… including Clotilde and Heidi from the Conversation Group, who went for this tramp in the woods today. Unfortunately the tramp got away but never mind – we’ll get him next time.
First place we were taken to was deep in the woods at the back of Gouttieres, and here we uncovered some old machinery.
It is in fact some old pithead winding gear – a winding frame of sorts and a steam engine to power it – and dates from the turn of the 20th Century when this mine-shaft was sunk to exploit the coal seam here.
St Eloy les Mines was well-known for its coal mines, as I have said many times in the past and as the quest for fuel intensified at the end of the 19th Century they started to sink shafts at the peripheral edges of the valley.
They struck a good, profitable seam at Youx and Montjoie and so they followed it right through to the edge of the plateau where the valley opens out into the valley of the Sioule.
Early indications were promising and several mines were sunk in the area between Gouttieres and Lapeize, including this site in the forest at the back of Gouttieres. They had high hopes for the area – even going to the lengths of making a huge goods yard at the railway station at Gouttieres for the trans-shipment of the mined coal.
A great deal of investment was made in the area, not just with the mine installations themselves but even dividing up farmland into tiny plots for housing for the workers, but all hopes were dashed as the coal quite literally turned to dust.
Not one of the pits that were sunk lasted more than a handful of years. It was quickly discovered that the reserves were nothing like as prolific as everyone was expecting and there was insufficient coal to make the proposition an economic one.
Even the massive Puits Michelin at Lapeize, the remains of which can be seen in this photograph, lasted no more than 5 years. The huge area that was set aside for a slag heap rose to no more than about 20 feet high.
We visited the site of 3 or 4 mines but the highlight of the visit, from one point of view at least, was finding the final outcrop of surface coal.
Here, we are probably no more than 300 metres from the Puits Michelin and this is where the coal seam ends. It just curves upwards to the surface and that is that. No wonder that it wasn’t possible to make an economic proposition of coal-mining in the area with the coal seam petering out like this.
A small amount of open-cast mining was carried out here but it was done in a very desultory, half-hearted fasion and never amounted to very much at all.
After a stop for iced water we went to look at the quarries at Lapeize.
The area is famous for the “Grès de Lapeize” – a hard silty millstone grit type of rock with a close affinity to sandstone and there are 5 major outcrops in the Lapeize area.
These have been quarried for centuries, if not millennia, and many important buildings in the area, including the Chateau de Pionsat, are made from the stone.
They closed down just prior to World War II but some kind of desultory attempt was made to restart them but it was doomed to failure. But in 1970 one of the quarries was bought (for a pittance) by a man from St Georges de Mons who was going to build a hotel there and he needed the stone.
Now Krys told me to look out for fossils (I suppose she meant something other than my fellow walkers) but never mind that – the guy who bought the quarry took a wartime American GMC truck – 6-cylinder petrol sidevalve – into the quarry. And people say that it was fitted with a mechanical crane to scoop up the rock.
And one day he simply stopped coming and his truck is still there.
So I had a good nosy around it. It’s been robbed of many parts but its major components are still there. And it’s not a mechanical bucket on the back, it’s a mechanical prodder-type of ram-type of drill for breaking the stone off the wall and into manageable chunks.
Still, hottest day of the year so far – 34.5 degrees and the heat exchanger went off the scale – the first time since 6th August last year.
However it got off to a bad start. Being a Bank Holiday I was planning on a lie-in but not one but two phone calls shortly after 09:00 knackered that idea.
And it’s still warm now. It reached over 27 degrees in here even with all of the windows open and as I type – at 01:40 with all of the windows open and a pleasant breeze blowing in, it’s still 24.7 degrees. Summer has well and truly acumen in. Lude sing cucu, hey what?
