h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems the Welsh dig (see past journal) *might* be starting to go a bit. A couple of guys went to poke around at the end, and managed to get into ~20m of bedding-plane passage, 1-2ft high, 3-4ft wide, ending in a cappable blockage.
The entry to the bedding is currently classed as 'not ideal for mass access' (ie unstable), but should have been stabilised by Wednesday evening to allow most of the past digging team down safely to have a look. With luck, there may be enough room in the bedding for stacking some digging debris, so hauling everything all the way to surface might not be as necessary as it has been so far. In any case, having a solid one-piece roof would be most welcome novelty even if it is rather low.

Fingers crossed.

Last Wednesday, I had a look at the new cave passage.

An initial flat-out crawl under (now supported) large slab leads to a chamber (or shaft bottom?) with a boulder pile mound in the centre, the current way on being up round the left wall, then dropping down the other side to immediately enter another low crawl, though a way *through* the boulder pile is visible at floor level, and given some support would be a better route for dragging digging debris, if not for humans.

The low crawl carries on at about 1/2m height over several shallow pools, then the roof rises slightly above a welly-deep canal/pool, followed by a short narrow section over dry rock, just passable on one's side. Finally, the water seems to sink through the rock-and-gravel floor of a pool, and the floor rises as a gravel slope into another chamber +/or shaft-to-surface of uncertain stability.

It seems that digging out the gravel at the end would probably lead to a continuing passage. The current cave end is about 30m down-valley from the entrance, though we know the water ultimately does a right-turn to flow into the main cave we are aiming for.
Once the passage moves right and runs under the side of the valley, we hope the chnaces of running into one shaft-bottom full of boulders after another would lessen, but it will be hard work getting that far.

The following Sunday, a trip down the Pool Park mineshaft was cancelled after some teething toubles and doubts over the modified hydraulic drive on the newly refurbished winch, so we went down the valley dig again instead.

Working back out from the end, the current cave end is now rather larger, much gravel having been removed.
The final pool is now largely buried by a self-levelling floor of gravel and mud slurry, but water still seems to be draining out of the remaining fragment.
The tight section is largely wider, but would probably benefit from one recalcitrant rock section being capped. Removed rock has been dumped in the bottom of the deepest pool to help raise the floor (lower the depth of the water).
The low crawl has been cleared somewhat.

More scaffolding work is planned to help further stabilise the entrance to the new passage, and the end certainly seems to have *potential*, though it may involve work of a different nature to the previous short-range boulder carrying and hauling.
Also, the midge season is now full swing, so hauling debris to surface has become hugely less popular than a couple of weeks ago.