Wednesday 9th July

 Mike Wise, Ed Ford and Sam Hill. Carried in 3 daren drums of sand and EF also took a 1/2 drum of cement. We dropped all this at Cement Dig and went to have a look at the scaff structure. We agreed it looked sound enough with the bar ends pinned or blocked and cemented and the descending block and flake adequately supported. Mulling over whether to dig here or endure purgatory at Puddle, it was decided by unanimous vote to continue digging down here. SH took pole position having not seen it since early April, MW went to the top and EF heroically shuttled between the shaft top and the awkward boulder half way up the slope carrying 2 buckets at a time and unjamming pretty much every bucket at least once in different locations. Between 19:00 and 20:30 we moved out 26 buckets at which point we decided to call it an evening. We are all still alive and EF is clearly made of heroic stuff!

 Photos by N/A

 2 1/2 hours 

Mike Wise 

Tuesday 8th July 2025

am. John Cooper spent a couple of hours trying to turn triangular blocks into rectangular building stones. Running out of nice rocks; filling trailer with rubbish rocks. John.

Monday 7th July 2025

am. John Cooper spent a couple of hours trying to turn triangular blocks into rectangular building stones. John.

Saturday 5th July 2025

Mike Kushy and John Gisborne. Met at 10am and took in tackle sack of scaff' clips, angle grinder, drill and small tools for the work. MK went to the dig face first to assess any movement, then JG went in to look at what scaffolding work was needed. The aim was to make it safe, but also allow enough room to still dig. We opted to close up the 'up cave' area as there's no way we're making our way horizontally back under ourselves. JG set about drilling for 16mm threaded pins and starting the scaffold whilst MK went back to surface to get more pole. 6 x 2m poles brought in. It's feeling a heck of a lot safer already so we made some cement mixes to build up around the scaff' bar ends. Another couple of weekends work yet before back to clearing. Amazing draught today seemingly coming from everywhere! It looks as though we may be on top of an E/W rift about 2ft wide, clearing back the opposite side to our proud solid wall and a little lower it's looking a lot like one big wall...but time will tell. 1 daren drum of sand in cave and all empty drums took to surface to be refilled, also need to take in water for mixing. 4 1/2 hours. Mike.

JG fitting scaffold supports. Photo MK.

Looking North into dig base. Photo MK.

Looking South into dig base. Photo MK.

Friday 4th July 2025

John Cooper, Mike Kousiounis and David Morrison. Tuska and Kushy spent the whole day on the surface building up the entrance turret. John did a couple of hours in the afternoon ferrying scaffold bars and clamps to site as well as topping up water for cement mixing. John.