom.

So, we turned round and followed his route, back to where we'd come from. Devanned and started hiking up to the peak, where the coal minings were. Here we go; That couple were just coming off the high track, as we approached its intersection with the lower track we were on. Sadly, we'd got the timing just wrong, so we'd passed beneath them. Thus we couldn't get another decent look at her. Bastard.

That's when I pointed out to Dean O' that he'd obviously been fucking her, up there. Thus we should try to find the condom as soon as possible. Dean looked at me rather old fashioned then. But, I then pointed out that, never mind its contents. If we could find it, still glistening and wet on the Outside? Surely worth a lick?

It was quite interesting then, to notice how avidly Dean started casting his eyes about the ground before us! He actually started pushing ahead, obviously anxious to find likely spots before me! LOL! Dean O' learns things from me ;-)

Never did find the glistening prize. Plenty of curious sheep and yet more fucking rubbish though. Most of all, Dean discovered a hole in the rock face. I, at first, thought it must be a foxes hole, by the position of it. Just a barely man sized, irregular hole, half covered by juncus and such. Till Dean shone his torch in ..... Fuck!!!

I'll leave it there though. For now. Just tried PhotoBucket again and it still won't let me in. Next time, I want to show ye some photo's.