Redmoor Mine

Date:

12 July 2010

Party:

Big Dave, Ali, Finbar, Margot, Rick, Bob, Mike, & Jenny

Photos:

Big Dave

In Brief:

There were emails going around, mentioning a few die-hard cavers and surveying equipment. Enough to spark the imagination. The venue? Redmore mine. 

The entrance was an inclined shaft, and I was first to go down. It took me ages! The rope was not very slippy, and my stop is not very worn, and for a caver I'm not very heavy. I had to try very hard to move! But I made it. And hardly more than seconds later Ali was down as well. He was clearly in it for surveying, and asked if I would mind giving him a hand. Well, no, so off we went, into the pretty mine. An amazing specimen as well, as for some very obscure reason, someone had indicated all geological units in spray paint... even the least talented field geologist could make sense of that!

Continued:

We went down past all the garbage, and past some pretty tram rails and chutes and what have you. Below there was something that may have been a water reservoir, but now the whole mine was as wet as any reservoir could desire. Ali ran away in a seemingly arbitrary direction; maybe he wanted to compensate for the fact that Lionel hadn't joined us. In no time he was standing far away from any sign of the others, in cold, crotch deep water. It would be one of those days. And surveying is a game of standing still, and I was not dressed to that. Furthermore, I thought it was a bit of a waste to go caving with such an exquisite choice of fellow cavers, only to stand all alone in a tunnel with a laser distance meter in your hand. So after an hour I demanded to give my task over to somebody else. Dave had vanished with some flash gun assistants, but Bob the Archaeologist, Rick of the Muddy Digs and Finbar Without Epithet conveniently walked by, so I gave the pimped laser pointer to Bob and let Rick take me on a small sightseeing tour. They had gone beyond where Ali had started surveying, but they mentioned that they only found very deep and cold water, so it wasn’t worth going there. Instead Rick took me one level up, to another wet tunnel, with a small lode. A pretty mine!

Having eight people climbing up that shaft would take a while, and people were getting cold, so we decided soon to start making a move. Finbar had such cold hands he could not get into his harness without help, so Rick rigged him in while I romantically held his hands in an attempt to tackle the cause of the problem. And a rope can hold two people, which makes things much faster, so when that was done Finbar and I decided to go together. Strangely enough everybody else chose going alone, but still we were all out before it was dark. Pub time! 

In the bar afterwards Bob shocked us with his announcement he had accepted a job far away- he's leaving us! When I just thought he would be joining us. There goes the biggest caving treasure trunk of mining archaeology knowledge. May he be happy in the new job! The good news is, though, that Rick IS joining us. Bring on the mud! In large amounts!

Write up by  Margot

Added 19-07-10