Warning!! THe pubs/ Hotel in T' bath use plastic recepticals for ale on Firework sessions. Take your fave mug,tankard or suffer horribly the fate of plastic tainted ale.
O. G.

thanks for the warning! Do you know if they let you on the top round giddy edge during the fireworks? I assume you should be able to park in starkholmes area and walk over?

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Not sure, tho as the fireworks are across on Wildcat tor I don;t see why not.
If you want to 'do ' giddy edge the hard way I still have the same mountain bike I used, If you want a loan. :devil:
O.G.

If you want to 'do ' giddy edge the hard way I still have the same mountain bike I used, If you want a loan. :devil:
O.G.

you biked it?! Bloody 'ell, i'm not sure whether that's brave or suicidal! 😮

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I think that's called throwing down a gauntet Rockchick -off you go :)

See you all at 10.30 in Monyash For breakfast :thumbsup:

Who's in for Saturday out of this list?

OG - yes
AR - yes
Droid - yes
Zomjon1 - yes
Gaz1983 - ?
Pwhole - but yes for sun

Hope i've not missed anybody?

We can i guess decide anout Sunday on Saturday.

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Hi Guys hope you had a good weekend,sorry for the late reply, but im unable to make sunday iv got no transport,maybe next time i could join you

Really enjoyed our trip down Hillocks and Knotlow today, especially the amble through Meccano! Shame we need a return trip on Monday to retrieve two ropes, I'm sure that's a good excuse for the wife! 😉

Day 1 was good fun, Simon and Rockchick have done the through trip and can now be considered well 'ard. I decided against doing Meccano in the end due to being a bit knackered but then went and enlarged the way through to Whalf Old Sough and the Bung series which maybe wasn't the best of light duties! My shoulders and upper arms are now really starting to get their revenge....

A few interesting finds, such as the base of an 18th or early 19th century hand-blown bottle in the lower sough, and oddly, a bent scythe blade in the floor of Waterfall Chamber. Having looked at the beam slots in there and around the inlet I'm starting to think the 18th century waterwheel was sited there, not in Rift Chamber as has previously been suggested. Cave shrimps were observed in both soughs too, and I found some really nice mineralisation down a seldom-visited passage.

As for tomorrow's jaunt, it will be Old Ash Mine, time/place to follow later assuming Simon can get signal and post.

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Many thanks to everyone who came along on the weekend, we had a marvelous time :thumbsup: Owd Git, AR and Ratboy Masson did a great job of organising everything for us :flowers:
We even managed to get to the fireworks as well- great stuff! :thumbup:

I can now claim to have made it through both Meccano passage and knee breaker in Old Ash (although i did manage to land on my head) :blink: I don't need to do them again now! :lol:

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Sorry I didn't make it in the end - work screwed up my Saturday (though I was well compensated for the inconvenience and can now buy some new kit!) and didn't have time to arrange anything for Sunday - not by bus anyway! But next time eh? If there's a reverse trip anytime, I'd be up for that too, and always happy to share fuel costs if there's a lift. Glad you all enjoyed it anyway.

Another fantastic weekend.

Thank you so much to OG, AR, zomjon1 and Masson Ratboy for laying on two really good trips.

Meccano passage ticked off - so probably don't need to do that again 😉

Sorry I didn't get in touch in time on Saturday night pwhole :(

Quite bruised and battered today :lol:

Video footage of Rockchick getting stuck in the Kneebreaker will appear in due course 😉

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Video footage of Rockchick getting stuck in the Kneebreaker will appear in due course ;)

That wasn't getting stuck- it was, er, just taking my time- honnest! 😉

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I've put a few photos in the Knotlow album from Saturday's trip - but wanted to check... was the trip in Knotlow and out of Hillocks or the other way around? And where was the link? Waterfall chamber? Thanks :flowers:

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You went down the Hillocks climbing shaft, along Meccano passage into Waterfall Chamber, went down the coffin level to the four-way junction at the base of Crimbo Hollow shaft, west to the base of Wyatt's shaft, then back to Waterfall chamber, up into Pearl Chamber and then out of the Knotlow climbing shaft. All the credit is due to OG and Zomjon for that trip, they did the rigging!

p.s. the Bung series apparently gets a bit less grotty after the initial bit, maybe I will give it a try next time I'm down there....

Edit - just looked at the photos, the large passage with the coffin level in the roof is part of the Hillocks side. Having said that, to my mind it's an artifical split, the whole complex is properly called the Whalf(e) pipe and it was always treated as a single entity in the 18th/19th century....

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Thanks very much AR.

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We had an enjoyable trip last night to recover the ropes; OG dropping back into Hillocks whilst I had the fun of descending (and reascending!) the 210 to retrieve the rope at the end of Meccano.
Simon, myself and Ric would really like to take you up on the offer of that N Wales trip - time to think about a date?

Simon, myself and Ric would really like to take you up on the offer of that N Wales trip - time to think about a date?

No worries - PM me some dates you can make :thumbsup:

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Curiously enough, I was in Old Ash last night, doing the usual kneebreaker-striding edge round trip, though I did have a quick try at getting into the caverns. Didn't quite manage, but I think I've worked out how to get through the slot and will have a proper go next time I'm in! I also notice "the lady" has disappeared from the upper entrance to Lords and Ladies mine - I hope she's been repaired and has found a loving home.... :devil:

If you sort out a date, please let me and Phil know!

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I've got a few snaps from Hillocks/Whalf actually that I forgot to post - nothing startlingly new, but there's not many up there, so I'll get 'em up shortly.

I'm glad everyone had a good time. After meeting with you all at Smithy's I headed off to try and get some aerial photography done. Not really that successful mainly because of the lack of wind for the weight of the camera and lens I was trying to get airborne. I was also trying out a near IR converted camera. Anyway results below.




The first image is the picture as taken and the second where it is flattened or un-fisheyed and the red & blue channels are swapped :confused:

AR- did a reccy of site mentioned will do as soon as conditions are right.

Peter.

To see larger versions of the above use these links.
http://www.anaerialview.com/public/IMG_0415cr1200.jpg 

http://www.anaerialview.com/public/413flt1200.jpg 

Just spotted a post in this thread about Bage Mine. We (WMRG) now have a new hydraulic winch, which is off this week for formal testing and documentation, so next year we'll be happy to take people down Bage Mine (Hard End Shaft), but without the traditional excitement of the old 'free fall' winch. 😮