Silver Mine tour

We have been having some rainy, cold weather- supposedly caused by the Americans and the Alaskan volcanic ash that has just reached our area of Europe. :-)

We decided to try a day trip anyway- and drove with our friends Jim and Mabelle to the small town of Kutna Hora. Notice that we made the right decision. We were blessed with blue skies and sunshine for most of the day! There are two major churches in this town, and we are standing at the larger of the two, looking out over the town.

Kutna Hora gained prominence in the 13th century for its silver mines, and we decided to take the mine tour that is offered. This deceptive-looking entrance leads to a short mine tunnel, not far underground, that houses displays on how the ore was extracted by hand back in the day. It seems that not only did the guilds protect miners by decreeing a reasonably short shift underground (6-8 hours), but the mining guild (forerunner of today's unions) protected the miners' families with medical care and pensions when the miner was no longer able to work.

It has been proven that humans were much smaller back in the day- which is a good thing because these mine shafts were SMALL! The working conditions in the mine were unbelievably bad- it is cold, dark, and wet underground, with water dripping through the rock. We were told that the water contains arsenic and other toxic material, and that the air would frequently be bad in the mines, so miners were fortunate if they lived past the age of 35.

After that wonderful news, we were outfitted for the REAL trip underground! These canvas coats are similar to those worn by the ancient miners, and we were supplied with hard hats and lamps.

Our tour guide spoke fluent English, but there were times when I wished that I didn't understand what she was saying. In the photo below, we are listening to her description of the hardest points in the tour- an area where the roof of the tunnel is extremely low, and another section that is extremely narrow. She told us that occasionally someone actually gets stuck in the narrow section of the tunnel, so she now puts anyone who appears to be at risk for sticking at the end of the line, because you can only go one way through the tunnel. There is no turning around to go back! She smiled as she said that no one in our group would be designated as the "last-in-line". This information, by the way, is NOT in the guidebook!


And yes, I did fix my helmet to the correct position on TOP of my head before we went underground.

Heigh-ho, heigh ho -it's down in the mine we go- and down and down we went. Our tour only incorporated the first level of the mine, but it was certainly deep enough for everyone in our group.

I'm not sure if you can see how close these walls were, and this is the WIDE part of the tunnel. In the narrow part, we all had to turn sideways to get through. Tom says this was the scariest thing he has ever done. I kept telling myself that I was about the same size as our guide, and if she could make it through, so could I! In the area with the low ceiling, even I hit my head and had to bend over to get through, so I can only imagine how the tall folks must have felt.

Silver ore is almost indistinguishable from rock by sight, so the miners had to use their hammers to determine whether or not they had hit a vein containing silver. The density of ore and rock are different, producing different sounds when struck with a hammer. There is no ore left in this mine, but the rocks and the varius mineral deposits were interesting.

We were awestruck to think that people actually worked in shafts such as these - on hands and knees- for hours at a clip.

Happily we all made it out in one piece, although the gentleman in the blue shirt is still a little shaken. He had a difficult time in the narrow section, and was extremely glad to be back above-ground.