At Abereiddy

Walking south along the coast path of St David's Head in the Pembrokeshire National Park, amongst the bays and headlands of rugged and ragged cliffs and worn-down volcanic hills, one lesser, lower, headland stands out for its clearly man-made feature.

The squat little tower of Abereiddy, standing on a headland that is barely still there, more hole than headland, where the Blue Lagoon has been carved out as part of the long lost local slate mining industry.

Standing sentinel over the little bay and beach, and the little street of houses behind.

More photos in the Pembrokeshire gallery

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Cwmorthin

Cwmorthin is one of the many huge disused slate quarries and mines around Blaenau Ffestiniog in Snowdonia, a mile walk up into the Moelwyn Mountains from the town and station.

Most of the workings are underground, in the many miles of mine tunnels that climb and descend inside the mountain, some of them still open to cavers, others now damaged by the attempts to use explosives to aid the extraction of slate in the quarry's final working years in the 1990s.

But there's still lots to see above ground, around the portals beside the lake, Llyn Cwmorthin.

In addition to the huge spoil heaps, which send tentacles reaching out into the lake, the quarrymaster's house is intact, but boarded up and getting scruffy. But the quarrymen's barracks, whose residents had a life expectancy of 44 years, have been in ruins for several decades.

These photos were all taken early one May morning. There's a lot more industrial archaeology in the Cwmorthin valley that I didn't get to see that time — I must go back.

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