Welcome to the Blue Mine! I will be your guide today for an exploration in an authentic slate site. Are you ready for this adventure?
Equipped with a safety helmet and accompanied by your guide, board the elevators for a direct descent to 126 meters underground!
At the bottom, as soon as the doors open, the light fades and your eyes take a few seconds to get used to this dark environment.
Under your feet as above your heads, the slate is omnipresent and silence almost total.
After a few minutes in a small mining train, you arrive at the heart of the slate site: your journey through time begins.
Still in good condition since its closure in 1936, this slate quarry reveals to you extraction chambers with striking dimensions to discover the origin of slate, its techniques of exploitation and more broadly, the lives of the men who extracted and wound the blue stone at the beginning of the 20th century.
At the corner of a gallery, meet Lucien, called «Lulu la glue», and his co-workers and discover their trades.
You’ve already been in the skin of a miner for an hour and a half. Even if the working day is not over, it is time to go up to the surface to follow the path of the slate schist block! Head to the bumper of the fenders for the rest until you make a cover slate.
At the end of this unique experience at 126 meters underground, you will see a demonstration of slate slit with the explanation of the great stages of crafting according to the methods of the past. Present in hundreds on the surface, the splitters worked the slate schist until they obtained a fine slate of standard size for the purpose of decorating our roofs.
Its natural properties, which have made it one of the most common roofing materials and its surprising fissility, now have no secrets from you!