A weather-beaten bluff just a couple miles away
provides the same Land's End thrill without the crowd.
It's Cape Cornwall.
To be sure we know about special places
like this and understand them,
I'm joined by my friend
and fellow tour guide Tim Uff.
Tim: Yes, so this little church goes back to the 6th century.
Just imagine a Celtic priest living in there with
just a little altar and a fireplace.
That's all he needed.
Rick: A short climb leads to the summit
of this connoisseur's Land's End.
Here you can sit with the sound of the wind
and the cry of the gulls.
Enjoying the meditative view,
I like to ponder how this small island
has had an impact far beyond its shores.
From the start, Cornwall's economy was based on tin.
As far back as the ancient times, Greek and Roman traders
traveled all the way to Cornwall for tin.
You see, an important step
in the evolution of civilization
was the ability to mix tin and copper to make bronze.
And when people entered the Bronze Age,
they could make better tools and stronger weapons.
Tin mining was the dominant
Cornwall industry well into modern times.
This evocative coast is dotted
with 19th-century Industrial Age ruins.
These desolate engine houses
once pumped water out of the shafts
so they could mine a half-mile down
and then, under the sea bed,
far out to sea.
The ground here is honeycombed with mine tunnels.
In its heyday,
there were hundreds of tin mines in Cornwall.
The industry peaked about 200 years ago
with the Industrial Revolution.
Back then, the demand for tin was huge,
and mines like these were booming,
making Cornwall one of England's wealthiest counties.
Ruins look almost ancient,
but it's easy to forget that less than 100 years ago,
thousands of workers spent most of their waking hours
in these crumbling buildings, supporting their families.
But Cornwall's glory days of tin passed.
The iconic smokestacks today
are the dramatic remnants of Cornwall's
now-dead tin-mining industry,
which just couldn't compete with cheap tin from abroad.
Along with these old buildings,
another reminder of the mining heritage
is the tin workers' simple lunch:
the Cornish pasty.
So, this would be the classic miner's lunch, you could say.
Tim: Yeah, the Cornish pasty. So you'd hold it
on the crimped edge right here like this.
And the idea was that if you did have arsenic on your hands,
then you would leave it on the crust.
Rick: It's 'cause there was no way to wash your hands
when you're mining. Tim: Exactly.
Rick: So you come out of the mine and you're gonna eat and you're hungry.
Tim: Yeah, absolutely.
Rick: So this is a "pasty"? How do you pronounce it?
Tim: "Pasty." Rick: Not "pastey?"
Tim: No, pasty. Rick: Pasty. Aright.
Tim: Yeah, so eat away. Rick: Mmm!
Generally, what do you put inside of a pasty?
Tim: You've got steak, onion, potato,
and turnip, or Swede, as we call it.
Rick: So any bakery around here would serve these.
It would be a great take-out meal for a traveler.
Tim: Yeah, absolutely.
There are thousands of these made every day.
Rick: God, the original take-out food in Cornwall.
I mean, 200 years ago for the miners
and today for the travelers.
The last tin mine to close
is now open to visitors,
dedicated to telling the miners' story.
The Geevor Mine closed in 1990.
It represents the last hurrah, not only of Cornish tin mining,
but in a sense, of Britain's Industrial Age.
Exploring it, you'll gain an appreciation for the simple,
yet noble, life of miners.
Though closed for decades, it feels as though the miners
could show up at any time to clock in.
The blasting schedule was a reminder
that punctuality in the mines was a matter of life and death.
The miners' lockers were left just the way
they were on the day the mine closed,
with the miners believing that somehow, they'd be back.
Photos humanize the plight of individuals
who lost their livelihoods.
They remind us that when economics change
and an industry dies,
it devastates families and entire communities.
In a huge structure nicknamed "The Mill,"
the stone was crushed to extract the tin.
The miners brought in tons and tons of raw ore,
which was put into big drums
like this, which would then tumble.
And with the help of metal balls like this,
it would break the ore into smaller and smaller pebbles.
The noise must have been deafening in here.
You'll see how a vast room full of shaking tables,
like giant machines panning for gold,
separated the tin from the waste.
Tin and other heavy metals,
are the dark material at the back,
while the lighter waste slowly shakes forward.
With 90 tables shaking each day, hundreds of tons of rock
gradually gave up a few tons of coveted tin.
For the finale of your visit, you slip on a coat,
don a hard hat,
and head both underground and back in time,
deep into one of the original 18th-century mines.
The shafts, narrow and low,
give you a sense of the difficult life of miners
and their perilous working conditions.
Former mine employees serve as guides,
and are happy to tell the story.
Guide: Here we are: we're in a section of tunnel
that's 250 years old, approximately.
This mine itself didn't work under the ocean,
but a lot of mines in this district,
the St. Just mining district, went under the ocean
for sometimes a distance of a mile-and-a-half.
Rick: Tin mining is hard-rock mining,
where you look for a lode,
and then follow veins of tin through the surrounding rock.
Guide: And once they establish where the tin is,
then they work upwards through the earth
and downwards through the earth,
extracting that vein from the rock.
Rick: Even under the sea if necessary. Guide: Even under the sea, yeah.
Rick: So if they took 100 tons of rock out of the mine,
how much tin would they hope to find?
Guide: Just one ton. Rick: One ton.
That's hard work. Guide: It is extremely hard work.
Rick: Cornish mining had a diaspora in the 1800s,
with large numbers of skilled miners emigrating.
Guide: The Cornish miner has moved all over the world
from Canada and North America
and Mexico, down into South America,
New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, even Cuba.
There's hundreds of thousands of people around the planet
now that are directly related to those Cornish miners
who took their skills with them.
And in fact, there was a definition,
and it still holds true today, really, largely,
that a mine is a hole in the ground
with a Cornishman at the bottom.