Wales

 We travelled to Aberaeron in Wales and stayed at a hotel called Y Seller.

Pretty little fishing village hey?  The weather kept being perfect for our visit too.

Tide was out when we arrived though:

But after a day of driving getting to Aberaeron, well, next day we had to stretch our legs. We were told about this great spot where you can take a 2 hour walk and then watch wild Red Kites getting fed.  I'll let you work out the pronunciation of the destination: Bwlch Nant yr Arian Forest.

So... we bypassed all the cathedrals and castles and went on a walk.  Woohoo!


Another stunning view to enjoy.  Ruth found an appropriate chair to take in the Royal view:

Looking at:

Thick forest for part of the walk too:

Well afterall, the part of the name I could pronounce did have "forest" in it.

While walking, one Red Kite came very early for feeding.  I managed to shoot it with my camera as it was checking out what was in my backpack:  

We are such accomplished walkers now, instead of taking 2 hours to complete the walk, it only took us 1 hour.  So, being the expert tourists we are now, we found that an old silver mine was nearby and decided to go check out that history.

Here's the topology of the mine.  I bet the Welsh pronounciation will get you here too:



This mine started around the 1750's and operated into mid 1800's.

The diagrams show there are 7 levels of this mine, but we will only go down to the first level.  Even so, we had to wear crash helmets to abide by the mine's safety standards. 

The main issue was to protect ourselves from banging our heads against the crossbeams above us in the tunnels.  The miners were a lot shorter than us Aussies.

The mineral that was being mined actually was Galena.  This contains silver and lead and then a major business of the mine operation is to crush the galena, and extract the precious metal.  Would you believe that the galena there had 0.08% silver.  So a lot of waste!

They had big water wheels to power the crushing process.  They recreated a small one here to give us a feel of how it all operated: 


We only got down to level one, but that was surprisingly deep indeed.  The mine got down 74 fathoms deep which is about 135 metres.  Here's the steps down to level 1:

Apparently this guy was a bit slow in finding the exit:

I was assured he wsn't a tourist from Australia!

Thankfully we found our way out and then rushed back to see the feeding frenzy of the Red Kites:

I liked this photo of one of them:
I can't say I got all that excited seeing a flock of birds eating food laid out by the rangers.  They do it 3pm every day, and yes, the birds know what to do to get a free feed!

So only a short stay in Wales.  Next day was a driving day - off to Dartmoor in Devon - home of Devonshire tea!

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