The Tinners' Trail at Pendeen

The tin and copper mines of Pendeen on the north coast of the Land's End Peninsula are redundant, as are all of Cornwall's mines; the culmination of the long decline of Cornish mining since its Victorian heyday. The deep mining of Cornwall lost out to cheap ore from surface strip mines in Asia and to the vagaries of the international market. At Pendeen the area's last working mine of Geevor closed in 1990 after years of uncertainty and false promise and despite vigorous efforts by the local community to save it. Today, the modern buildings of Geevor have been transformed into a fascinating mining museum, but it is the ruined granite chimney stacks and engine houses of the 19th-century industry that have given this mining coast its dramatic visual heritage. Below ground lies the true heritage of hard rock mining.

To walk through this post-industrial rural landscape is to walk through a huge slice of Cornish history and character. Early in the walk you reach the Geevor Tin Mine and then the National Trust's Levant Engine House. From Levant the coast path runs on to Botallack, where the famous Crown's Mine Engine Houses stand on a spectacular shelf of rock above the Atlantic. The workings of the Crown's Mine ran out for almost 1 mile (1.6km) beneath the sea, and the mine was entered down an angled runway using wagons. You can visit the Crown's Mine Engine Houses by following a series of tracks down towards the sea from the route of the main walk. Flooding was a constant problem for these mines and some of the the earliest ever steam engines were developed to pump water from the workings. On the cliff top above the Crown's Mine the National Trust has restored the 19th-century façade of the Botallack Count House. This was the assaying and administrative centre for all the the surrounding mines.

From the Count House the way leads to the old mining villages of Botallack and Carnyorth, before climbing steadily inland to the exhilarating moorland hills of Carnyorth Common. This is the famously haunted landscape of Kenidjack Carn which local superstition identified as the playground of giants and devils. From the high ground the linear pattern of Pendeen's mining coast is spread out before you with the glittering Atlantic beyond. The walk then leads back towards Pendeen and past the Church of St John, built by the mining community in the 1850s from the hand-quarried rock of the hills above, yet another token of the remarkable skills of the Cornish hard rock miner.

Where to eat and drink

Halfway along the route is the Queen's Arms in Botallack village, a traditional miners' pub that has retained much of its character. Pub meals are available. The North Inn at Pendeen is another traditional inn at the end of the walk and the Geevor Museum has a café.

What to look for

Just below the track that runs past the Botallack Count House lie the ruins of an arsenic labyrinth. Mineral ore was often contaminated with arsenic. In the 19th century during times of low tin prices, this arsenic was collected by roasting ore in a calciner and passing the smoke through enclosed tunnels, the labyrinth. The cooling vapour deposited the arsenic on the labyrinth walls as a powder that was then exported, mainly to America as a pesticide against the boll weevil in the cotton fields. Its effect on both the labyrinth workers and cotton pickers does not bear thinking about.

While you're there

A visit to the Geevor Tin Mine is worthwhile for the background to the history of Cornish mineral mining. Part of the experience is an underground tour and a visit to the old treatment sheds. The National Trust's restored engine house at Levant Engine House contains a remarkable reconstruction of a Cornish beam engine, the great driving force of every Victorian mine. The engine is regularly 'steamed up' to go through the stately rocking motion that powered deep water pumps and facilitated the movement of ore from below ground.