I don't think as far as I'm aware anyone has done a report on Honister, so I thought I would hopefully be the first or one of the few to do so.
Anyway Honister Slate Mine situated in the Lake District is a "Show Mine" where people can go on paid tours where parts of the mine are floodlit to give guests a clear view of the sheer size of some of the Cathedral-like caverns within, There's a lot of history to the place, however I'd like to just get straight to the good stuff, now I've always wanted a look into here but I don't like the thought of a tour guide leading you round on a short trip with commercialised routes and passages, floodlit areas and large groups of (sometimes irritating) people, so me and a friend of mine decided to have a proper look round the place as it should be done, in the dark, after closing time.
The Explore:
Now getting into the place is actually pretty straightforward and easy If you know where to look, we left the car down at the car park which was deserted, and walked up the dirt track to the entrance, greeted by a slate sign saying we should turn back
:
Aha, erm... nope! Haven't driven all this way for naff all!
: So onwards we went and found that whoever was last in there (probably a worker who wanted to get home) had left the big metal door wide open, so in we went, the place is quite well linked together, most of the passages connecting to a central stope where they would have originally winched up the slate.
We were also greeted by some metal cutout figures of miners put in place for the tour, amongst a bunch of other electrical equipment etc and old relics from the mine itself put on display, and most of the passages lead to the outside of the mountain face where they have a Via Ferrata rigged up, but you'd definitely need some SRT equipment for that, there's also some SRT Via Ferrata points in the mine too which look like tonnes of fun.
Anyways after a couple hours of wandering around we reached our exit point and made our way home. Though I will say I'm Intrigued to see how the place looks during Opening hours:
Enjoy the pictures and thank you for looking.

Thanks for looking: (I really need to figure out how to caption my photos 
Anyway Honister Slate Mine situated in the Lake District is a "Show Mine" where people can go on paid tours where parts of the mine are floodlit to give guests a clear view of the sheer size of some of the Cathedral-like caverns within, There's a lot of history to the place, however I'd like to just get straight to the good stuff, now I've always wanted a look into here but I don't like the thought of a tour guide leading you round on a short trip with commercialised routes and passages, floodlit areas and large groups of (sometimes irritating) people, so me and a friend of mine decided to have a proper look round the place as it should be done, in the dark, after closing time.
The Explore:
Now getting into the place is actually pretty straightforward and easy If you know where to look, we left the car down at the car park which was deserted, and walked up the dirt track to the entrance, greeted by a slate sign saying we should turn back
: Aha, erm... nope! Haven't driven all this way for naff all!
: So onwards we went and found that whoever was last in there (probably a worker who wanted to get home) had left the big metal door wide open, so in we went, the place is quite well linked together, most of the passages connecting to a central stope where they would have originally winched up the slate. We were also greeted by some metal cutout figures of miners put in place for the tour, amongst a bunch of other electrical equipment etc and old relics from the mine itself put on display, and most of the passages lead to the outside of the mountain face where they have a Via Ferrata rigged up, but you'd definitely need some SRT equipment for that, there's also some SRT Via Ferrata points in the mine too which look like tonnes of fun.
Anyways after a couple hours of wandering around we reached our exit point and made our way home. Though I will say I'm Intrigued to see how the place looks during Opening hours
: Enjoy the pictures and thank you for looking.

Thanks for looking
: (I really need to figure out how to caption my photos
