23/5/23 back digging again, no longer flooded!

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon, Jon Riley

2hrs

Arrived to find many of the buckets still part full of slimy sludgy water from the flooding and stagnating and sadly 3 dead fledglings and a dead rabbit between them too. We emptied all the buckets and headed down to dig. The hole at the end is now around 18" of water below the 'neck' of the rift, so heading down nicely and Jon said the pool above was at the grill last week and that was a good foot lower too. Estelle had taken down a piece of conveyor belt a few weeks ago and now it had drained, that was put over the hole in the floor to stop us getting too much spoil down it whilst digging above it. James dug, he started off by clearing flood debris spoil and then dug forward to the right first and then headed more left as the evening went on. Couple of rocks came out and there is still a mix of rock and clays, quite hard in places, so not the fastest to dig out. He filled about 30 of the 35 or 36 (not sure) buckets - quite a few were very stinky from stagnated water, hopefully by next time they will smell better! Whilst he'd been digging, the rest of us filled a few buckets with flood debris spoil in the passaged to clear up a bit and Mike and Jon managed to get most of the buckets to the top of the steps and were hauling the railway by the time Estelle and James came up with the last 4. Emptied all the buckets and lay them out to dry. Hopefully we're back digging every week now for a good while, could do with more people as only 4 of us was very hard work! Headed for sustenance in the Waldegrave after.