Off to Wales today to see a friend who lives at Pennal:
It was slow going between Wolverhampton and Telford early this morning what with freezing fog reducing visibility and making a crust on the windscreen. I had my finger on the windscreen washer almost all the way!
Anyway, I got there and after a nourishing fried breakfast in Machynlleth we went out to admire the countryside. We saw the furnace at the eponymously-named village of Furnace:
That water wheel is much restored and probably dates from when the premises were used as a sawmill. Rather than driving a blower for the metalworking.
I made some new little friends:
They were tiny - about the size of a Labrador. Then we went and looked at some old mine workings:
Here are some "buddles" which would have been used for separating ore:
And here's a waterwheel pit:
And here's a mineshaft:
These particular workings were never very productive, so the story goes. They were set up speculatively, without any convincing geological survey evidence, and were largely used to fleece money out of the investors. There's a lot of lead in the area, and these mines are probably in what's called the Glyndyfi Tract, so they probably should have yielded something . . .