19/9/23

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon, Chris Smart, Greg Horveth

1hr 45mins

James and Greg dug the end, with James working around the big boulder. Lots of red clay/gravel coming out of that dig, while Greg dug up in the aven which has the proper sticky mud, which sticks like glue to the buckets, particularly when they start out wet rather than dried out! The air was a Little thicker than sometimes, but not too bad, just aware that it wasn't as clear, but we did have similar last year at this time too. 39 buckets of spoil moved out of the cave in 2 stages, some of the spoil bagged, but the bags are holey now so need to get some more from Cheddar Ales soon. After scraping the buckets, we headed to the Hunters. 

12/9/23

Estelle Sandford, Mike Moxon, Adrian Miles, Stu Lindsay

2hrs
Estelle brought along 10 new buckets (£3.94 each inc VAT from CRS) and we packed up the 29 already there and headed down to dig. Stu was making some measurements to make the climb up the bag wall safer as it's very slippery and we also measured the grids (18ft) for changing them to conveyor belt. On arrival at the dig, it was noted that the large boulder above the straight on dig in the roof, was now on the floor! Several of us had tried to bring this down before and assumed it was wall as it didn't come down with much beating, but clearly the clay had been doing a good job of keeping it glued in place until it started to dry out. It had brought down a lot of mud/clay as well, so it only took around 30mins between Adrian digging the right hand aven/dig into 4 buckets at a time and Estelle and Mike clearing the clay around the boulder. There is still quite a bit of clay left. 
Just as we finished filling buckets, Stu joined us. He initially hauled the grids and the rest of us did the other spots to get the buckets to the chamber by the railway. Then we all shuffled up to exit the buckets out and empty them. In hindsight taking down bags and adding more to the ex-pool chamber would have been more sense with the low numbers tonight as it was blooming hard work for all of us and the air wasn't great tonight either. Headed to Waldegrave for much needed refreshments after.

5/9/23

Estelle Sandford, Jon Riley, Mike Moxon, Duncan Butler

1.5hrs
James had injury to his head, so unable to wear a helmet, no-one else available so just the 4 of us. Duncan and Mike dug, forward and right respectively. Right probably has a couple more digging sessions to finish clearing, forward continues to go along and down. Only did the 1 round of 30 buckets before heading to the Waldegrave.

29/8/23

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

2hrs
A welcome back to Dave to digging, he was impressed by how much further we'd progressed. He dug the side aven briefly before Stu got to the end and took over digging that one. Estelle dug forwards, concentrating on digging out the floor as there had been some tunnelling going on. The floor dropped by about 2 foot all in and boulders removed as well. Need to carry on clearing out all, but looks like it is dropping a bit there. 50 buckets were taken to the top in stages and emptied out. We're now down to 30 buckets with another handle failing tonight. Headed to Waldy after.