With Alex. What better place to spend your birthday! Cleared the remaining spoil from the bottom of Witches Cauldron (WC) to the base of the entrance shaft ready to be hauled to the surface. There is now plenty of room at the bottom of WC to dump more spoil from the end of Toil and Trouble and allowing forward progress to continue.
In addition to a huge number of very annoying and irritating Common mosquito’s (Culex pipiens) in the entrance and along the upper approach passages, there are also a number of Tissue moth’s (Trichosa dubitata) to be found in the cave, possibly as a consequence of the inclement weather that we are experiencing this summer, this particular moth species is one of several that are known to inhabit caves in the British Isles.
The image above is taken from the website: www.cambriancavingcouncil.org.uk and follow the links: Cave Life Website/Cave Life of Devon
The Herald (Scoliopteryx libatrix) is another species of moth that is a regular sight within the Mendip cave environs, particularly during the winter months when they choose caves as hibernation sites. The image above was copied from the Wikipedia website.
On a rather more embarassing note we had to ask the farmer for a tow out of the field when the van became stuck after a sudden rain storm, especially after I had already hesitated about parking there.