Geevor Tin Mine & Pendeen Watch

Around you spreads a landscape like nowhere else on this coast — the wild cliffs of Penwith, the grey Atlantic beyond, and, scattered across the headland, the buildings of Geevor Tin Mine. This was one of the last great tin mines in Cornwall, working until 1990. Out on the point stands Pendeen Watch, its lighthouse. You are in the heart of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site.

Tin and copper were won from this coast for centuries, but Geevor's story is remarkably recent. The rock here is granite and altered slate, which the miners called killas, both threaded with the tin and copper lodes that drew men underground. Through the twentieth century Geevor grew into a major mine, its shafts and tunnels reaching down hundreds of fathoms and far out, connecting even to the older workings of neighbouring Levant, following the ore beneath the very seabed. Generations of local men went underground here, walking to work each morning from the villages of Pendeen and Trewellard. Then, in 1990, the world tin price collapsed, and Geevor — like every deep mine in Cornwall — could no longer pay its way. After centuries in which Cornwall had led the world in tin and copper, the industry that had defined this county finally fell silent. Geevor closed. But rather than being flattened and forgotten, it was saved, and reopened as a museum where visitors descend into the earth to see for themselves how the work was done.

Now, let me point out some things to look for. First, the mine buildings themselves — the headframes, the great sheds where the ore was processed, all standing stark against the sky and sea. Unlike so many Cornish mines, worn down to a single romantic ruin, Geevor survives almost whole. Second, look west along the coast to Pendeen Watch, the lighthouse built by Trinity House in 1900 to guard this dangerous shore; its white tower marks the point. Third, look at the heath underfoot, which supports skylarks, stonechats, and the returning choughs — Cornwall's emblem bird, red of bill and leg. Fourth, scan the rocks and coves far below, where grey seals haul out and seabirds nest along the cliffs. And fifth, notice the older engine houses and ruins that punctuate the walk, for Geevor's neighbours, Levant and Botallack, lie just along the path.

Here is something to hold in your mind. This is a mine within living memory. There are men and women in the villages nearby who remember the day in 1990 when the miners came up for the last time — who remember fathers and grandfathers, whole families whose lives had been bound to this ground for generations, suddenly without the work that had defined them. When you go underground at Geevor, your guide may well be someone who worked these very levels, who can tell you what it was to labour in the heat and dark far out beneath the waves. That is a rare thing. Most industrial ruins keep their silence, their stories long since gone quiet with the people who lived them. Here, the memory is still warm, passed on in living voices, and it gives this stark and beautiful place a weight that no guidebook can quite convey.

From here the South West Coast Path presses on south along the cliffs, past Levant and the astonishing engine houses of Botallack, towards Cape Cornwall and, eventually, the far end of the land. You have just walked one of the wildest and most rewarding legs anywhere in Cornwall, and some of the finest lies still ahead. Take a last look at Geevor and the lighthouse on its point, and keep to the path — old shafts lie hidden off it, and the cliffs are steep and unforgiving. Walk safe.