Magpie Mine 27/05/12

We drove down to the pretty village on Ashford on the Water, on the river Wye. Once we found a parking space, we set off through to village crossing the river over the old bridge and crossed the busy A6.. After following the footpath a little way we branched off onto a minor road and soon cane to a path that led to the river.

We followed the river upstream heading towards an old derelict bobbin mill, as usual I kept my eyes open for birds but apart from a coule of Mallards did not recognise anything else. Although derelict the bobbin mill was quite interesting, only small but with two waterwheels. A little futher up the river was the weir presumeably built to divert water for the mill, the river above the weir is broad and still. A little further upstream and we came to a small lake, mallard and tufted duck on here plus a family of Coot, including several chicks.

We now left the river and began to climb up through a wood, lots of birdsong but nothing spotted, The path reached almost the top of the wood and then descended to reach the mouth of Deep Dale. We started to walk up the dale. As dales go it isn’t the most picturesque, a small stream meanders through it and there were lots of cowslips on the sides. Eventually we left the dale and climbed up the steepish side to reach farmland. We could now see Magpie mine across the fields and we headed towards the village of Sheldon, which was original home to the miners.

We followed a path from the village and after a short while we reached the mine. Magpie Mine is one of many lead mines in the area but is one of the few ,possible the only one, where a lot of the buildings and structures are still standing. It is surrounded by spoil heaps which have now been covered with grass and lead tolerant flowers such as leadwort.

Interestingly further investigation following the walk shows that the mine was in operation on and off right up tho the early 1950, so its not surprising that a lot of it remains.

On leaving the mine we set off to walk back to Sheldon and from there took paths that lead down past flower filled meadows to the River Wye and so back to Ashford.

It was a pleasant enough walk with a couple of quite strenuous but short climbs. The river Wye was lovely and the mine was interesting but we have certainly been on a lot nicer walks.