Blimey, what a weekend!
After not a lot of sleep Friday night and an early start Saturday morning we met up with Owd Git (a bit of a misnomer!) and drove up to Massons.
OG rigged, handed RJV the digging implement / goading stick and sent us off down the 140 foot shaft (narrow enough that you could stop yourself by bracing against the sides in many places) and we began several hours of walking, crawling, flat out crawling, squeezing and climbing. Up there amongst the most strenuous trips I've ever done.
Don't mind admitting I had a bit of a wobble on the free-climb up the stope, cheers Rich and Ed for helping me get up and across the stopes :thumbsup: followed by a fun descent through a sequence of shoulder width pipes!
Beyond the overseers chamber we reached the squeezes proper; which were actually rather good fun, here's Ed's pic of Rockchick in the 2nd squeeze:
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And again from Ed, a vid of me in the same squeeze :lol:
[youtube]1DZ4UcJoEho[/youtube]
I can see how they'd be rahter more interesting if it had been raining heavily though...
Yet more crawling and we reached the coffin level, which is a spectacular thing to see.
No rats, and by virtue of not actually looking for them, no spiders either... although I'm assured they were there 😮 Finally emerging to daylight, covered in mud and looking like hell to the obvious amusement/alarm (delete as applicable) of parents pushing their kids on the swings in the playground the coffin level emerges into!
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Hot footed it to the Miners Standard (good food and beer), tents up and into the pub. Hit the tents just in time for what must have been the biggest gale to batter Derbyshire in decades...
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Sunday, breakfast at the Miners Standard and met up with Owd Git again for Snake Mine.
Spliiting into two groups, half of us descended the engine shaft (a 250' single drop), the others going down via the climbing shafts. I think we were underground for around 6 hours in total, which with photography wasn't enough time to see everything. A really fascinating insight into Derbyshire lead mining.
Ascending via the climbing shafts was an excellent route out, a good meandering route, some of the original climbing stemples still in place (imagine free climbing 140' on stemples with a tallow candle?), and excellent ginging - and plenty of time to appreciate it on the way up!
Finally a quick drink in the Barley Mow before heading our separate ways.
Many thanks to everybody who came along for making it such a great weekend; and especially to Owd Git for guding and rigging :thumbsup:
A few lessons learnt:
- When Ed says "you won't need a rope" treat this statement with some trepidation :lol:
- Keep an eye behind you when towing...
- Derbyshire can be very windy
- Two days of this sort of malarkey is rather strenuous!
my orders are to sit here and watch the world go by