St. Aidans Country Park

This is a follow on to the photo of the Dragline (Uploaded the other day) which you can just about see on the right-hand side near the horizon. This was originally one large open cast mine which filled nearly all of the area you can see in this photo. The gap between the R. Aire and the mine was breached in 1988 and the mine was flooded with 17 million cubic meters of water which stopped extraction for 10 years and cost £20,000,000 to rectify. It took 2 years to remove the water before mining could continue. If I remember correctly during the subsequent draining and diversion of the river a Viking Long Boat was discovered.