7/12/21 Storm Barra made no difference to the water levels...

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

2hrs

James and Mike went to the end, the water levels were unchanged from last week, despite Storm Barra causing a bit of rain in the last day. James dug first continuing down into the floor where Estelle and Dave had been digging last week, pulling out more gravel and rocks, not clear it’s at the bottom, but definitely a different floor to what we’ve been used to. Estelle turned up about 30mins in with buckets being backed up at the inside end of the railway and hauled them out and emptied. At changeover digger to Mike, who continued more forwards on digging, Jon came outside and everyone else moved down one apart from the 2 at the bottom, Fran appeared with about 30mins to go and helped Jon with emptying. 42 skips filled during the evening. We need to look at getting some replacement trugs soon as many of them are splitting and handles going now.

30/11/21 driest we've seen it!

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon, Dave Walker, Jon Riley, Stu Lindsay, Adrian Miles

2hrs

Estelle went in first and dug around 18 buckets, focussing on digging down. There was no fresh water in the dig beyond the dam and the water before the dam was about the lowest we have seen it all year. The weather has been kind to us for a while, which is great for continued digging. Going down saw the usual layers of multi-coloured sediment and yellow false floor and eventually hit a gravelly layer and some rock, which was probably wall rather than boulders. Dave then went in and dug, continuing down and he found the definite right-hand wall, not sure we’ve got to the bottom in the middle, but he then moved onto digging forwards. Estelle moved to the taking the skips from the digger to the haul - an annoying roof pendant had to be beaten into submission after stabbing in the back a few times! It’s now much easier to walk across the metalwork. After around 15 bags, Adrian swapped in and dug so fast no-one could keep up! Packed up and headed to pub!

We worked the dig with one in dig, 1 taking across the puddle grill to the lower haul and one on lower haul, one top of, one doing steps, one doing outside haul and one emptying – could do with one more on the steps really, as with 7 and the digging being easy, you are going to get a bottle neck somewhere!