Today we drove about 30 miles to the far west of Cornwall to the Levant Mine near St Just, not far from Lands End. I have always had something of a fascination for old mines and as this area has many of them we took the opportunity to get a few photos of some of them. Unfortunately it was dull with light drizzle in the morning but things brightened up a bit for a while in the afternoon. The weather didn't stop us, we watched a film about the mine, had a look around the beam engine and saw it in action then headed out into the elements to find some geocaches, one of which would be the furthest west we have done to date (others were not to be attempted on the cliff edges).
Levant Mine
The mine covers a very large area.
Along the coast a little, looking towards Pendeen Lighthouse.
We then returned to Levant Mine and walked along the south west coast path in the other direction until we came to some more mines, the first one was way below on the rocks. Just before this we got chatting to a Cornishman who was out with his camera and extremely long lens (made my Nikon Coolpix look a bit inadequate to say the very least) photographing birds. You know how it is once you get chatting it just goes on and on ......but he was very knowledgeable about the local birds and wildlife and gave us a few ideas of things to look for, choughs, seals and dolphins for instance. He also bore an uncanny resemblance to Bert from the tv programme Doc Martin! Anyway once we got away from 'Bert' we saw a kestrel, the first this week and according to our new friend 'Bert' there aren't as many around in this area because of the winter storms and kestrels struggled to find food and starved to death.
More mines.
Just after these mines we went to find a geocache in a small quarry place, covered in rocks, big, small and anything in between - the hint for the geocache being 'under a rock'!!!!!!!!!!!! We decided to not bother with this after all, we could well have been there until it got dark.
And one more mine on the lane out of Levant driving towards St Just, I had to nip out of the car a bit quick and take this over a wall.
We definitely did the whole mine experience today, walked 5 miles and had a great day.
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