Video - Great Flat Lode Cycle Trail

This video is of a cycle trip around the Great Flat Lode Trail which can be walked or cycled and is part of the Cornwall Mineral Tramways Heritage Project.  

A further 29kms of activity trails are currently being created in Cornwall and are due to open in 2009. The new trails will link in with existing routes such as the Coast to Coast and the Great Flat Lode Trails

The Great Flat Lode Trail is a circular trail around Carn Brea hill approx (12 km; 7.5 miles) long. .

The circular Great Flat Lode Trail is mostly off-road, taking you through farmland, heathland and industrial areas.  If you climb to the top  of to Carn Brea you will have a panoramic view of Cornwall.

The trail also follows part of the line of the Basset Mine Tramway, built to carry tin ore for processing at Wheal Basset Stamps and West Basset Stamps.

In the 1870s, when many copper mines were closing, a 'lode' of tin ore was discovered below previously worked copper deposits to the south of Carn Brea. This lode produced over 90,000 tons of high quality tin concentrate and was worked by some of the greatest mines in Cornwall.

It was also flatter than most, lying at an angle of 30 degrees instead of the usual 70 degrees from the horizontal – hence its name, the "Great Flat Lode".  Fortunately the area south of Carn Brea has remained relatively undisturbed, which explains why it now contains some of Cornwall's finest remains of engine houses, tin dressing floors and other mining structures.

A related video os that of the Smoking Chimneys Day the occassion when fires were lit in many of the old chimneys in the area.