Spirit of Miners

DISCOVER Ceredigion Th e Spirit of th e PHOTO: MINERS PHOTO STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY/ALAMY WILD PLACES © CHRIS HOWES: Ceredigion’s Cambrian Mountains once echoed with mines and now is the perfect time to step back in time and explore, as the wild hills turn copper and the vital autumnal rain falls. WORDS: JULIE BROMINICKS FADE TO GREY Former silver and lead mines dot the hills of Ceredigion, giving walkers a riveting insight into the county’s NOVEMBER 2015 COUNTRY WALKING 57 industrial past. DISCOVER Ceredigion u WHEELS IN MOTION Water wheels – once a major source of power in the mines – PHOTO: now stand as a reminder of the PHOTO STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY/ALAMY WILD PLACES © CHRIS HOWES: region’s past. q THE HEIGHT OF GLORY PHOTO: The Frongoch lead and zinc GILES W BENNETT mine near Pontrhydygroes, pictured in its 1900s heyday. PHOTOGRAPH ARCHIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO STOCK ARCHIVE/ALAMY PHOTOGRAPH © THE KEASBURY-GORDON KEASBURY-GORDON THE © PHOTO: HE CAMBRIAN MOUNTAINS catch innkeepers, shepherds and miners – for this was a p WET WET WET clouds and store rain in their blanket time when the county’s mines were booming. Clouds are to be bogs. Water tumbles into black mires, The hills are now silent, but you can discover embraced in this hurrying streams and crashing cascades. Ceredigion’s mining history in a series of walking beautiful, rain- soaked landscape, T Stone walls and tree trunks are lush trails, developed by the Spirit of the Miners project. as seen in this view with liverwort and mossy citadels. On a damp day, Circular routes of about seven miles begin from across Cwmsymlog. drops cling like diamonds to twigs and the colours Cwmsymlog, Nant yr Arian, Talybont, Bontgoch are saturated; moss glows iridescent green, grass and Devil’s Bridge, and cross landscape s where the gleams yellow and slag heaps and crags are purple mining heritage is still visible in the ruined PHOTO: and wet. The rain is beautiful, and for centuries it villages, slag heaps, leats and shafts along the way. was essential to the industry that mined these hills, Each trail has its own character. The Cwmsymlog GILES W BENNETT providing water to power the machines that bored walk is defi ned by its restored chimney and the into the earth in search of silver and lead. colony of rare forked spleenwort creeping over the When walker and writer George Borrow ventured ruins. Red kites soar above Nant yr Arian. The over the Cambrian Mountains in 1854, the landscape Bontgoch trail climbs from the green Leri Valley he encountered was wild and wet: ‘In a little time onto the quaggy Cambrian highlands via an p LAKE VIEW I came to a slough which crossed the path. I did not exhilarating narrow path at Craig y Pistyll falls. Llyn Craig-y-Pistyll “The hills are now silent, but steve to do like the look of it at all; and to avoid it ventured upon Particularly fascinating is the Devil’s Bridge was dammed in the some green mossy-looking ground to the left, and circular, which you can reach via the Vale of 1800s to supply map to show water power to the you can discover the region’s had scarcely done so when I found myself immersed Rheidol Railway from Aberystwyth, on the same region’s lead mines. mines & routes to the knees in a bog.’ George was halfway through track that was built to carry ore from mines to the Explore it on one mining history in a series the journey he described in his book Wild Wales. In coast. The train climbs the gorge within touching of the Spirit of the what was then Cardiganshire and is now Ceredigion, distance of the dripping rocks, to which epiphytes Miners trails. of walking trails.” mires, mountains, rivers and the merry dialogue of cling and steam and cinders billow about views of the people he met colour his pages. They were the vale and slag heaps where pulleys once hauled u 58 COUNTRY WALKING NOVEMBER 2015 DISCOVER Ceredigion t DEVIL’S IN THE DETAIL The Devil’s Bridge trail takes you to the three bridges stacked across the gorge. Chalcopyrite and sphalerite containing copper and zinc lie beneath the boggy uplands, green valleys and rushing rivers, but it is lead and silver- bearing galena that was the most heavily mined ore. Continental collision created the Central Wales Ore Field between 200 and 400 million years ago, and it’s been mined since the Bronze Age by prehistoric people, the Romans, Cistercian monks, private landowners and Charles I, who required silver for his Aberystwyth-based mint. But it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that the mines were seriously developed. After blasting, the ore was pulled to the surface by kibble, crushed, carried by horse or donkey to the smelters and then to Aberystwyth for export by ship. The mining companies collaborated to build roads such as the A44, with an incline that was not too steep for © CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO STOCK © CHRONICLE/ALAMY horses pulling heavy carts. PHOTO: George Borrow walked here at the beginning of the era, which would see more than 150 lead and silver mines working the region. He described the “The splendidly gothic one at Pontrhydygroes: ‘On the right-hand side of the road were immense works of some kind in full Devil’s Bridge, where play and activity, for engines were clanging and three bridges cross the puff s of smoke were ascending from tall chimneys.’ His description still resonates, as in the centre gorge, is as compelling of the village the restored water wheel shushes and creaks, and as you climb into the quiet hills above, now as it was then.” it’s somehow still easy to imagine the din of powder blasts, and the home-bound thump of the boots ore up steep slopes, to the tracks. Like the River of hundreds of men. Rheidol, the trail darts in and out of the fecund George had a local miner guide him over the hills wooded gorge, and like George, you’ll be awed by to Ponterwyd, but modern-day explorers can get a PHOTO STOCK EVELEIGH/ALAMY © BRYAN the cascades: ‘The fall, which is split into two, is good insight into a miner’s life by taking a guided PHOTO: thundering beside you; foam foam foam is fl ying all tour into the adits, shafts and winzes at Silver about you; the basin or cauldron is boiling frightfully Mountain Museum – a disused mine at Llywernog. p LOOK FOR A below you; hirsute rocks are frowning terribly above Miners typically began work at the age of seven SILVER LINING you, and above them forest trees, dank and wet with and rarely lived beyond 30. Unless they slept in Stroll around the BACK TO NATURE spray and mist, are distilling drops in showers from barracks provided at the most remote mines, their old workings of their boughs.’ The gothic Devil’s Bridge, where three shift began with a long walk over the hills. At the 18th century bridges cross the gorge, one above the other, is as Talybont there was also a smelter in the middle of Llywernog silver lead mine compelling now as it was then. the village. Poisonous water fl owed through the Moss es & �erns in Ponterwyd, Years after the last miners downed tools, There is also a 37-mile linear route between streets and the air was acrid with smoke. Bakers, Aberystwyth. nature is regaining a foothold among Borth and Pontrhydfendigaid, along which the grocers, schools and chapels fl ourished in the u the mines and metal-rich spoil heaps entire history of Ceredigion mining can be traced. PHOTOS: scattered across the post-industrial Beginning where a 4,000 year old copper axe head landscapes of mid-Wales. While most was found near Borth Bog, the trail continues past GRZEGORZ LESNIEWSKI/NATUREPL.COM ; DR. DAVID HOLYOAK ; DR. DAVID GRZEGORZ LESNIEWSKI/NATUREPL.COM plants can’t survive in earth that’s laden the industrial age chimney at Cwmsymlog, the with toxic metals, there are a few hardy Bronze Age copper mine at Darren, the water wheel species that thrive. Specialised lichens can at Pontrhydygroes, and fi nishes near Strata Florida extract nutrients from the rocks, while Abbey at Pontrhydfendigaid, home of the medieval PHOTO: resilient grasses like sheep’s fescue mining Cistercian monks. This long-distance trail © ROBIN WEAVER/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO STOCK © ROBIN WEAVER/ALAMY (Festuca ovina), fi nd anchorage in the ventures through valleys rich in hedgerows, sheep, spoil. Even rare ferns, such as forked waterfalls and craggy gorges, emerging occasionally spleenwort (Asplenium septentrionale), onto the uplands. The land is wild, mossy and wet, © THE PHOTOLIBRARY WALES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO STOCK WALES/ALAMY © THE PHOTOLIBRARY pictured top right, fl ourish in the acidic and the chuckle of underground springs and lime mortar of the old mine buildings at rushing of white water provide a musical background. PHOTO: Cwmsymlog. Look out for tiny green Too remote a region for coal to be imported into, t LET THE TRAIN p STEP BACK IN TIME tufts of lead moss too (Ditrichum the Ceredigion mines were powered by water. Now TAKE THE STRAIN Get a feel for mining life plumbicola), pictured right, which only occasional wind turbines tilt on the horizon, but in Walkers can take the Vale 200 years ago at Llywernog, grows in the silty refuse from lead mines. the 19th century, hundreds of water wheels turned of Rheidol Railway to the which was saved from and shushed, powering machinery. Devil’s Bridge circular.

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