20/11/18

Estelle Sandford, Dave Walker, Stu Lindsay, Jonathan Riley

2.5hrs

Looked at the end, it’s still about welly deep in water. Plan from last week was to drill and bang the hole in the floor half way down, either to give us a way on or at least to perhaps give us a drain hole as it does drain slowly when we fill it with buckets of water. Stu was left drilling holes while Estelle, Dave and Jon dug out the steps a bit more and carried on cementing in stone to hopefully prevent subsidence if the dig floods again this winter. Used up pretty much all of the cement and also need more dust now and exited. Satisfactory dull thud from the bang which we set off on exit.

13/11/18

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon, Jonathan Riley, Dave Walker, Mike Moxon, Stu Lindsay, Phil Hendy

2.5hrs

End still lovely and wet, puddle about welly height. Phil came along to have  a look – first time he’s seen it since he introduced us to Kevin and the dig way back in 2012! He helped with moving buckets around. Top where the bags are is getting really slippery and James fell off at one point. The end is changing but with the amount of water it’s hard to dig, but gone from high and narrow to wide and getting lower (we think, although hard to gauge the floor depth with the level of water…) At the start of the dig, we again poured some 4-5 buckets of water in the hole in the floor part way up and all drained, so we are going to blow this up and dig it out – either it may provide a way on or if not, it may provide somewhere we can drain water off too…

6/11/18

Estelle Sandford, Jonathan Riley, Dave Walker, Stu Lindsay

2hrs

Stu brought his drill so after we'd dug it out of the water a bit and tried to move it a bit, the big boulder in the puddle was capped and broken up. There is quite a large puddle at the end which is not draining now, in some places close to welly deep!

Estelle had changed wellies from last week to non holey ones, so went to the end to dig. Filled most of the available buckets and also pulled a lot of mud and rock from the wall. The end is mostly boulders held together by clay/mud now and pulled out a lot of rock, some of it was broken up, but many moved as they are to the steps. We have a lot of good rock now ready for building into the steps. The end is now widening a bit and seems to be lowering a bit, definitely changing again and a lot of rock... We did try putting water down the hole part way down the passage - 4 buckets and it was full - it did drain through the evening, but slowly.

Next week will depend on numbers and wetness of the end!

30/10/18

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Jonathan Riley, Dave Walker, Mike Moxon, Nick Hawkes

2hrs

After the bottom step was effectively completed last week, with Nick there too, we went to dig the mud from around the rock that had fallen previously and we'd brought down from the roof and then the end. about a foot or so deep of water at the end, so quite sloppy digging. Removed quite a lot of buckets doing it in stages as to start with we were only 5 as Mike was late, but with 6, it's not really enough now, we do need 7 to go all the way from dig to surface. Need to work out what to do with the remainder of the steps...

23/10/18 from Mike Moxon

Mike Moxon, Dave Walker, Jonathan Riley

Just the 3 of us. We lowered extra sand / dust down the entrance & took concrete makings to the top of the steps, to mix there. After checking the water level (bit higher than last week), Dave & Jon completed walling the bottom step, whilst Mike removed 17 part buckets of mud from the top of the boulder at the end, these were dumped on the pile between concreting. Tidied up before heading to the Hunters'. Will need some more rock & concrete for further steps.

16/10/18

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon, Dave Walker, Jonathan Riley, Fran Campbell

2hrs

took some cement, dust and sand down and took stone back in from the spoil dump to build a small wall/bottom step to help build up and protect the loose looking boulder on the right. Did as much as we could in a couple of hours and then headed to the pub! Will need to continue the work next week and then decide on what to do next with the steps. Some water at the end and Mike brought down more roof mud.