Wednesday 21st February 2024

John Cooper. Early evening trip to carry on with p&f on the large rock. Now in smaller chunks. Whether they are now small enough for Pete to build with will find out another day. Nice trickle of water flowing along and down into the floor. 1½ hours. John.

Pete Hillier and Trevor Hughes arrived on site at 19.00. Once at the dig face it was obvious that someone (John) had kindly destroyed the rock that I was going for tonight.
To give us room to work we hauled about 8 skip loads of ugly rocks to the surface enabling us to move the wall building rocks, so recently produced, away from the dig face. I attacked the next boulder forward and reduced it to a single residual piece. Quite a few smaller rocks were pulled out of the end leaving an enticing open space ahead from which emitted the usual draught.
We stopped work at 21.30 as the clarion call of the Hunters was beckoning.
The next trip (Sunday?) may, given some careful rock breaking, allow access to the c2m open passage ahead.
Good luck to the Sunday team. Trevor.

Sunday 18th February 2024

John Cooper and Trevor Hughes. John took across 2 bags of sand and a bag of cement, bringing back 3 of the scaffold poles which have been left in the digging shed at Upper Pitts. There are still 5 left on site. Trevor used p&f on the large rock ahead whilst I ferried some rocks out to the surface. 2½ hours. John.

The dig face  after yesterday’s session. Photo TH.

The top rock has been reduced in size, then split in half vertically and the right hand (slightly smaller) half reduced to spoil/walling stone. The left hand half has been turned 90deg with the sheared face uppermost ready for the next visitors to further reduce. The debris from yesterday is somewhat haphazardly stacked adjacent to the new wall and needs to be climbed on cautiously. Rather splendid open voids can be seen ahead and the whole area draughts well. A lot more work needs to be done to 1) reduce the residual top rock and 2) demolish the lower rock - which does move slightly. All this took 2 1/2 hours with JC nobly acting as my assistant and spoil remover. A decent pile of rock was brought out to the surface and the concreting stocks replenished by John. Trevor.