Quarries, rivers, ridgeways...
When man and nature play nicely.
SINCE STONE AGE man first realised the importance of a sharp flint, humankind has been hacking materials it deems useful out of the countryside. There are more than 2000 active quarries in the UK today – distinct from mines in that the workings are overground – but it’s the abandoned ones that make for a fascinating walk, where nature has returned with wild aplomb. Lichen and moss fur the cut cliff-faces, brambles twine into the tumbled shale beneath, grass climbs up the spoil heaps, and eventually trees get a grip in the crevices. Some quarry pits fill with water too, where suspended mineral particles reflect vivid colour – hence the plethora of Blue Pools and Blue Lagoons in abandoned workings.
Numerous materials have been sought over the centuries, from clay to gravel to marble. At Llangattock in the Brecon Beacons it was limestone, a crucial ingredient for the iron-works in the valleys to the south. The 19thcentury quarrying has left a bewitching landscape of chockstone cliff, turfed spoil-heaps like a range of Lilliputian mountains, and a tramway that rolls in a green carpet around Craig y Cilau.
In north Wales it was all about slate and the new 83-mile Snowdonia Slate Trail takes in numerous sites including Blaenau Ffestiniog, aka ‘the town that roofed the world’. The summits of Cnicht and the Moelwyns rise to the west of town, and a circuit of their windswept tops and the shattered slate heaps and ruins of Rhosydd Quarry makes a day of striking contrasts.
In the Peak District it was millstone grit for milling grain ( hence the name) and you can see abandoned wheels of stone peppering the slopes below the quarried bluff of Stanage Edge.
Before the railways started transporting large quantities over long distances, many quarries were small and the rocks typically used locally, which resulted in regional differences in architecture. The pale limestone from Dorset’s Isle of Portland was an exception, though, used to build much of London including St Paul’s Cathedral, the Palace of Westminster and the Tower. Walk at Portland now and you’ll discover one of its disused workings, Tout Quarry, is a nature reserve and sculpture park, where artists have chiselled boulders into the shape of sheep, owls, fossils and giant cephalopods, and crafted bridges and windows from the shale.
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Download Llangattock, Cnicht, Stanage and Portland at www.livefortheoutdoors.com/ bonusroutes