Wednesday 25th June 2025

John Cooper, Hollie London, Ed Ford and Mike Wise on site to do some more spoil removal and initiate modifications to the stepping in right hand (or left hand depending on your view of things) wall.

We met Dave Morrison while changing and undertook training on the process for opening the new gate and wooden lid before heading in.

HL and EF worked at the front, with MW on the corner and JC up top hauling and dumping. The corner was modified slightly which reduced the bucket jamming frequency and opportunities for improvement work next week were noted.

After 20 minutes or so HL advised  finding a hole at least a metre deep (isn't that a MK line?) which she proceeded to widen before swapping with EF. The draught noticeably increased at this point. EF descended and proceeded to open up the hole further and partially fill it with mud - at least according to HL :)

We lost count of buckets after the first half dozen but it is likely some 25 or so were removed in the hour allowed.

After this, JC and EF exited via the old route and attached our new wire to the end of the old and deployed it to the surface. MW started drilling while HL sat shivering in the draught, ear plugs in and trying not to drop too much loose spoil down MWs neck. Five 10mm holes were drilled, 4 along the stepped in wall and one on the 'left' of the hole. One drill bit snapped off in the drill chuck, but happily both parts were extracted and operations continued with the spare.

The new hole is impressively large and we are a good distance below the 'undercut' now. It made it quite easy to get in and do the necessary after the holes had been drilled.

After some wire fettling, HL and MW exited via the new route and met JC and EF who were relaxing on the surface. HL got the drill bag caught on the wooden lid on the way out.

Rock modification could just be heard from the surface.

JC and MW had some fun trying to shut the new gating arrangement. 

2 hours for JC and EF, 3 hours for HL and MW

Photos by HL

Mike Wise  

Before starting the session

The hole appears and the draught picks up

as above

The other end of the hole with rock bridge. One 10mm hole made in the 'wall' just above the wellie boot

as above 

overall view before rock modification

Monday 23rd June 2025

Mike Kushy and Dave Morrison. Fitting new doors, mesh and preparing for turret building. Also had a tidy up of the thistles. 2 1/2 hours. Mike.

Framework. Photo DM.

Framework. Photo DM.

Thursday 19th June 2025

Mike Kushy and David Morrison. DM fresh off the plane and straight back to digging plans. We had a little clear up and forumlated a final plan for the site. We also measured for the final gate. This will be bolted and hinged to the concrete sleeper, lifting upwards to a catch. A turret is the landowners preferred style for the cave entrance itself. 2 hours. Mike.

Wednesday 18th June 2025

Mike Kushy, Mike Wise, Mike Waterworth and Ed Ford. MK at the sharp end to begin with, filling buckets of slop, with MWi at the 1st haul, then MWa at the corner and EF top hauling. Works okay with 4, with a bit of fettling it might be possible to clear with 3 even. 4/5 people preferred though. MK and MWi swapped places after a couple of dozen buckets, then another couple of dozen cleared. Still more loose to come out but we think it's best to open the ledge up at the bottom to create more clearing space. Draught picked up around 7.30pm. 2 hours. Mike K.

Saturday 14th June 2025

Mike Kushy. Crowbarred some boulders, broke these down with pfs. Collapsed a lot of mud ready for Wednesday nighters. Mixed up two small buckets of cement and resumed stabilising work. New wire near cement dig still coiled up. Apologies for not having any photos or videos of the pit downwards, I dropped my phone whilst probing the holes. 3 1/2 hours. Mike.

Wednesday June 11th 2025

 Ed Ford, Hollie London, Mike Waterworth, Trevor Hughes and Mike Wise.

 Took in 2 daren drums of sand and with HL, EF and MWa rotating roles at the front we extracted 35 buckets of spoil which TH hauled up and dumped. MWi made some minor improvements to the surfaces to ease the upper hauling route. Spoil became progressively wetter and digging harder during the session. Draught improved noticeably towards the end. Some decisions are going to be needed regarding rock removal in the floor and on that section which forms the left hand corner, but digging should be possible for one more session.

Dig at the start of the session

Looking onwards around the left hand corner

The base of the dig at the end

Looking around the left hand corner

 Photos and video by Hollie

1.5 hours digging, 2.25 hours overall

 Mike Wise 

Saturday 7th June 2025

Michael Kousiounis and John Gisborne. Met 10am and took in drill, water and 2 daren drums with premixed cement and sand in. JG went for a look at the sharp end, then MK went in and broke up the nuisance rock from Wednesday evening. JG in the meantime started making a mix and sent the first load down to MK to carry on the wall building. A second mix was made and this was used supporting the opposite wall. Buckets filled up ready. Lots of calcite amongst the spoil at the bottom and the floor seems to be drying out well. All daren drums brought out and left with sacks in container, ready to get filled up with sand and taken back in. 2 1/2 hours. Mike.

Wednesday 4th June 2025

 Hollie London, Trevor Hughes, Mike Wise, Ed Ford, Chris Holt and John Cooper on a mission to level the bottom of Cement Dig. HL, EF and CH each spent approximately 30 minutes digging and filling buckets. The top rope attachment loop was found to have a very long tail; when this was adjusted the rope reached all the way from JC at the dumping spot to TH at the top of the shaft making hauling easy peasy especially with MW, EF and CH assisting the buckets to negotiate the corners. A new 8m rope was attached to the top rope krab and left to follow the bucket, making it easy to retrieve the bucket from JC after emptying.

EF had a 1 on 1 battle with a tooth shaped rock in the floor which was rocking to and fro but did not want to be extracted. The full time score was EF 0 - Rock 1. In extra time CH and MW took a look at it but the final score was Diggers 0 - Rock 3, with a grand total of 42 buckets removed, all of which were dumped by JC with the rest of the team rotating to different extents.

At the end MW went down to review the status at the bottom and was really pleased to find a flat floor with no downhill wriggling needed to see the 'corner' and a clearance of maybe 15" below the undercut. The floor has some rocks embedded in the mud but a bit of minor furtling indicated these could be dug out.

No-one got cold as the draught wasn't as strong as it was on the last visit, but TH and MW got persistently dripped on while positioned just above the top of the shaft.

 JC took CH out via the old cave, HL carried my bag of tools in and out - thanks HL!

Before digging photo

After digging photo - the rock mentioned above can be seen in the floor just above the krab

 2 hrs and 15 minutes

Before and after photos by HL 

 

Mike Wise