Denniston

During March we took another trip doing some tourist stuff and we went up to Denniston which is a historic site where there was once a very busy town. The whole town was based around the coal mines that surrounded it. There is only a few houses left up there but some local people are slowly trying to restore the historic sight so that visitors can see what the mining town once looked like.

You can still clearly see the incline which was used for the coal buckets to make their perilous and fast way down the hill to the rail head to be carted away to Christchurch or to the port. There is also some of the works around that you can look at and see where different places like the school, shop and of course the pubs were. Most of it is in barely recognisable ruins but it was interesting. There are stories of children who were born up there who never came down "The Hill".

The top of the incline. The coal wagons started their journey here and basically just went over the top at speed.

The children sitting on one of the restored coal wagons that would have gone up and down the hill carrying the coal around. Small wagons were used to bring the coal from the different mine areas.

This was a brick viaducts that is still in place that was used to bring the coal from one of the mines to the top of the incline for dispatch down the hill for transport away.

The floor of the old engineering workshop. Not very much left

A piece of the old machinery that helped to make the coal wagon move up and down the hill.

The view from up there once the cloud cleared was amazing all over the valley all the way back to Westport and our to sea. Good a clear day. The day we were up there it was clear for very brief period of time the rest of the time it was covered in low cloud.