Saturday 07/03/2015

Pete, Nigel, Myself. With the view of going to the bottom & first hauling out the clatch, and then drilling another two holes in a boulder on the right-hand side of the tunnel. We had hauled approximately 7 buckets of clatch out, with Pete at the bottom filling the buckets. Unfortunately pulling the bucket up dislodged a rock in the shaft (approx. 3 metres up) which then fell and hit Pete on the head / back of neck. The rock was the size of large brick. Quite a lot of the “F” word arose from the shaft with Pete obviously in pain. I went down to the bottom and gave him a quick check out. No obvious damage apart from behind his left ear on the skull/neck join a graze and a red lump. Pete was complaining of Neck and Jaw pain. We made the decision to stop digging & to slowly make our way out. No problems encountered on the way out, but it was most likely to have been the better decision. At least if Pete had deteriorated we would have been closer to the surface. So, a short digging trip followed by medicinal tea & cake. Adrian.

Monday 2nd March 2015

Maxine Bateman, Tom Chapman, James Collings, John Cooper, Pete Hann, Tony Seddon, Adrian Vanderplank and Jude Vanderplank. Tom and Adrian cleared bang debris from the bottom shaft whilst the rest of us hauled 41 loads up 4-ton shaft. 1¾ hours. John.

Pete Hann, Tom Chapman, John Cooper, Maxine Bateman, James (?), Tony Seddon, Jude & Myself. A very strong team tackled a major amount of spoil. With Jude at the bottom of 4 Tonne Shaft and a good hauling team a lot of the residual clatch was taken up and dumped behind Pete’s newly built wall. Tom and Myself to the very bottom where Tom removed the spoil from the end of the dig and the larger spoil we hauled up to the top of the bottom shaft. The very end is looking choked up but T.C. thought he could feel a faint draught coming through the choke. Adrian.