Roughton Gill

A beautiful day.  We drove to Fellside and walked up Roughton Gill.  This was once an important mining valley, especially for copper and lead, and there are scars of old mine-workings everywhere.  The valley once had mine-workers' cottages and a smelting mill, but is now left for the sheep and walkers.  Further up, as you begin to climb steeply by Dale Beck, there are old levels still to be seen in the rock-faces.  All the tunnels into the mines were painstakingly chiselled out by hand, using picks, into solid rock.  This was slow, hard work, and no more was cut away than needed, so the tunnels are extremely narrow, wider at shoulder-height than at the head and feet, and known as coffin levels by reason of their profile.