A Darlington woman has gained thousands of views on TikTok by sharing her adventures exploring old abandoned Cumbrian mines.
Katie Jones, 38, started exploring mines across the UK – and in particular Cumbria – when she moved closer to the county last year.
She said: “I’m from Poland originally and I lived in Wales for over 14 years and I started doing my exploring there. I always wanted to visit the Lake District but lets be fair, driving from South Wales to the Lakes was quite a stretch.
“Eventually I moved closer and I now live an hour away and I started properly exploring the caves and mines last year.”
After lots of research and planning as well as advice and long-term guidance from other professional mine explorers, she eventually developed enough knowledge to start finding Cumbria’s hidden mines and set out to explore them.
Some of Katie’s TikTok videos of her explorations have over 100,000 views and they capture an equally terrifying and beautiful underground world of mine shafts full of old machinery and objects lost in time.
She added: “The Lake District is a gold mine – it is a mining county where there is so much amazing history behind it all, it’s amazing how many of them are open for the public to access.
“Seeing it all with your own eyes and finding different spectacles down there its just so exciting and with it being underground there’s not many people who actually want to go and explore those places.”
Katie added that she follows a strict safety process and has special gear to explore the mines with including a helmet and industrial torches and boots.
She said: “I always make sure people are fully aware of where I am but there is one thing you cant go without and it’s a light – if you don’t have a light, you will die, one fall will kill you.”
Katie has explored mines all across the country from Snowdonia to the Peak District – but she says her all time favourite mine is Coniston Copper Mines.
@katiejones9582 This place never disappoints ???? #cumbria #lakedistrict #lakedistrict_uk #oldmine #shaft #underground ♬ Haunted House – Myuu
She added: “I absolutely love them, you could spend days looking through Coniston Copper Mines. It beats everything and people are absolutely oblivious to it being there.
“I went recently went with my friend who wanted to see the mines but couldn’t find out how to get there. When we were in the mines I stood there and said to him ‘you do realise there are hundreds of people above us who have no idea we are here and that there are mines of such an impressive scale beneath them?’ It’s just incredible.
“The mine shafts down there are absolutely enormous and the openings are huge and the mountain itself at Coniston is just absolutely spectacular.”
Katie added that while she regularly goes with other people – she is not afraid to go alone and does so for half of her explorations.
She said: “There are times I prefer going alone because you can take your sweet time, but then I also have friends who come along and some of them are older gentlemen who worked in the mines years back and we go and do it together.
“I haven’t had anything weird or scary happen to me and I’ve never had any real scary experiences – it’s always a positive experience but I have heard stories from my fellow miners.”
Katie added that some mines in Cumbria are so vast inside that they still have old cranes inside them and she said there is always something new to see when exploring.
She added: “When I went down Coniston Copper Mines with my friend recently we found the corpse of a sheep deep in the mines like something had dragged it down.
@katiejones9582 Coppermine Valley ???? #copperminevalley #caves #Coniston #conistoncoppermines #Cumbria #lakedistrictuk #lakedistrictnationalpark #lakedistrict ♬ Lovely – Vicline
“My friend said to me what’s dragged that down here and I said I didn’t want to know! You see old ladders and equipment and some of the mine equipment is preserved enough to actually use – in Coniston there is old cranes still hanging up and it looks incredible, you shine your torch up and it’s breath-taking.”
Katie said she had decided to start sharing her adventures on social media as a way of letting people see the things that lie beneath their feet.
She said: “I personally hate hiking don’t get me wrong, but if you tell me there is a mine shaft at the top of a mountain I would be jogging up there.
“I post the videos and pictures for people to see where they live, there’s so many people who have no idea what is beneath them.
“Some people at my work see my stories on Instagram and say ‘bloody hell I’ve never seen any places like that before!’ It’s about making people aware of the history there.
“There are so many old mine shafts in the Lake District that you can just walk into – some you can walk in dry and not even get your feet wet and it is just interesting, I think everyone should learn more about where they live and explore it more and appreciate it more.”
Katie added that her whole year is planned around multiple monthly trips to different mines across the country and the Lakes and she plans to share more videos and pictures from her adventures.
