Online videos showing a “car grave” in a disused slate quarry prompted many other people to come and take photos, but left trash and graffiti.
It has been claimed that a former flooded slate mine used as a car sale in North Wales, the strangeness of which attracts photo seekers on Instagram, is at risk of being destroyed due to visitors looting the site.
YouTube videos of the so-called “Cave of Lost Souls”, filmed in the Gwynedd quarry, were viewed by millions of people and attracted adventurous visitors to the former Gaewern slate mine, from where they posted a bunch of photographs of the “car tomb”. . .
But in their wake they left rubbish and graffiti that is now destroying the site, Anthony Taylor, 42, a spelunker from Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, who has been clearing disused mines, told the BBC.
“They’re lovely places and a lot of other people don’t need to be destroyed,” he said. “Instagram turns out to be the killer of a lot of things. People come in, take a picture, and leave [in disarray]. “
The flooded cavern, part of the Gaewern slate mine that began in 1820 and continued after a merger with the nearby Braich Goch slate mine until the 1970s, employing another two hundred people at its peak, has become a dumping ground for old cars and televisions. , microwaves and other waste.
They rediscovered it thanks to urban explorers who posted striking photographs of the sunlit scrap metal, prompting others to dare a perilous 65-foot (20-meter) descent and use boats to cross the lake to reach the scrap.
Now, Taylor and her fellow volunteers have been cleaning up the site, which is on land, and have also picked up many discarded canisters.
“It’s a weird environment, one of the strangest places in the world,” Taylor said.
“How do you see a bunch of cars underground with sunlit lamps?”
But he complained that he was forced to pass a front full of abandoned garbage bags that visitors used to keep their feet dry and spray paint on the walls, which was “horrible. ” The graffiti intensified in the main room, towards cars and trash. The objects discovered included discarded glow sticks and human feces.
“When you get to the end, there’s just a sea of boats and boats everywhere,” he said.
“It’s just disgusting, unhappy and disheartening.
“The only reason other people need to make a stopover in a place like this is because they’ve seen it on the internet and they think, ‘This is an amazing place to stop,’ so why destroy it?” he told the BBC.
“Something had to be done,” he said, estimating that his organization and others on the YouTube channel Hell on Earth had disposed of a total of 30 abandoned lifeboats.
“The other people who pass through those places, the influencers who call themselves . . . They happen there because they have inherent value. Why destroy it for everyone?
Taylor, who needs to raise awareness of the problem of old mines and fears that one day sites like Gaewern will be closed, added: “If these things continue to happen, we will all lose them forever. “