First on the list this
morning was a short walk around Mynnydd Bodofon from the 'Best Walks
in North Wales' book. These hills were just a short drive from the
campsite and despite not finding the car park mentioned in the book,
we were soon walking over the hills. The weather had improved
considerably and we were blessed with bright sunshine although there
was still a cold wind, especially when we were standing on the peaks.
However the great news was that the views were very good and this was
what the walk was all about. The peaks of Yr Arwydd and Bodafon give
fantastic panoramic views over the whole of Anglesey, Great Orme,
Snowdonia and the Llynn Peninsula. The latter two had their own
cloud system making them look dark and rather forbidding but Anglesey
was bathed in sunshine. In exceptionally clear weather it is possible
to see Ireland and although it wasn't that clear today, we could make
out the outline of the Isle of Man. Parys Mountain lay before us with
a wind farm between and Holyhead Mountain stood out clearly at the
tip of the island. Magical!
We drove on into Almwch
where we filled up with LPG before visiting the Visitors' Centre at
the port of Almwch. This was fascinating and well worth the visit. It
told the story of mining on Parys Mountain from the Bronze Age
through the Romans to the boom in the 19th century. It
also told the history of the port and town which is tied up so
closely with with the mining. The centre also has a café
where were purchased two pieces of Bara Brith for our lunch – the
best we have ever had.
Parys Mountain is a
mess and yet beautiful. The intensive opencast and deep mining of the
19th century has left the mountain deeply scarred and
covered in spoil heaps. Having said that it is a fascinating site and
one that we thoroughly enjoyed exploring. The first thing that struck
us was the colours. Piles of rocks lay everywhere and the colours
ranged from black to deep purple, lilac, grey, brown, red, ochre,
sulphur yellow and even some broken yellow rocks with bright white
centres. Sometimes the colours were mixed in one pile but often
adjacent piles had contrasting colours such as purple against ochre.
The colours were not the result of any industrial process, they were
the natural colour of the rocks. The whole mountain was obviously
full of minerals and ore of many types – a geologists heaven. As we
walked around the mine we passed a windmill and engine house both
used to pump water from the deep mine. There were also many
settlement lagoons used to clean the water draining from the site.
Rainwater and subterranean water from the lower working leech an
array of chemicals from the rocks and, despite efforts to reduce the
problem, run-off from the mountain is still the major polluter of the
Irish Sea.
The most interesting
part of the walk came towards the end when we came to the viewpoint
over the huge opencast area. Spoil heaps tumbled over the edge into
this vast space with its multi-coloured rock faces and at the bottom
of the crater we could see the black, gaping mouths of the deep mine
shafts. We were told that early Doctor Who episodes were filmed here
and it truly does look like the surface of another planet. Hopefully,
these were colour TV episodes as it wouldn't have looked anywhere
near as good without all of those wonderful colours.
There is still one
working mine here and fairly recently they discovered new veins of
valuable ore that could sustain the mining for many years to come.
Whilst we were there we saw a drill rig drilling exploratory bores
into the area around the opencast area.
Photos: A view of
Mynydd Bodafon over a mountain tarn; A view over the Parys Mountain
opencast area; A piece of Parys rock full of minerals.
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