31st March 2012

Rather surprised to find the gate chained and locked at the farm so over to School Hill and a longer walk up to the cave. Spent a while prodding and scratching away at the sediments above the rift, still doesn’t appear to be anything solid above – need to proceed with the utmost caution. The roots appear to have grown nearly 300mm since the last visit. Alex spent some time removing the lumps of calcite flow that impede the progress of the skip up Witches Cauldron. Crawled along to ‘Merlin’s’ for a reassessment of the area – there is a possible route along the right hand side that would avoid damage to the formations, but would require a good deal of effort initially.

After digging took a stroll up the valley to the east of Hallowe’en Rift to take another look at the rock exposure and to explore the head of the gully. Came across this interesting little spot. A number of holes were noted in an arc that showed some signs of previous excavation, there is a large badger site on the opposite side of the gully or this is the site that Trevor Hughes tentatively dug in the early 1980s.

Author: mendipgeoarch

Archaeologist, Geologist, Speleologist