The ever-changing tailings lagoons at Wheal Maid
Although I regularly take infrared photos around Cornwall, there is no such need to employ the technique at the Wheal Maid Tailings lagoons in the Poldice Valley, so extraordinary and ever-changing are the colours. I never tire of the place; so surreal and alien is the landscape, it is sometimes dubbed the Cornish Mars (like the similarly-surreal area around St. Austell is called the Cornish Alps. One day I’m hoping to stumble across the Cornish Cornwall).
The so-called lagoons were man-made in the 1970s to store waste from nearby mines, which contained amounts of arsenic, copper and zinc. Traces of which are still found, and it’s these minerals which account for the strange colours.
To see the colours at their most surreal, that is the yellows, browns and oranges, it’s best to visit on a sunny day after a period of heavy rain. It can look very different at other times, as below shows.
It was looking quite dry in July 2019
July 2019
In August 2022 the lagoons had completely dried up.
One of the other lagoons was likewise completely dry, the first time I’d ever seen it so.
By late September 2022 the main lagoon had partially filled up again.
After some days of rain, we returned on a sunny day in April 2023 when the browns, oranges and yellows were highly visible.
Previously on Barnflakes
Flickagrams #18
Wheal Maid Tailings lagoons