SOUTH CROFTY MINE ADVENTURE FOR CUBS

IT wasn’t just a trip down a mine but also a journey back in time for a pack of cubs during their visit to South Crofty, Pool, Redruth, last week.

During the two-hour trip, the group of eight to 11-year-olds, all members of the First Playing Place cubs, were given a taste of what life could have been like if they had been born in the nineteenth century.

Wearing hard hats and miners lamps they were taken deep beneath the towns of Camborne, Pool and Redruth and told how children of their age were expected to work, alongside their fathers, in the mines less than a century ago.

“It must have been really, really nasty,” said Sam 11. “So much hard work, it must have been horrid,” said his brother Nicholas, eight. “I never thought it was like this for them, it must have been exhausting and so mucky working for so long each day in those conditions,” said their friend, Howard.

But the general feeling amongst the cubs was that it was a fantastic experience. They walked 600ft down a sloping tunnel to the mine face 160ft underground. They explored the tunnels and shafts and even saw a seam of iron pyrites – fool’s gold.

As they moved further into the mine the children were shocked at how much hotter the air became, and surprised that the rocks around them were dripping with water.

Deep inside the mine South Crofty’s Managing Director, Kevin Williams, who was guiding the tour, encouraged everyone to turn off their lamps and experience the darkness mining children of the eighteenth century would have endured.

“That was a great bit of the trip,” said new cub, Jacob, eight. “It was so dark and a bit scary to think how they worked.”

But the best part for Jacob was when he was inaugurated into the pack within the depths of South Crofty.

He said: “It was such a fantastic location, I thought it was going to take place in the community centre where we usually meet but to be down a mine was something really special.

Hannah, nine, who is hoping to join this cub pack said: “I’ve been down a mine before but it was not as good this one. It was so deep, with twisty paths that went on for ages. I could see all the rocks around with the bright light from my mining hat, it was really good.”

The tour continued underground to a 200 year old shaft where the group made their way to surface in a modern lift.

                                                                                                            31 March 2006