TRURO — On Friday I visited Blue Hills where they demonstrated how tin-bearing ore was processed. Today I visited the Poldark Mine just north of Helston where you can descend into what used to be a working tin mine and imagine just a little what it would have been like working underground for hours on end.

The guided tour took about an hour and you had to wear a hard hat at all times. Which was just as well, because even though I was very concious of raising my head too early after yesterday, I still managed to scrape the roof of the mine. In places the passage wasn’t much over four feet in height. We descended to about 190 feet below ground and it was wet. Apparently 150,000 litres of water per day is pumped out of the mine.
The mine was started in the early 1700s and was worked for about sixty years. It was then forgotten about until a farmer rediscovered it in 1972 when a big hole suddenly appeared in his field. Originally the mine was know as Wheal Roots. Apparently mines changed their names all the time to take advantage of successful associations or divest themselves of unsuccessful ones. The developer of the current tourist attraction took advantage of an association with Winston Graham’s Poldark novels and free advertising from the BBC.

After lunch in the mine’s cafeteria I thought I’d go and have a look at another fogou nearby. I’d love to be able to tell you the route I took but I don’t rightly know. I can say I ended up in St Keverne which is a long way from where I should have been. I blame it on the narrow twisting Cornish lanes. What I can say is that I had a very pleasant old-fashioned Sunday afternoon drive!