8/1/19

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

2hrs

No pumping required, Mike had brought a metal grill to go over the hole and once we'd leveled the bottom end this proved to be very good for hauling and we only needed 2 people below the grill, one digging and one transporting/hauling, to get the skips hauled up. Therefore we were able to work to get everything out in one go. Mike dug first and then Jon, before Dave took over. Dave had proper dig fever and dug for the remainder of the evening. Just under 70 buckets hauled out and a few bags filled as well. The end is looking interesting - to the right is an alcove, which is full of mud and being cleared. To the left boulder stacked in mud. Down to the puddle, we are not digging fully down at the moment as we don't want the water to end up at the end. Hopefully the weather will hold and allow us to keep on digging.

6/1/19 - showing Tav and Nick the dig for Complete Caves book

Estelle Sandford, Robin Taviner, Nick Hawkes

2hrs

Tav visiting towards his work on Complete Caves and both wanted to take a look around in daylight. Showed them around all the smaller 7 holes before getting kitted and heading down the bigger 8th to show them the current dig and the higher series. Tav seemed quite impressed by what we had dug out and his comment was that 'he had been in a lot of sh*tholes in the past and this was definitely not a sh*thole'! Nick had quite a good look at the geology and all seems quite interesting. Noted that the end puddle had not increased at all since last week's digging so unlikely to need pumping before we dig on Tuesday, also hole in the floor hadn't drained. James Begley joined us as we were exiting the cave and we went and saw Kevin and the inside bones and geology before a coffee and chat.

Happy new year dig! 1/1/19

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

3.5hrs

Afternoon/early evening session. Used the pump again to get the end water levels to a point where we could dig the end, although the slurry in front of it is rather horrible and muddy… The metal ramp that Mike put in it has helped though so we don’t have to wallow in slurry. While the pump was doing it’s magic, we cleared the bang remains from the hole in the floor, removing a lot of rock scattered around and James dug out the hole to a point where it was sort of draining the little pool in the bottom. We had brought over some bits of wood/metalwork to aim to cover the hole so we can drag the skip over the top, but that was a bit of a fail as it was a lot wider than we had estimated, so hoping mike can get another piece of metalwork like what is in the mud at the end. Once cleared, we then went to digging the end, with Mike having first shift, Estelle second and Jon third. The end is definitely changing, it’s a lot wider and some really big boulders on the left, but another aven/roof hole looks like it is on the right above us. Passage now about 6ft wide by about 3ft high, although suspect if we dug out the slurry, it would be deeper… James got some mud in his eye and had to give up to try and clean it out, so we emptied all the buckets and all adjourned to the Waldegrave.

12/12/18

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

2hrs

Kevin had got us a pump, so we set to the job of getting it set up, firstly rolling out a rather bendy and lively length of pipe from the dig to the surface, then feeding the electricity and pump to the water. Pumping then commenced and after about 20mins it was looking quite good and we could have done some digging. Looks like we now have a way of draining! In other news, the bang was so good it filled the hole with gravel, we’ve not touched clearing this year, also the steps look good from last week’s cementing efforts, we need to add more. J

4/12/18

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

2hrs

continued work on cementing the steps (and dug out the next one up) while Stu prepared another bang on the hole in the passage. Kevin is sorting us a pump to use which should be available by the weekend, so hopefully we can then drain the end, but we will need to put something over the hole we've created then! Bang went off well, hopefully plenty of rock to clear on next visit.

27/11/18

Estelle Sandford, Jonathan Riley, Dave Walker

2.5hrs

cleared the bang out of the hole and passageway and broke up some rocks and removed all from the cave apart from the larger rocks which can be used for wall building. The hole is quite impressive - about a metre deep and width of the passage and about 1/2m wide in the middle. Really awkward digging as have to reach to toes, can't bend properly!