West Midlands 2022
Fauld Explorer Trail
The track you are NOT taking heads down to the Fauld Gypsum Mine, which is no longer a 'manufacting' gypsum mine and is now Britain's main quarry for 'cement rock', producing around 300,000 tonnes a year.
Cement rock is a mixture of gypsum and anhydrite, for use by the cement industry. Pure gypsum is no longer found here in suffient quantities to be viable. There's been a mine here since JC Staton's in 1838, and Peter Ford's in 1880.
In the 1930s the British government purchased many acres of disused mining tunnels to use as underground storage for ammunition and bombs. They named the facility "RAF Fauld". Up to 40,000 tonnes of high explosive and incendiary bombs, detonators and rifle ammunition were to be stored there. It was also a repair centre for defective munitions devices. Hundreds of people worked at RAF Fauld or close by in the factory, or on farms above the mine.
After finding the geocache, double check you take the correct track before heading off.
For more information on the West Midlands 2022 event, August 1-8 2022,
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