The china clay museum entrance.......



The museum has a vast collection of the old working machinery and tools within the original buildings, many well presented displays of how the clay was worked in the old days. Here's the old drying area, some floor panels removed to show the underfloor heating used...............



Waterwheels were used to power pumps and other accessories. The red rod shown was moved back and forth by the wheel and the rod went for maybe hundreds of yards over wheels to operate the pump to get the clay slurry out of the pits.....



China clay is used in many industries but maybe mostly in paper making, it seems to be the second biggest export earner after oil and gas.

Some of the cool forested area we walked through to get to the working area of the current clay mine.........



Up at the mine, high pressure water is used to wash out the clay from the broken rocks after blasting. About 90% of the ground is junk so piled up in shaped waste mountains to be later covered with vegetation.

A small part of the mine area, water blasting, and drilling for next set of explosions is all happening.......



A zoom into the water blasting area, the operator sits in the hut and controls it with little joysticks, the runoff (clay-water slush) flows out and is eventually pumped up to the processing works and most of the water is then reused......



On the road again and more old churches.......



At Feock church Lyn did find her Roberts ancestors.......



Some odd little round houses at Veryan......



This day is a bit muddled above, it did not necessarily happen in the order shown, along the way we needed to use a ferry across the Fal river, one of the few chain ferries in England, it hauls itself along a chain as opposed to a steel cable like the Berowra ferry at home.... (the name is King Harry Ferry)......



A tortuous twisty drive on/off the ferry, no place to stop and take clear shots, so grab shots from the car as we move was the only way.

As for those narrow roads that we complain about, oh dear, here's a small bus......



And here's a hay load going walkabout......



That is the main road through the little village of Ruan Lanihorne, very likely to see buses, trucks and things like that trailer of hay being hauled by a big front end loader sort of machine - totally road blocking at times, somebody has to dive into a driveway or back up to some safe spot. Quite scary driving. Luckily we had parked off into someone's driveway and that came along past us before we were ready to move off again.

To wind up today, here's the pub in Penelewey that some of Lyn's ancestors once ran, pity they didn't pass it down a few more generations.....