Some tour guides are summer jobbers. Others recite from a script. At Arigna, on the other hand, visitors are led by bona fide miners who once made a living squashing their bodies into treacherous gashes inside the mountain. The 40-minute tour offers a first-hand insight into life in the old coal mines, an unimaginably dangerous environment in which miners were paid by the ton. “There was no slacking here,” as Maurice Cullen, put it. It’s a brilliantly personal experience; one that delves as deeply into the miners as the 350 million year-old geology of the area.
Details: Tel: 071 964 6466; arignaminingexperience.ie