Have recently gotten landowners permission to dig an area in Weardale, the main (recorded) caves are known as Low Bishopley caves (Moldywarps 12 i think).  There are 4 recorded caves there and I was going to have a crack at the back of the first two to start with as theres the possibility of a through trip to LB4.

The bit I'm confused about is that in LB1 the choke is mostly sandy dirt and glacial till which is what I expected but at the back of 2 the choke appears to be gravel with a large amount of broken ceramic pipe mixed in, some large bits of pipe too.

I should also mention that both are substantial passages but both only about 20 meters before becoming choked.

So my question is....haha, how did the bloody pipes get in there??

Is there a surface depression over the choke that could have been used as a tip by a past landowner.. Or fly tippers?

Maybe its a Pipe Vein?

Haha!! could be, there are two caves about 20 meters apart, we are currently digging the northern one which is rammed full of glacial till, very easy digging in walking sized passages.  So far we've pushed it about 5 meters further than its description in MSG12 and it looks like it'll continue (fingers crossed).  The area is heavily quarried and after speaking to the farmer again I think that when the road was constructed, between the quarries and directly over the southern cave, they must have broken into the top of the rift and decided to backfill it with rubbish.  Shame as there are some whopping sections of stal mixed in amongst the infill and at the bottom the remains of a flowstone false floor.

In that case, will you be able to dig your way through to the measureless caverns (?) beyond without emptying the whole backfilled rift and possibly bringing the road down with it?

The northern tube doesn't go under the road and the infill seems to be natural this is looking back out of the entrance:


And this is the dig site at the moment:


We've totally cleared that out, there was a very tight squeeze into it originally that ended after a meter or so.
Its a shame about the other one as the rubble infill is total and I really don't want to be undermining the road, passage is even bigger in there and there are some nice formations (for weardale):

Impressive passages  , Know any dowsers who can maybe pick up the line the other side of the road?
People may scoff but I have known dowsing work for finding cave.

Hmm, never crossed my mind to be honest, I was hoping the passages joined well past the road.