The drive goes quickly.
Usually when you head off on a journey you've been anticipating for a long time the actual travelling seems to take forever.
This didn't.
One second we're leaving the ferry, the next we're pulling through the frost bitten and mist sodden roads of the Peak District. Naked on the roadside, snow threatening above us, we change into caving gear and phone our 'call out'. This is the person who will raise the alarm should the shit hit the fan and we don't make it out on time. Half of the Isle of Wight is going out to listen to some bludclart jungle bizness in Ventnor, and we're a few hundred miles away about to descend into Masson Cavern's tight passage ways and crawl spaces.
Lead mining was a huge industry in the Peak District; the galena ore which came to earth in the rocky outcrops was soon extracted and the veins followed beneath the ground making landowners and prospectors rich in the process. Bullets for the army, flashing for roofs and glazing bars for windows, lead was a valuable commodity and t'owd man, as miners were called in this area, made the most of it.
Masson Cavern was, I believe, a 'pipe works'. The caverns were originally caves formed in the limestone which were later filled by volcanic lava leaving behind the mineral deposits. Originally extracted by pick axe the 'owd man' removed the deposits to be smelted leaving the spaces as they would have originally existed.
In later years the rock was bored and gunpowder was used to blow the rocks apart, and later still, dynamite. Masson Cavern showed the evolution of mining history, overlaid across a geological history which becomes incredibly complex and beautiful to explore.
We crawl through a gap in the face of a quarry and into the ancient mine workings, half sliding, half falling down the slippery rift. A tight squeeze through some calcined rocks brings us into a huge gallery and we begin to explore the mine. Whilst the galena was removed many other minerals remain: huge calcite crystals, some completely clear sit in a pile, mixed with purple flurospar crystals. The colorful mineral vein continues over our heads with just the smallest glimpses of the silver blue galena ore remaining. The first chambers are covered in pick marks and as we continue deeper we discover the boreholes from gunpowder and discarded mining equipment. A few tight crawls through the spiders web of passages bring us to clear lakes and pools of calcinated cave pearls.
Time is getting on so we leave Masson Cavern, with heavy pockets filled with minerals, and head back to the car and along a mist smoked road to our bunk barn near Castleton.
As we pull up to the barn we realise we're right next to a cement factory. A huge working cement factory. Puffing billows of smoke and steam and dust across the darkening sky. We settle down for dinner, the drinks begin to flow and ideas for the week ahead are discussed. Before we know it Nick and I have suddenly had this amazing idea to go and explore the cement factory. This huge industrial beast, at night. It's probably a bit of a stupid idea but we're drunk and it's the first day... What can go wrong right?
So off we go. Then rapidly return to change into wellies and pick up the forgotten head torch. With red lights we skirt the perimeter of the factory, keeping an eye out for cameras or movement in the night. But there is none - the site is working, the lights are on the machines are running - and there is no one around. We slide down a bank and skirt around a building, climb up some stairs to get a better view of our surroundings. A conveyor belt passes to our left, delivering aggregates from a quarry behind to the processing plant that towers above us. A series of pipes and smaller conveyors run across our right hand side and a mud strewn courtyard lays between us and the tower.
We squat run across the courtyard and slip between some small buildings beside the tower. We look through a door to a room filled with boilers and dials. No ladder up. We pace through the sludge around the bases of equipment and find a ladder up into the heart of the tower. Climbing the dust covered rungs, over and under pipework and equipment, down steps and up steps we sneak around the factory wondering what the equipment does and snapping photos in awe of the meshing gears and tumbling machines.
By this point I'm sobering up. I'm thinking about the parallels that run between what we are currently doing, exploring a dusty industrial machine and what we're about to do over the next few days, ascending a mountain in the Lake District.
About the nature of exploring new places, inquisitive about the history and uses of these natural and man made environments.
Both off limits to the casual visitor they may require specialised equipment, but mostly just an informed common sence. An ability to risk assess.
What we're doing is illegal, we're on some companies property, but we're here because we're interested. We won't damage or take anything, just photographs and footprints in the dust. It's illegal but there is no moral wrong here, it's the same motivation that makes me want to climb a mountain or descend a cave.
Because it's there.
Usually when you head off on a journey you've been anticipating for a long time the actual travelling seems to take forever.
This didn't.
One second we're leaving the ferry, the next we're pulling through the frost bitten and mist sodden roads of the Peak District. Naked on the roadside, snow threatening above us, we change into caving gear and phone our 'call out'. This is the person who will raise the alarm should the shit hit the fan and we don't make it out on time. Half of the Isle of Wight is going out to listen to some bludclart jungle bizness in Ventnor, and we're a few hundred miles away about to descend into Masson Cavern's tight passage ways and crawl spaces.
Lead mining was a huge industry in the Peak District; the galena ore which came to earth in the rocky outcrops was soon extracted and the veins followed beneath the ground making landowners and prospectors rich in the process. Bullets for the army, flashing for roofs and glazing bars for windows, lead was a valuable commodity and t'owd man, as miners were called in this area, made the most of it.
Masson Cavern was, I believe, a 'pipe works'. The caverns were originally caves formed in the limestone which were later filled by volcanic lava leaving behind the mineral deposits. Originally extracted by pick axe the 'owd man' removed the deposits to be smelted leaving the spaces as they would have originally existed.
In later years the rock was bored and gunpowder was used to blow the rocks apart, and later still, dynamite. Masson Cavern showed the evolution of mining history, overlaid across a geological history which becomes incredibly complex and beautiful to explore.
We crawl through a gap in the face of a quarry and into the ancient mine workings, half sliding, half falling down the slippery rift. A tight squeeze through some calcined rocks brings us into a huge gallery and we begin to explore the mine. Whilst the galena was removed many other minerals remain: huge calcite crystals, some completely clear sit in a pile, mixed with purple flurospar crystals. The colorful mineral vein continues over our heads with just the smallest glimpses of the silver blue galena ore remaining. The first chambers are covered in pick marks and as we continue deeper we discover the boreholes from gunpowder and discarded mining equipment. A few tight crawls through the spiders web of passages bring us to clear lakes and pools of calcinated cave pearls.
Time is getting on so we leave Masson Cavern, with heavy pockets filled with minerals, and head back to the car and along a mist smoked road to our bunk barn near Castleton.
As we pull up to the barn we realise we're right next to a cement factory. A huge working cement factory. Puffing billows of smoke and steam and dust across the darkening sky. We settle down for dinner, the drinks begin to flow and ideas for the week ahead are discussed. Before we know it Nick and I have suddenly had this amazing idea to go and explore the cement factory. This huge industrial beast, at night. It's probably a bit of a stupid idea but we're drunk and it's the first day... What can go wrong right?
So off we go. Then rapidly return to change into wellies and pick up the forgotten head torch. With red lights we skirt the perimeter of the factory, keeping an eye out for cameras or movement in the night. But there is none - the site is working, the lights are on the machines are running - and there is no one around. We slide down a bank and skirt around a building, climb up some stairs to get a better view of our surroundings. A conveyor belt passes to our left, delivering aggregates from a quarry behind to the processing plant that towers above us. A series of pipes and smaller conveyors run across our right hand side and a mud strewn courtyard lays between us and the tower.
We squat run across the courtyard and slip between some small buildings beside the tower. We look through a door to a room filled with boilers and dials. No ladder up. We pace through the sludge around the bases of equipment and find a ladder up into the heart of the tower. Climbing the dust covered rungs, over and under pipework and equipment, down steps and up steps we sneak around the factory wondering what the equipment does and snapping photos in awe of the meshing gears and tumbling machines.
By this point I'm sobering up. I'm thinking about the parallels that run between what we are currently doing, exploring a dusty industrial machine and what we're about to do over the next few days, ascending a mountain in the Lake District.
About the nature of exploring new places, inquisitive about the history and uses of these natural and man made environments.
Both off limits to the casual visitor they may require specialised equipment, but mostly just an informed common sence. An ability to risk assess.
What we're doing is illegal, we're on some companies property, but we're here because we're interested. We won't damage or take anything, just photographs and footprints in the dust. It's illegal but there is no moral wrong here, it's the same motivation that makes me want to climb a mountain or descend a cave.
Because it's there.
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