Laxey Wheel

Europe » Isle of Man
July 10th 2010

Published: July 20th 2010

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marcin954

Laxey Wheel

Laxey Wheel visible from long distance, please note fog everywhere.

We travelled to Laxey (Manx: Laksaa) by bus number 3. We had one destination there - Laxey Wheel also known as Lady Isabella - name given after founder's wife name. We didn't know anything surely about this village and main attraction, we knew only its size - Laxey Wheel rises up to 22 meters or 76 feet.

Wheather condition - very bad. Fog covered almost everything and while we were driving in bus we were afraid about availability to wheel and sense of our excursion. We put into the use someone's advice from Thursday and always we travelled in double decked buses at the front of top floor to see everything around us. That morning wa saw rain and fog mostly.

Laxey Wheel we might say looks quite common but when we approached we noticed it is really huge. Started reaining, we displayed our explorers tickets and we followed straight to white painted wheel. We desided to go upstairs to the top despite of bad whether condition and rain. Everything was slippery. We got there and admired for a few minutes the ladscape and had a look down to whell and ground. That was really high and I was afraid

Laxey Wheel

Stream

a bit to being slipped and falling down. We got down carefully and obviously during that exploration we were talking about it because no one of us couldn't imagine so big pumping wheel on the so small island. After we found out about Lacey Wheel much more - ut pumped water from nearby mine where produced lead, zink, copper and silver up to 1929 when mine was definitely closed. The mine employed up to 600 miners in the best times. Shortly after we touched ground we decided to find someting else and Paweł spotted a path. According to our custom we marshed between trees and we found another attraction. It was mine about that heard previously. We saw entrance to tunnel and some safety hats on wooden fence. We met one man who let us inside. Shaft is quite narrow nad visitors must go one by one. Shaft has about 60-70 meters long. After we left outside we were speaking with that man who let us inside and found out some interesting facts regarding Isle of Man.

From Laxey we came back Douglas because we hoped to get to Tower of Refuge but whether getting worse and that time

Laxey Wheel

Lady Isabella from distance, Isle of Man's triskelion well visible.

started raining. Shortly after one man told us it isn't possible to get to Tower of Refuge by dry feet and normally we need possess any spare shoes to get there. We realised we were unprepared and we had lack of knowledge - we decided to go to Ramsey

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