Adit #2 and Reign of Fire

Lost mines of Co. Wicklow ?

The provocative The lost mines, Co. Wicklow started me searching maps of the area again, only to find that the site is a spoof: in fact the pictures are from Co.Tipperary see here and here and here.

But that reminded me of the film set constructed on the Hero site (aka "the rocks") for Reign of Fire which was very impressive - at the time I must have taken some photos but cannot readily find them (it was before the advent of the ubiquitous digital camera) so instead I offer these from a Google search...

"Reign of Fire" film set at Hero site

View, descending from Wicklow Gap

Adit #2 again

Courtesy epa

Have just found this map here which identifies my "adit #2" as "8 Luganure Adit" and indicates that there is much more to explore in this area.  And, what our family calls "the rocks" was, apparently, the Old Hero Processing Plant. I think we will continue calling it "the rocks" though.

The EPA site has a useful interactive map which superimposes mining data on OSI maps.

Adit #2

Having, in my last post, discovered an adit into the Glendalough / Glendasan lead mining complex I feel an urge to find more of the same, though I am too chicken and am not well equipped to explore very far inside.

Glendasan / Glendalough courtesy osi

The adit of my last post is approximately at the magenta square: the one I found today is at the red square. My route was up the inclined track visible in my map from "the rocks" layby.  There is a lode line running north/south between these two points see here and the tunnel I referred to cannot be far away.

The stream that exits from the adit

The entrance is less than a metre high

Taken from just inside: the water is maybe 0.3m deep

A couple of ruined buildings nearby

View from the buildings

Spinc walk and Lead mine

Mining village

This was my second time doing the Glendalough White Route barefoot, and this time we climbed up the scree from the mining village at the top of the upper lake.  Some history can be found here which says "The workings in the Glendasan valley (Wicklow Gap) were connected by a tunnel through Camaderry mountain into Glendalough" so maybe this was the tunnel I entered?

Another cave entrance is visible in the picture below, highlighted in magenta - but we had no time to climb up to it.  See here for  more details of the mineral lode lines.

The mines viewed from the Spinc - note the yellow rectangle
(click to enlarge the photo)

This is the yellow rectangle zoomed in,
this is the mine entrance we climbed up to

Looking into the mine entrance

I went about 20 feet into the tunnel to take this photo - standing in about 9" of chilly water to do so. The tunnel continued straight and level for as far as I could see.

View from the mine entrance

We descended down the path that the ore would have taken

Loose chippings

Whoever said that they could run on any surface barefoot probably hasn't tried the roads around here. The local council have, bless their best intentions, have been very active this year in "improving" our roads. It seems like they have a job-lot of Vulgan coarse sharp loose chippings and want to use them wherever.  First the road to the lake was chipped - this takes a reasonable flow of traffic and after a couple of months the surface is just about negotiable barefoot though the residual chips can still be painful.  This same road in the other direction has a few limited patches of chippings in much the same state.

The road beyond Tulfarris, however, has recently been done and even my son-in-law, who runs these roads with trainers on, complains of the chips!  And now to totally ring-fence me they are working on what we call Eagle's Lane (though the eagles have long gone). They have scraped away the lovely soft grass from the middle and clearly plan to do the chip thing. These last two roads carry very little traffic so I imagine it will be a long while before they are easily navigable again barefoot.

The process - hot tar is spread and then the chipping are poured on generously. Some of them stick, the rest remain loose. I find it almost impossible to even pick my way slowly across this surface (barefoot) and, if I do, I end up with tar on my feet which then transfers to the shower tray.

But I will not give up.