The Log

First thing, Stu and Tony went down and worked on removing the rock shelf in the floor. Meanwhile, on the surface, Tim started working on a door for the tea-room to keep out the drifting snow which he is convinced is on the way at any minute.

Then followed lunch and a nattering session sitting in the winter sun on the spoil-heap, very enjoyable and suprisingly warm.

In the afternoon, Mike and Alice arrived and work continued on the tea-room door, using a sheet of ply and gate hinges donated to the cause by Tim. By 1430, the ventilation system had cleared the air sufficiently for work to start underground and so Stu, Tony and Alice went down. Stu and Tony alternated as digger and haulier, while Alice dragged the filled bags to the base of the shaft whence they were winched to the surface by Mike and dumped by Tim. Altogether 10 kibbles of spoil were hauled out.

By 1615, the underground party surfaced for a tea break, this time with slices of rhubarb and custard roll. Thus refreshed, Tony and Stu went underground for a second shift and attacked the remains of the rock shelf in the floor. We surfaced at 1900 hrs to a shivering Tim, a light frost and fine starry night with a crescent moon shining between Venus and Jupiter.

The way on is still down in the floor, we are progressing, but slowly. No photographs, too busy digging.

To start with, Tony went to the bottom of the dig, with Stu at the top of the drop and Tim stationed in the chamber, bag hauling. On the surface, Chris drove the winch, Mike was on the bank and Alice barrowed and tipped. About ¾ of the way through the session, Tony and Stu changed places.

By lunch time, we had shifted 7 kibbles of mixed rock and gravel and exposed something that looked horribly like solid rock covering part of the floor floor on the south east side. This rock enters from the south and slopes down to the west at a steep angle. It may well be a continuation of the bedding plane structure seen in the chamber above. Whatever it is, it is considerably in the way. At the eastern end of the dig a narrow (15cm ish) open rift has appeared, which seems to continue for at least one metre. Hopefully, this will get wider as we go deeper.

In the afternoon session, Stu and Tony went below again and continued digging, but without much success as the the rock floor made it impossible to squat down effectively and the digging was head down and rather uncomfortable. We only managed a further three kibbles. The rock 'floor' rang flat when struck and was visibly cracked, but attempts to chisel it, hammer it or bar it to bits were fruitless, so we gave up and retired to the tea room and consumed date & walnut cake, chocolate donuts and french fancies.

An aside: Chris brought out copies of the recently published 'Subterranean Britain - Bath Stone Quarries' by Derek Hawkins (Folly Books 2011), I bought one, it's a great book - highly recommended.

A mixed session, working on much needed improvements to the tea room and then a swift trip underground to fracture some rock.

Had tea and battenburg cake then left at 1645

The session started with early birds Stu and Tony and they wasted no time on the surface and quickly got below ground into some warmth. Tony started digging at the bottom of the pit, passing spoil up to Stu who bagged it then periodically dragged the bags back into the chamber. After a short while Alice came down and took over the hauling and stacking in the chamber.

At mid-day, we had a hauling session with Chris as winchman. Meanwhile Tony attacked the south wall at the bottom of the pit with lump hammer and three chisel points and removed a 900 × 150 × 300 mm section of wall (sounds more impressive in millimetres). At this stage, the west end of the bottom of the pit is beginning to look more interesting as it is naturally wider than the rest (some 400 mm - almost cavernous) and the fill is loose as we are beginning to get down to the natural level. The wall on the north side also appears to be undercutting. We just hope that this continues to be the case.

Most of the afternoon digging was by Stu and then Nick, while Tony hauled the paint tin and Roger dragged bags to the bottom of the shaft. On the surface, Chris was engineman and Alice acted as banksperson. By the end of the session, we had removed 14 kibbles of spoil and the base of the pit was just over 4 metres below the bolt belay at the the top. The spoil was still largely digging debris from the walls, but a certain amount appeared to be in-situ fill.

Finally, Chris provided cherry cake, Stu brought an apple pie and Nick took samples of the vein-stone away for analysis.

P.S. Mike Wilson sent in a Doctor's note to excuse him from digging - he has 'flu.

Stu arrived at the dairy with a large pallet (8 × 4 ft approx) to be used as a floor for part of the shelter. This took a bit of getting over to the dig.

In the morning session we enlarged the rift at the bottom of the drop and then, while waiting for the air to clear, we mixed several loads of concrete using the "tossing it in a blanket" texchnique as our mixer is in use off-site. We used the concrete to secure the threshold and the door corner post of the digging shelter.

In the afternoon, Stu, Tim and Tony went underground. Tony tried digging at the face, but his knee objected so he swapped places with Stu. The session continued with Stu digging at the bottom of the pit, Tony above him hauling the paint can and tipping it into bags, while Tim hauled the bags through RDR and up to the base of the engine shaft.

On the surface, Chris drove the winch and Mike used the rock debris to make gravel paths across the mud of the depression. He was helped later by Alice, who arrived in the afternoon having walked over from Cheddar.

At the end of the session, we had a comfortable working space at the bottom of the pit and had lowered the floor something in the region of half a metre. There is a hint of an open space against the back wall and clean-washed blackened rocks can still be seen behind a narrow slot running back under RD Rift. We finished at about 1700 hrs with a 'snow flake' cake, provided as ever by Tim.

Continuation of mucking out at the bottom of the drop. In the morning Jeff, Stu and Tony went down, Jeff and Stu started digging and Tony drilled and fixed re-bar pins into the rock to secure the ventilation pipe in the chamber and to the roof of RD rift. This done, the digging settled down with Jeff and Stu alternating in the drop, using a 2.5 litre paint tin to haul the spoil out. Tony bagged the resultant and piled the bags at the base of the shaft. Chris Batstone came down (rather stiffly because of a sick knee) and pronounced that RD Rift is indeed Batstone sized.

At mid-day, we had a hauling session and shifted the six bags from the morning's digging.

In the afternoon, Chris, Jeff and Tony went down. This 'crack[ed]' team had 3½ fully functional knees between them, so perhaps one shouldn't expect too much of them.

The bottom of the drop was seen to be narrowing down again, with a mixed fill of clay and gravel. Most, if not all, of the latter was from the rock walls. The small rift that we had seen before, now appeared more clearly as some 5 inches (120mm) wide, running back under the line of RDR for some 2 ft (600mm) to end in a small void filled with blackened rocks about the size of loaves of bread. This may well be the bottom end of the 'bedding-plane' like feature seen in the floor of the chamber at the entrance to RDR. For the time being it is as well to ignore this; if we dig into it we are just going to end up doing more shoring, perish the thought.

Jeff and Tony both tried digging at the bottom of the drop, but we were working in an area only wide enough to get a boot into and it seemed a bit of a pointless exercise to continue without enlarging the digging area.

By the end of the session, we had filled three bags of spoil, so these were hauled up the shaft by hand and we are counting these as one more kibbles worth for the record. Is this cheating??

We ended up the day eating Dundee cake (from Jeff), jam doughnuts and then custard filled doughnuts (both from Chris). Good start to the year.

We had a rather late start (1130) and I think that we all felt rather slow and heavy for some reason. Eventually, we got started and spent the rest of the morning in a deep and meaningful dialogue with the rock walls at the bottom of the drop ...

... In the afternoon, Jeff and Stu went down to muck out the debris and they sent up six kibbles of spoil. There was little else of note except that Tim had a disagreement with my petrol stove and created a spectacular fireball about one metre in diameter. This set fire to the safety notice attached to the petrol pipe of the stove, completely blackened the kettle and filled the shelter with floating soots. Petrol stoves have real entertainment value, better than these mamby-pamby gas abominations, which just sit there and hiss.

Jeff, Stu, Mike, Roger,
Annie & Alice drinking
hot Gluhwein

First thing Annie And Roger went down the shaft and produced a line survey of the dig. Then Annie, Roger and Mike ran a 70mm (ish) I.D flexible pipe from the surface to the end of the dig and Tony fixed a VERY old Hoover "Dustette" vacuum cleaner at the surface end of the pipe. All junctions made sound and secure using rainwater downpipe inserts on the inside of the pipes and a liberal plastering of gaffer tape on the outside.

This done, we softened up the constriction at the bottom of the drop, turned on the ventilation system and sat round the shaft drinking hot Gluhwein for half an hour or so.

Annie, Jeff, Roger and Stu then went underground and sent up 12 Kibbles of muck, lowering the floor by some 3 ft, (or a metre if you prefer that sort of thing). Unfortunately, the way on down is still closed by broken rock and the walls of the drop need more enlargement before we can dig it out effectively. However, the good news is that my Sunday-Best crow bar, last seen on 23^rd November has been recovered.

More surface building work - Quote from Trevor Hughes What! Are you building a village there?. Well, not quite, but we do need more shelter.

Stu and Mike fixing the shelter

We started at the Belfry where Stu, Tim and I loaded sheets of wriggly tin into Stu's van. We then drove in convoy to the dairy unit at Wigmore where we spent some time discussing the best way to get the wriggly tin and other bulky items over to the dig. We thought that the field was still sufficiently frozen to allow Tim to drive to the dig towing the wriggly tin sheets behind his truck. This was not entirely a good idea. It got the heavy items over to the dig, but it did plough up the field rather badly and we had been trying to avoid this.

Over at the dig, we met up with Mike and later Alice, who arrived with an emergency supply of screws. Mike got up on the roof of the new shelter and laid down two layers of heavy duty polythene sheeting. He then fixed the sheets of tin on top.

Stu had found a couple of sheets of perspex, so he cut a slot in the west wall and fitted on the perspex as a window. This done, we installed a table in the shelter and immediately set up the stove on top and started boiling the kettle for some tea. Meanwhile Stu cut another slot in the south wall for a second window and filled all our cups with sawdust. That's team work for you.

The original plan for today had been to start work on the winter digging shelter and then later to do a bit of rock removal at the end of RDR. However, things didn't go quite according to plan.

First thing, jeff and I fitted a new fuel tap to Stu's generator to replace the one that had suddenly sheared off. This done we had power for Stu's circular saw.

Stu, Jeff and Tim
setting up the first panel

With this out of the way we started work on building the shelter against the south wall of the digging hut / engine house. The shelter was made out of 8 × 4 sheets of ply supplied by Stuart. It was a rather rough and ready construction with the sheets of ply bolted and screwed to 90 mm square timber uprights at the corners. Tim did most of the fixing and the rest of us did most of the holding, which is the difficult part.

Stu and Jeff
cutting a ply panel

As the work progressed, the weather deteriorated and the wind increased. We realised that the structure would need to be complete, roof and all before it would be safe to leave it. So we abandoned the idea of working underground, which was probably just as well as during the afternoon, the skies opened in an incredible downpour, the depression quickly became flooded and an impressive roar of falling water could be heard at the top of the shaft. During the height of this downpour, Tim produced a Christmas cake and Stu some mince pies.

Christmas cake and mince pies

At some stage during the late afternoon, I fell off the foundation wall for the new shelter and landed in an untidy heap on the water and rocks below. This made the remainder of the day seem a bit more unpleasant than it actually was.

Eventually we fitted the roof sheets which made the structure secure enough to leave it for the time being, so we packed up and walked back across the sodden field.

Footnote, Mon 12^th
I spent a happy 4½ hours in the A & E department of Weston Hospital being X-Rayed for suspected fractured patella [thank goodness it wasn't], then being stitched up - great fun. But I won't be climbing the ladder in the shaft for a bit.

A day of horrible weather and rather slow progress. Jeff and Stu went down first and started clearing the rubble out of the drop, Jeff in the hole passing the stuff back to Stu who bagged it. I followed them down a little later, then Jeff and I took turns in working in the drop.

We concentrated on chiselling the cracked up rock off the walls of the drop to enlarge it sufficiently to allow us to squat down and reach the material on the floor. This was slow work and rather tedious, but at least we had a better time of it than the team on the surface who were battered with strong cold winds and intermittent heavy showers of rain while dealing with the spoil.

In the afternoon Stu had a few capping sessions to try to cut into the walls. He had somewhat mixed success with this as clay partings within the rock made it difficult to set the caps off. He did remove a creditable amount of rock for his pains.

By the end of the day, we had managed to produce a narrow shaft, almost 2 metres deep, still solidly choked at the bottom. We did, however, uncover a narrow slot (about 7cm wide) off to the side, which trends back under RD Rift and there is a slight hint of a cold draught.

The dig is putting up a good fight, but what the hell, Stu brought some coffee cake for tea.

Stu and I went and started work on clearing and enlarging the top of the drop. We had managed to block this entirely with rubble and it was great fun to clear it working head down and passing the stuff back to Stu. After clearing most of the fines, I started lifting out the large blocks. Unfortunately as I was pulling on a key stone, it slipped from my hand and precipitated a collapse of most of the remaining debris down into the rift below. The way on is blocked AGAIN.

In the afternoon, Stu and I cleared the stacked bags from Wed 23^rd and today's spoil totalling 17 kibbles in total, largely broken rock. Stu then started capping bits off the left wall of RD Rift to improve access and I dismantled the traverse abomination and sent it to the surface.

All three underground, clearing the remains of the rock that had overhung the drop. We bagged the broken rock and stacked the bags at the base of the shaft ready for Sunday's session.

The shaft/rift/way-on needs more widening before we can get down it. The best estimate puts it something in the region of 200 millibatstones.

Jeff did try knocking some of the nodules off the wall with my Sunday Best crow-bar but only succeeded in dropping it down the hole. I guess he owes me some beer for that.

P.S. There was a log entry number 129, but it was only about surface house-keeping and the like and was altogether too boring to inflict on anyone.

The weekend of the JRat digging award combined with the celebration of the 75^th anniversary of the Mendip Rescue Organization.

This year the digging award was won by a Scottish team for their work at a cave near Applecross, Ross-shire known variously as Flood Resurgence No 2, FRN2, or now more properly as Uamh Nam Fior Iongantais (the cave of true wonders).

A small contingent of the GSG had travelled south to attend the award and we had managed to inveigle one of them, Ross Davidson into spending a day at the dig. Stu, Ross and I met up at the Belfry and loaded some 8 × 4 sheets of ply into Stu's van. More material for building our winter shelter.

At the dig, we were joined by the rest of the team and Ross and I went down and installed the wire traverse. This done, we were joined by Stu; then Ross and Stu started digging at the rear of the chamber while I started drilling into the obstructive rock at the head of the drop with the intention of eventually removing it.

It very soon emerged that the traverse system was A.F.U. (a technical term indicating that it didn't work very well) and it was abandoned in favour of passing the bags of spoil by hand. Nine kibbles of semi-liquid goo were sent to the surface where they were fielded by Chris on the winch, Alice on the bank and Tim as barrow-man.

The day's digging ended with the team sitting round a gently smoking shaft while drinking tea and eating stollen cake.

The traverse head.

Digging from home! Making up a traverse wire and Blondin to move bags of spoil from the back of the chamber up to the base of the shaft. This is just a temporary measure, but it is likely to be less fraught than manhandling the kibble in and out of the chamber using the power winch. Tried that once, didn't like it. The traverse head was made up from two lengths of 40 × 2 mm strip encasing two 50mm diameter cast iron pulley wheels. These are smaller than I would have wished but that's what was available.

My thanks to Dave Speed for his help with this.

Tim and I went underground, where most of the morning was taken up by inserting a pair of metal grids, which happened to be more or less the correct size to act as shoring to retain the semi-mobile slope of fill in the chamber. There is a steeply sloping rock floor on either side of the chamber, but in the centre there is a metre(ish) wide trench which seems to be an open continuation of RD Rift. This trench is filled with fluid clay and small rubble which is trying to sludge its way down into the rift and undermine the base of the shaft at the same time.

The grids were stacked in place against the by now almost vertical slope of fill and held in place by eight 12 mm re-bar pins drilled into the rock walls of the trench. Four bits of psychological timber battening and a few wooden wedges were added and the whole topped off with a light sprinkling of cable ties. Unashamed bodgery, but it will do for the time being until we see how the area develops.

Meanwhile, Tim attacked the offending rock at the top of the drop in RD Rift. The result of much hammering, chiselling and levering was an exhausted Tim and a smugly unmoved block; you could almost see the smirk on its face.

Lunch was enhanced by a blackcurrent and apple pie, brought by Stu.

In the afternoon, Tim and I descended once again into the mire and tried digging below the shoring by disconnecting the kibble from its guide cable and handling it down into the chamber. This, and in particular the return journey, was a slow and rather fraught process and not to be repeated without further thought and considerable modification. Despite this, we managed to send up five kibbles of mixed rock and sludge.

On the surface, Stu continued building drystone spoil retaining walls, all the time grumbling bitterly about the lack of spoil and the slow rate of the digging.

Tea-time and Tim produced a Stollen cake, which seems appropriate somehow. After tea, we dried off, cleared up and finished as dusk was falling.

Sandstone cobble.

An Aside: During the excavation of the fill in the trench, a curious rounded cobble turned up, which appears to be sandstone. The upper surface of the cobble is rounded, but the lower surface is almost perfectly flat (to within about 1mm); strictly speaking it is very slightly concave in the centre. It is very similar in shape to a tea-cake or bap. Further investigation is required.

Tim creating an
atmosphere|

Tim and I went underground and attacked the loose rock on the walls of RD Rift from each end, Tim from the inside and me from the outside. After we had removed as much as possible, we started lowering the floor, excavating clay which graded into small stones as we got deeper. There were voids running down through the stony layer and on opening these, Tim was certain he detected a 'farmyard smell'. If he is right then that implies an open connection to the Wigmore streamway some 100 metres below.

The photographs show Tim working in the rift at the start of the session. There was a problem with this as Tim would insist on breathing and this made the atmosphere rather cloudy. Some people just have no consideration for others. The second photograph shows the rift after we had cleared the loose material from the walls and lowered the floor somewhat.

RD Rift
(getting smoother)

Stu digging in
Annex chamber

I went down to inspect the results of last week's efforts and to take some photographs. The floor at the rear of the chamber had been lowered considerably and solid rock had been exposed in the floor on the right. This could be the bottom of a bedding plane running under the rear wall of the chamber. There is a gap between this and the solid previously exposed on the left, filled with wet clay and Harptree Beds rubble. This needs shoring.

At the junction of RD Rift and the cross rift, the area had been cleared and it is now possible to squint down the drop there. This appears to be in the region of 7 metres deep, but it is difficult to be precise as it is narrow and twisted. Nevertheless, it does look like a good candidate for the 'way on', but there will have to be a lot of heated discussions with the surrounding rock before we can get down it.

Stu then came down and started digging at the rear of the Annex chamber, while I acted as kibble filling monitor.

After lunch, Stu and Tim went down and continued the excavation at the rear of the chamber. This is now very squalid because of the heavy drip in the chamber but voids are opening in the floor and this should allow some drainage during the week.

Highlight of the day. Tim produced a coffee and walnut cake for tea, this gets my vote for the best cake ever.