Monday 19th August

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon, Stu Lindsay
2hrs
Arrived to find a double length of ladder left for us by Kevin. 6 bags removed between the two holes, 3 from each. Bigger hole now getting really hard to fill the bags and is below the reach of the digger arm, so we may have to consider moving the a frame and using buckets now. Is heading away from house direction into what looks like a rift. Other hole still got a lot to come out!

Monday 12th August

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon and Alex Gee
2hrs
Working on both digs on holes 5 and 6 again. 5 is getting quite hard to fill the bag without it jamming in the rocks now so we’ve had to bash a few bits off, but still going down and still plenty of mud to clear. 6 is still quite a way above 5 in depth and going down nicely, was slightly puddled at start. Alex came for a look and gave us a hand with the digging for the evening and also had a look at the finds bins. Digger still needing manual switch off.

Wednesday 7th August

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon
1.5hrs
We were going to go down HLIS, but as no bags at the Belfry and no drill/plug and feathers sorted, we left Mark and Stu to go and take some photos and retrieve the ladders and rope from down there and headed over to Cutlers as we’d not managed to get over there since Kevin back from holidays. Arrived and met Kevin and he went and fixed the pump wire that he thought was the problem with the digger and we started digging. Got 2 bags out of each of the two holes, but digger not stopping still so we called Kevin back and he had a look and showed us how to turn it off manually as the electric part of the pump isn’t actually working! Main dig draining, but the mud was quite wet, other dig not draining yet. Pond even lower with little rain but Little Grebe’s have chicks now!