Parys Mountain

First thing this morning we drove out to the lighthouse at Point Lynas.  We walked out to the end of the peninsula and watched porpoises and a seal (or perhaps a sea lion, it was quite big!) in the water.

From there we drove to Amlwch Port where we looked at the Copper Kingdom museum.  This was a great introduction to the history of copper mining in the area.  We had lunch just up the road from the museum and then drove to Parys Mountain copper mine where we took the photos in this blip.

The museum gave us some great context for what we saw here - so we definitely recommend you go there first!  The open cast mine workings are over a large area and were worked in the late 1700s, a time when the mine became the main supplier for global copper.

I'm actually quite glad that the main blip shows people - they give you some idea of scale.  These were geology students from Manchester who were allowed into the bottom of the mine - we had a three hour walk around the edge.  This large hole in the ground was all excavated by men with picks.  It's quite something to behold.

The colours in the rocks were amazing, with stripes of different colour side by side.  There were also many abandoned buildings around the site, and even some slag from the furnaces - this had a weird texture, somewhat like glass.

From there we drove to Cemaes for a cuppa before driving up to Ynys y Fydlyn where we walked down to the sea.  By this time it was getting quite gloomy, and we drove to a local pub for dinner.

Well, we planned on getting dinner here but it was shut.  So we drove and found another pub - "food served all day until 8pm".  So we went in, but they weren't serving food this week, unless you were a guest in the hotel. They suggested we could have food if we came back next week...

So we drove through to Valley where we found a lovely fish and chip shop with a cafe - Enoch's - definitely recommended, the food was lovely!