knocked this together on a trip a few months back



Yes I know it's not as good as Those by Mr Adams 😉

Good fun recognising familiar places on your video!

From 6:20 to 7:50 the video makes the second pipe (at the fall on the Comet Lode) look a very small diameter indeed!

The formations at 1.00, 2:00 and 4:45 are hydrozincite, not calcite.

The 'strange contraption' at 1:50 was a flop-jack that rang a small bell when the water container filled and emptied; it was installed 10 or 15 years ago at the site of one installed in the 1960s but which also broke due to age / decay.

Your video highlighted the litter that has built up in this part of the mine. Next time I'm there I'll do some wombling!

A bit of work info:
The first ladder at the back (right through the second pipe) has had some extra reinforcing and a bit of tidying at the top to hold back loose rock, but you still need to be careful.

Second ladder appears sound

Third ladder, rotten and hanging, has a new ladder alongside.
Interesting workings up there but unsafe to proceed further in my judgement.
Something will eventually be done.

As its SAM I have to get consent normally even for undergound work, however this was Health and Safety.

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Well done Roy!

Third ladder, rotten and hanging, has a new ladder alongside.
Interesting workings up there but unsafe to proceed further in my judgement.

All the workings up the third ladder have been surveyed* ; they all end in falls or in solid roofs or in timbers overhead holding back deads. The workings are complex rather than extensive. The most intriguing area is at the far east (right) end from the top of this third ladder - the rubble slopes lead to a moderately inclined rise partly blocked with rubble that ascends around 50 ft to end in deads and a very short drive west (left) for about 15ft that ends in a fall of large boulders. Intriguingly, there are badly decomposed sheep remains in the rubble at the very top of the rise, and after rain a fair amount of water drips into both the top of the rise and the end of the drive westwards. This suggests that this area is close to surface. I have not yet located this postion accurately on surface but it lies beneath rubble slopes near the east end of the Graigfawr Opencast. The opencast resembles a series of old-fashioned egg-timers in that rubble cones are subsiding slowly into the upper stopes at various positions high above Lefel Fawr. It looks as if a sheep expired in one of the conical hollows in the opencast, and its remains was carried downwards into the top of the rise. Any attempt to dig such a subsidence cone from beneath (i.e. from inside the underground workings) would be like attempting to empty an egg timer from underneath.

Portions of these upper east stopes get quite close to some locations in the upper west stopes (i.e. the workings accessible 'up the Incline') but the large volumes of unpleasant deads and the poor quality of the remaining timbering that holds up even more deads, makes any aspirations of a making connection throughly unrecommended. There have been a number of collapses in the upper stopes over the last few decades and there are areas of workings entered by the old North Cardiganshire Mining Club that are now buried and inaccessible. Some of the workings I surveyed in the 1980s have also collapsed. Its what might be termed a 'dynamic' area!

[* as have all the lower stopes also]