25/8/20

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

2hrs, plus an extra 1.5hrs for Stu and Dave

Stu arrived early again to cap more boulders in the chamber, but this was a bit fruitless as with Storm Ellen and Francis having gone through in the last week, all that could be seen was the tops of a few of the larger boulders, the rest of the chamber was under about 2.5ft of water. He capped a few of the larger ones that were just above that area and then headed out soon after. Dave had arrived a bit earlier too and had helped with clearing and Jon went in next to break any boulders he could. Jon then moved onto digging the ceiling, Dave swapped out further up the chain with Fran who also did some digging in the roof and floor where the grill and puddle is. Lots of roof coming down from a very drippy aven. We came out around 8:30 to get to the Waldegrave in time for another ‘eat out to help out’ half price meal.

If we don’t see more dry weather to dry the chamber out, we’re going to have to look at pumping options – looking at 2 pumps, sludge pump for the end to bring up to the end of the railway to perhaps a water butt we can install there, and then another pump to bring to the surface, but this doesn’t need to deal with sludge then.