15th February

Report by Vince

Vince, Tav, Jake and Jon

A small band of stalwarts assembled at the Hunter’s Lodge Inn, undeterred by ‘coronavirus’, an excursion to Cheddar or, shopping. As we did last weekend, the spoil would have to be removed in stages.

All into the van and down to the farm where we changed into caving kit and made our way up the hill into the face of Storm Dennis, in all honesty, it was a bit windy and not very wet, yet.

At the end of the narrow rift in the ‘far’ reaches of the Cold Gnarly North there was plenty of debris to be removed. It was hard work scraping the gravel and cobbles sized lumps back to Tav who was busy filling bags and passing them down the line to Jake and Jon. The spoil stacked at the bottom of the aven. It is just a tad constricted at the end of the rift and I reached the conclusion that I am going to make it bigger. The spoil cleared, or most of it, we shifted back to start moving the spoil out of the cave. From the aven it was moved and stacked in the ‘spa’, from here the next stop was the bottom of the entrance. Twenty bags and six skip loads of rocks were eventually emptied onto the surface spoil heap.

The walk down the hill to the farm was a bit windier and wetter, glad that it wasn’t cold as well!

Author: mendipgeoarch

Archaeologist, Geologist, Speleologist