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.