simple website creator

Thursday 8th - Down the mine then up in the sky.

We left Lynmouth this morning and headed west to Land’s End to catch the flight to the Isles of Scilly. It is a three hour drive and we had six hours to do it in so how should we fill the day. Gill has never been to St Ives so that was first choice but the queue for the out of town car park was horrendous so we abandoned that idea and instead headed further west to the Geevor Tin Mine.

We expected that to also be overrun by tourists but no – it was empty. The waitress in the cafe thought it was because the sun was out, all the tourists go to the beach or St Ives on the few days the sun shines.

Geevor Tin Mine Museum is great, it was still working in the 1980’s so the guides, who are ex tin miners, know about the subject and are pleased to share their experiences. The visit could easily fill four hours so we were a little rushed but may return after our flight back in a fortnights time.

The walk through the “mine” is aimed at children but the rest of the site is very informative. 90% of what came up from the mine was not metal ore so there is a huge factory full of crushers, washers and sifters sorted out the ore from the stone.

They have 90 huge tables which worked in exactly the same way as using a gold pan, the table is vibrated and the heavy stuff stays put and the light material is shaken away. 
There was also an amazing model of all the tin mines in the area which was made by geologists in the 80's to understand the three dimensional puzzle of where all the workings are, this might prove useful as a new company has recently been formed who hope to extract Lithium from the existing workings.

I had a traditional miners lunch, a Cornish pasty. It was disappointingly served on a plate with a knife and fork in a nice cafe, not in a bait box and eaten in a damp dark corner but it was very tasty all the same.

In the evening we caught the 17 seater "Otter" aircraft over to the Islands, I am a bit concerned about an aeroplane named after an aquatic mammal, surely it should be named after a bird. 

We are now settled into out holiday home for the next fortnight, it is a few doors down from where Harold Wilson used to live in the most unpretentious (hideous) 1960’s bungalow (for those of you who are not as old as us Harold Wilson was the Labour prime Minister from 1964 to 1970 and again from 1974 to 1976).

I am not sure we will do a blog entry every day as we don't intend to do much so it would be even more boring than usual unless of course we meet the islands latest celebrity, Wally the walrus.
Watch this space for the latest news.



Before we left Lynmouth I photographed the ruin we were seriously considering buying before we moved to Bishop's Castle. It was an old stable yard with some rather run down rental flats and a large barn. We would have lived in the barn and converted the flats as holiday lets. I have found the pictures we took at the time (in 2001) and you can see that whoever did take the project on made a good job of it.