Car graveyard known as ‘Cavern of Lost Souls’ contains 1000 abandoned vehicles
- A car graveyard in North Wales has been dubbed the ‘Cavern of Lost Souls’
- Scores of abandoned cars lie rotting away inside
- Explorers have hit out at people visiting the and leaving rubbish behind
Published on Jun 13, 2024 at 12:55 PM (UTC+4)
by Claire Reid
Last updated on Jun 13, 2024 at 6:24 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
A quarry in North Wales – dubbed the Cavern of Lost Souls – has become a mass car graveyard.
The flooded mine contains scores of rusting old cars as well as banished household appliances and other rubbish.
Known as the ‘car cave’, the site used to be the Gaerwen Slate Mine which operated all the way back in 1820 until its closure in 1970.
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What’s it like inside the car graveyard?
Sometime later, the disused quarry became filled with old cars and other junk, and has been branded as ‘one of the oddest places in the world’, by caver Anthony Taylor.
Speaking to the BBC, he said: “How often do you see hundreds of cars underground with lights coming onto them from the sun?”
Erm, I think I can confidently say never.
Footage shared online shows cars piled up in a heap, deep underground.
French explorer Gregory Rivolet told WalesOnline: “There was something so surreal about this exploration: it was totally dark, wet, slippery and very dangerous – and then you see the most unexpected thing, a mountain of old cars.”
Locals hit out at unwanted attention
The flooded quarry has become a bit of a hot spot for social media influencers – keen to get an up-close view at the car graveyard for their channels.
However, Taylor has hit out at people who turn up to film and leave behind their rubbish, which includes numerous dinghies used to make their way through the quarry.
He added: “When you get to the end, it was just a sea of boats, inflatable dinghies everywhere.
“It’s just disgusting, really sad and disheartening.
“The whole reason people want to visit a place like this is because they’ve seen it on the internet and think, ‘That’s an amazing place to go and see’, so why would you trash it?”
In an attempt to clean up the quarry, Taylor and some fellow cavers decided to go in and drag out as much rubbish as they could – including around 30 discarded dinghies.
The area also isn’t particularly safe for visitors who climb in without knowing what they’re doing.
Rivolet warned against the dangers of visiting the mine, saying it was ‘very dangerous as the mine is really unstable’ and said ‘pieces of slate were falling from above our heads’.
Probably best to keep away.
Weirdly, this isn’t the first eerie car graveyard that’s turned up on social media, a YouTuber out in Japan stumbled upon one filled with classic cars, including vintage Corvettes; while a man in Germany found one in an abandoned forest that had more to it than meets the eye.
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Claire Reid is a journalist who hails from the UK but is now living in New Zealand. She began her career after graduating with a degree in Journalism from Liverpool John Moore’s University and has more than a decade of experience, writing for both local newspapers and national news sites. Across her career she's covered a wide variety of topics, including celebrity, cryptocurrency, politics, true crime and just about everything in between.