Laxey Valley

A walk to the Snaefell Mine

Tuesday 11^th January, 2011.

We intended heading for the hills this week – weather permitting.  But weather often doesn’t "permit" during winter on the Island and there was dense hill fog up on the tops.  I have never quite managed to work out the difference between hill fog and low cloud – perhaps clouds move more and hill fog clings to the high ground.

Anyway we didn’t manage to tick off any more peaks on our list of hills this week – and settled for a walk in the upper Laxey valley instead.

We started near Brown’s Café and walked up the road to Agneash and then continued along the track towards the Snaefell Mine.

There were patches of sunshine but Snaefell was hidden in the hill fog which extended down to below the level of the mountain road.

The first ruin along the track was bathed in winter sunshine.

It is a long, stony track but eventually we reached the last ruin before the mine workings – the Mine Captain’s house.

There is a little building on the hillside above the house which looks too small to be anything but a Thie beg (outdoor loo) although it was rather a long way from the house.  I expect the Mine Captain was important enough to have servants to deal with chamber pot emptying duties.

This photo shows part of the interior of the house – with the oven below and a fireplace for heating one of the upstairs rooms above.

Dorothy stopped to photograph the “deads” or spoil heaps which are criss-crossed with the tyre tracks of daredevil bikers.

Then we headed up the hill above the mines.

This part of the walk reminds me of one of our first solo walks on the Island.  We were accompanied by Chrissie, a little golden Schipperke who came to the Island with us in 1990.    Chrissie's best friend also came to the Island with but but she was a ginger cat called Emma who couldn’t understand the attraction of hiking and preferred to stay at home.    We were armed with one of Peter J Hulme’s books “Rambling in the Isle of Man” but still managed to get lost.  My main memories of that early walk are seeing the hares on the hillside and wandering for hours without finding the right path.  Chrissie thought she might be able to catch the hares but they just bounded off cheerfully and then sat up and laughed at the little fat dog.  They knew that they could outrun her . . . even at half speed.

When I read Peter Hulme’s description of the walk now, it seems easy to follow and hard to understand how we went wrong.  I think we just couldn’t believe how high we needed to climb before reaching the footpath.  It didn’t help that he mentioned following a wall until we reached an outcrop of rock.  I think we must have followed the wall too far.  Anyway to cut a long story (and a very long rough walk!) short we finally found ourselves outside an isolated house in the semi-dark.  In desperation we knocked and asked where the footpath was – and were told that we were on it!  The kind owner of the house pointed us in the right direction and we got back to the car without any further problems.

This last photo was taken on the footpath which we couldn’t find on that memorable occasion.  We were just below the dense cloud/fog and the view into the valley was quite hazy.