Winsford salt mines

[Brown and Boris]

Piece about them in todays Sunday Times mag.

Here is the site http://www.winsfordrocksaltmine.co.uk/

Really interesting piece but basically as well as be the only place in the UK to mine our beloved road salt (and I say that with a tongue in cheek having owned a number of Lancias and Alfas) they now use it for storing toxic waste from incinerators and documnets (criminal, NHS etc), works of arts, and now even models because it has constant 14 degrees C and humidity. An entire underground city sized cavern 200m under Cheshire.

Laid down as a dried up sea 200M years ago and found by accident in the 19th century whe they were looking for coal.

Edited by Brown and Boris on Sunday 25th January 21:50

[mybrainhurts]

By 'eck, that's a big garage....

[BruceV8]

Brown and Boris said:

Really interesting piece but basically as well as be the only place in the UK to mine our beloved road salt

There is a working salt mine near Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland. I visited there to see how they used and stored their explosives in 2006. Absolutely surreal and fascinating place.

They had a number of Land Rovers and ex military 4x4 trucks. Some never saw daylight and lasted forever. The ones that went in and out of the mine rusted to dust in a few years. When they were beyond economical repair, they dug a vehicle sized hole in the mine walls and just drove the vehicle in and left it there.

[5 wh]

Very interesting place.I used to remove and shred confidential documents from deepstore-we used to take our lorry down in the lift and drive around underground when we used to load up there.

[cazzer]

Not as impressive as this Salt Cathedral in Columbia I was once taken to.

http://www.catedraldesal.gov.co/index.php?option=c...

Website is crap though

[Zod]

Looks like a good place to stick Gordon Brownturn.

[forsure]

It was featured on BBC's 'Countryfile' a few months ago. The scale of it is amazing. Some big life-expired trucks down there, it's uneconomic to retrieve them - so there they stay.

[mdm123]

BruceV8 said:

Brown and Boris said:

Really interesting piece but basically as well as be the only place in the UK to mine our beloved road salt

There is a working salt mine near Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland. I visited there to see how they used and stored their explosives in 2006. Absolutely surreal and fascinating place.

They had a number of Land Rovers and ex military 4x4 trucks. Some never saw daylight and lasted forever. The ones that went in and out of the mine rusted to dust in a few years. When they were beyond economical repair, they dug a vehicle sized hole in the mine walls and just drove the vehicle in and left it there.

They showed it on an episode of coast once. I remember hearing that the mechanics had two sets of tools, one set that stayed in the mine and the other stayed up top.

[Parrot of Doom]

Theres a long history of mining around there. One of the wharves on the disused Manchester Bolton & Bury canal was named 'Salt Wharf' as it received shipments from around Northwich.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Bolton_%26...

[shirt]

cazzer said:

Not as impressive as this Salt Cathedral in Columbia I was once taken to.

http://www.catedraldesal.gov.co/index.php?option=c...

Website is crap though

wieliczka's pretty good too, especially the underground pub at the end of the tour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine


read this article and agree it looks impressive. i was offered a look around when a contractor was trying to sell me some kit they have there, but i thought it'd be crap so turned him down. i bet its a riot on the night shift once management have gone home!