The bizarre underground car graveyard ‘influencers’ are ‘destroying’

An eerie cave containing a mound of dumped cars and TVs has been blighted by rubbish and graffiti after going viral on YouTube. The former Gaewern slate mine contains the remains of cars that were dumped underground and a group of cavers recently made the perilous trip into the chasm to clean it up after “influencers” left it in a terrible state.

The ‘car graveyard’ is located 65ft below the surface at an abandoned mine on private land near Corris Uchaf, Gwynedd. After the mine closed, it became a dumping ground for disused cars and TVs which formed the scrap heap first highlighted in a popular YouTube video in 2018.

Since then it has been subject to further visits by travel vloggers – and when Anthony Taylor, a caver from Aberystwyth, visited recently he found the site had been disrespected and vandalised. Get the best user experience with WalesOnline’s Premium app on Apple or Android

Mr Taylor said that, from around 30ft into the cave, “awful” spray paint was visible, getting worse closer to the cars. There, he also found a “sea” of inflatable dinghies (presumably used to cross the water in the cavern) and rubbish on the floor including glow sticks and human faeces.

“It’s just disgusting, really sad and disheartening,” Mr Taylor told the BBC. “Instagram seems to be the killer of a lot of things… 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?” For the latest Welsh news delivered to your inbox sign up to our newsletter

Volunteers, pictured here, organised a clean-up of the graffiti(Image: Anthony Taylor)

The descent into the cave is difficult and should only be undertaken by competent cavers(Image: Anthony Taylor)

Mr Taylor initially moved as many of the dinghies out as possible before returning with a group of six volunteers on March 22. In a video on the Hell on Earth YouTube channel entitled ‘Influencers Have Destroyed This Once Beautiful Cave’ the volunteers find mounds of rubbish including more than a dozen deflated dinghies.

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