A blog with photographs by Iain Robinson exploring the abandoned places in wild Wales

Wandering uneasily around Manod

1/5/2015

A quiet look around Manod Quarry in 2015

A burnt out Bedford in the quarry. Extracting slate can be a desperate business by this evidence.

The mist had closed in, to the extent that I wasn't quite sure where we were. Our footsteps on the slate road sounded as if they were coming from somewhere distant, while the giant five-ton rocks lined up on either side of the road loomed, one by one, as dark sentinels in a milky world. No matter, we were on the pit road and it would be safe- there would be no blasting or activity today, I had made sure of that

The view into the pit in 2010

For months now, the sounds of thunder and falling rock from the big hole had been mingling with the screams of the zip-wire thrill junkies, their cries carried on the wind to this side of the hill. My curiosity was piqued by the constant noises. I wanted to go up to the badlands and take a quiet look over the edge of the opencast...

Warning hooter run by a compressor

On the way up, it quickly became obvious that the weather topsides belonged to a different world. It had been a warm summer evening in the valley. Now, the mountain glowered above us in his dark war-gear, a tattered, black mantle of cloud above his head. Trouble was probably afoot. If the Manod could speak, I'm sure he'd have something to say about folk carving his insides out.

A warning to travellers...

Thus, we found ourselves descending into the pit. The lid was blasted off many years ago, leaving a gigantic scar and a lot of gangue rock to be got rid of. All this accomplished by a couple of blokes and a lot of bang. These days it helps to have a big Cat or two, some all-terrain tippers and a line in slippery talk to distract the bank manager. The old boys round here still talk of the "old man" with unconscious irony- the generations tapping away on the ribs of time, men that gave their lives and passed on the knowledge now carefully measured out between the rock falls. They say there's no respect for the old ways, but that has to be uttered sotto voce in this place.

The quarry office (portakabin)

We came to a gathering of huts that looked as if it had fallen victim to a nuclear attack. Everything was smashed or burnt and the office ransacked. One of the surviving folders in a filing cabinet was labelled with the name of an old part of the quarry. I felt warmth at the use of this old term, as if somehow there was an echo of respect amongst all this chaos. We walked further down the road, taking nothing, touching nothing, leaving just our footprints.

A comparison with the 2010 shot will show that they have gone down quite a bit

A brief movement of the wind parted the curtain of mist, revealing a working face, guarded by the inevitable big Cat. I was astonished to see how deep the pit had become- the big chamber we'd seen a few years ago was now marooned high above and an adit had been exposed, iron rails pointing out like the legs of a dead insect. We took photos before the mist fretted back in, swirling everything again to grey.

The big Cat. The excavation has gone below the chamber floor in the background

There are no treasures now, save the slate, which is all they, the delvers, diggers and agents of destruction ever wanted. All this mischief ... for what? I don't know; it was always thus, except that in the past, the cost was measured in human suffering. Up here, the few that pass rarely glimpse the cleverly concealed pit or smell the diesel. They hurry by, as if passing a beggar with a gigantic bowl on the street. We kept looking back as our truck grumbled down the steep road, until the mountain disappeared gradually from view behind the mist. Back up there, a corrugated sheet, coming loose from the eaves of one of the utility structures, was scraped one way, then the other by the wind. Marking a few seconds in the endless stretch of geological time.