Day Trip #3 The Man Engine in Cornwall

The Man Engine is an amazing tribute to Cornwall's mining history and I loved that I got to take the children along to see this amazing 10ft plus man engine because I really thought of him as a real work of art not just a tribute or something to go down in history for it's height and meaning, I thought it was wonderfully made.

The Man Engine came to our local town after visiting quite a few towns before ours, it was actually nice to have something like this come to us rather than missing out because I couldn't afford the travel (usually the case) 

Loaded on the lorry before being bought out to show off

We waited in the crowd for about half an hour before the choir sung Camborne Hill and other songs and there was a brief talk about why The Man Engine was built, plus a moments silence for those miners who lost their lives all those years ago. He then slowly rose up, overlooking us all. We didn't see a great view of him at first but after 15 minutes people started to leave so we walked around town to get him front facing and it was amazing!

Overlooking Camborne

The children were mesmerised by him and I was really impressed by him too. He was able to move his arms up and down, his head side to side and accepted a giant Cornish Pasty from the towns Mayor which was pretty cool. As more people left we got closer and closer until eventually we saw him slowly coming down which was cool because we could see his face and helmet and all the smaller features you miss when you're further away,

The Man Engine being collected to go onto his next town


Midge and A posing, they loved The Man Engine!

After we saw him being loaded back onto the large lorry we browsed some shops and got some lunch from one of the local bakeries. Midge wanted a sausage roll and Little A really wanted a proper pasty like 'the big robot had' so that he got (and the last one much to the grown men in the queues disappointment!!)


Midge enjoying her sausage rolls

Little A extremely pleased at getting the last pasty!

I then treated us all to a hot chocolate. We got to sit for a bit and chat about what we had seen and I got to explain a bit more about why people had built The Man Engine. I'm sure it went in one ear and out the other but at the time it was nice to discuss! We went home shortly after to relax and look through the leaflets we had picked up. I'm putting one in the book I'm making for my American pen pal, hopefully she'll think it's pretty impressive too.

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