Ah hem... Sandy Bear here... tour guide extraordinaire! Or shall we say extraordibear! anyhow... Today we are going to explore something that we spotted off the road ages ago! Do you see it? Looks like an old ruin.
Having seen the Morden Colliery tipple... we know that this is something similar! A bit of research and... this is the old Granby mine site!
You can see some of the old gears and gizmos inside this structure.
And this tree made it's way around the concrete!
See here... all of the ground here is black, full of coal bits...
Anywhere around here... if you see black soil, you know there was a coal operation nearby!
There are bigger chunks here as well... we pocketed a few.
It kind of looks like the ruins of a cathedral...
We were here early before the sun came up and now that it's up... cooler photos!
This bit is more likely the tipple (you can't see it, but it's angled)...
See... this is the Morden mine one... So that angled thing... that's the tipple... and that's the bit above. The other stuff with the tree hugging it... that would be the same as on the right side of the photo at Morden... (We did a tour of Morden here...)
See... this bit...
And then... across the road, we found all sorts of huge chunks of concrete... there was apparently a whole TOWN here back in the day... (you can read a news article about it here).
When the mine closed for good, they moved a bunch of the fancier houses into the city... but a lot of the other stuff just got knocked down. We might have to do some more exploring later and see what we can find.
Then we poked around further down from the old tipple and found an old dam and reservoir... probably connected to the mining operation.
See... lots of black soil here!
There's this wooden contraption in the middle of the old reservoir area... maybe an overflow regulator? Or... that's the water outtake...
And we found this cool footbridge!
And beyond that is the old E&N Railway bridge. There's been talk for AGES about resurrecting the rail corridor but... nothing ever comes of it. It would need a bazillion dollars!
We walked across the footbridge...
It's a pretty creek...
I wonder if there's salmon in this creek in the fall?
Then we deked up to the old railway...
See... lots of the railway ties are rotted... I tell ya... $$$$$$$$$ to get this up and running!
There's the bit that goes over the creek... do we dare?
Do we???
Ahhh... !!!! Ok... that's good enough!!! Let's go back the way we came!
This railway likely carried some of the Granby coal down to the harbour... cool!
Hope you enjoyed the tour!! We have some more coal adventures coming up... including a story about two teens who got lost in an old coal mine...
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