Vince, Brockers, Jon, Jake, Duncan, Nick, and [French] Matt (?)
As planned, I got to the farm early, changed, kit sorted and walked up across the fields to the cave. Underground by 0900hrs. Set to work with the plugs & feathers reducing the sizeable boulders at the bottom of the pot in the deep Soft South to more manageable sizes, at least so that they would fit into the skip. I was soon joined by Brockers, who was keen to get some overtime in, he started to bag-up the loose sediment. Jon and Jake arrived, Duncan too, and the spoil was moved along the passage to be stashed at the bottom of the entrance. I continued to break up boulders. When Nick and Matt arrived around midday (they had cycled from Draycott with Nicole, who decided not to stay) the spoil temporarily stored at the bottom of the entrance was hauled out of the cave to be distributed onto the spoil heap. There is now another pile of rocks ready to be used for wall building at a later time. Down in the pot, the boulders were gone, and Jon was filling bags while I hauled them up to Brockers on the ledge. At around 1230hrs we decided it was time to stop for lunch and made our way to the surface.
In the afternoon session, Jake and Matt were digging (first time guests get to go digging!), Brockers resumed his position, as Project Director (no filming today), on the ledge, Jon and Nick were hauling the spoil back to the entrance while me and Duncan were on surface duties. Filled bags were hauled out and emptied, rocks were added to the pile, even found some time for a little bit of terrace walling. It was warm and humid, some mizzle arrived mid-afternoon. When all the bags had been filled (and emptied) the today’s digging was ended. Time to go wherever!
Jon had picked up some 25 litre drums from Hugh Tucker (thanks Hugh) and I took a couple home to convert into hauling skips as the current ones are starting to look a little worse for wear.
