[Reddood]

Visited with Budah and Blino


Minera lead mines date back to at least the 1200's and were worked up untill around 1910. The area is littered with both open and capped shafts, ranging from around 10m deep to medow shaft which is 370m.

there is lots of history around about the area, if you're interested you could have a look here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minera_Lead_Mines

or here - http://www.wrexham.gov.uk/english/he...ines/index.htm

today was a visit down cabin shaft which i beleive were some of the earlyer workings (but i'm sure someone will correct me on this), access is fairly simple with an abseil through a nice hole, lots to anchor too with in-situe rope protectors. We quickly rigged the rope and dropped down, having been here before i was aware that there would be a lot of crawelling about, so once in we got out of the harnesses and put on some knee pads.

The first thing you notice when you get in there is how cave like the mine is, with no obvious route and passages that are very low and very un-even. everything that was removed from this area of the mine must of been removed by hand, there is no path / tunnel what would of taken any kind of truck / cart.

we headed into the direction of Boundery shaft, which takes you deeper into the workings and as you go, there is a noticable change in the way the mine was worked, the twisty belly sliding passages open into much bigger passages with a more uniform layout.

once we got as low as we could without rigging more ropes, we turned around and took a different route, finding a rigged mini traverse, we went around it which led us to a ladder, obviously a recent addition as it was in a fair condition. off down the ladder went..

after much more craweling about, we found a second ladder, wich looked rarther sketchy, having not lugged a second rope in with us, we decided it was best we didn't try going down it, so we turned around and headed back. While we didn't cover a huge amount of the mine, it did take a long time to do the parts we did, getting about takes so much time and effort, with all the squeezing through gaps and not been able to stand up for 95% of the time.

all that said, i really like it in here, budah also seamed to like it, we herd lots of ohhhh, look at that, wow have you seen this.. he did get quite excited over some of the chunks of rocks he kept finding

anyway, some pics..