Anyone who heard that the Dudley were planning a weekend trip to “Parys” might have envisaged us all drinking wine by the Seine. No such luck this time: this was an excursion to “Parys” not “Paris”. But what an amazing trip it was!
A handful of Dudley members plus one extra, met at the surface workings of Parys copper mine on Anglesey. Before setting off, we spent a moment admiring the surface landscape which is a beautiful surreal place; full of heaps of multi-coloured rocks and minerals.Very fascinating and well worth a look.
We were ably guided by Tim, a member of the
Parys Underground Group. The plan was to do the through trip from Mona mine back through to Parys.
Having changed, we went through the hidden entrance into Mona. Once underground we quickly came upon formations that gave us a taster of the unusual decorations to come.. Here, what looked like black calcite was actually formed from fragile rust. Tim explained that the mine is on a volcanic plug and contains just about every mineral going. This meant we were treated to the most amazingly coloured formations, from bright pink through to yellow and greens, and even bright blues (more of that later).
Naturally this resulted in much stopping for photos. The lighting crew and models were mostly very tolerant of this, although you can see evidence of the beginnings of a protest movement if you look carefully...
The route went up and down through different levels. Due caution was a necessity as much of the structure supporting the mine is in an advanced state of decay. Some of the water was also very acidic - as illustrated by these stainless steel bolts and a karabiner that have been left in a puddle. One particularly blood coloured pool also had arsenic and other nasties in it - not the best spot for a swim…
We learnt that much more of the mine used to be flooded, but because of the acidity of the water a concrete dam holding much of the water in, had gone worryingly mushy so the Environment Agency had to pump it out. This has opened up more levels of the mine for exploration and also resulted in a very beautiful geological phenomena:
As the minerals leached through into the newly drained chambers they started to form these bright blue crystals. They have formed over about 20 years and as the mineral all leaches out they start to disintegrate again. Or at least that’s how my non-geologically trained brain understood it. Tim said other areas in the mine have had these blue formations in the past but now they have vanished.
If that wasn’t enough scientific curiosity, we were also treated to a pipe growing iron-eating fungi...
...plenty of snottites...
...bits of non-corroded pink copper...
...iron formations that look like dragon eyes and a bronze age section of mine complete with the hammer stones that the miners had brought from some distance to help them extract the copper.
All in all an amazing mine exploration. I don’t think I’ve heard “Wow!” quite so often on a a Dudley exploit before.
Cavers: Bartek & Paulina, Dave & Anne, Firas and John
Trip Report: Anne
Photos: Bartek
