A ?new lead? I recently started in is turning into a funny little spot!


I started with a sink covered in large amounts of moss, big ?immovable? rocks and finally got into the crawl which I spied on my first trip had good scalloping on the roof. Being in t-shirt, on a solo visit and having squeezed down to get there, it was a hasty visit.


On my return last night I took a friend who seemingly has better eyesight than me, he calls up to me ?have you been drilling this crawl?,
?no? I replied,
?well someone?s been in here? says my friend,
?they can?t have been!? I proclaimed
?There?s even a drill mark under this large rock your standing on? he says
?What! Your joking!?


Ah well, that?s chalked one up for the experience board, I?m still going to progress with it, but I?ve asked a retired history teacher to have a look in some journals for me if he can.


Does anyone have any other silly stories about them uncovering an old cave/dig?

They clearly backfilled the dig every time to stop someone poaching their lead, and then died. It's quite common

It's definitely, definitely not a miner's shothole? I'm told there are veins nearby, but it's not an area I'm familiar with.

Narrower than shot, but larger than 8mm cap. And wires in the crawl, which I had previously assumed washed into the cave.

But now am 80% sure the wires were used in the cave.

End of drill mark was pointed in the centre rather than flat and looked almost like a star drill but with more ridges. My friend said it could have been a standard masonry drill, and the extra ridges were just vibrations rather than ridges left by the last position of the drill. (But I think they were quite uniformly spaced for being the last few spots a masonry drill touched)

He also noted the sides of these drill marks had ridges, which he put down to a faster drill and made a point that it might have been a drill powered by a genny, ?back in day?.

Yeah, the wires sound pretty conclusive. Only question then is why did they give up? And why are all the drill holes on he bottom of loose rocks? Maybe the famer got fed up with the previous spoil heap and chucked it all back in? Possibly with a machine if you had to cap them to get them out!

Have you had enough of ASV?

He?s calling this one Alastair?s Sloppy Seconds (ASS)

I hope it already has a name... as I don't think "Ass hole" will catch on at all 

It a certain ?ring? to it though.

I take it you won't need my hangers any more then, especially seeing as they're still hanging on the wire rack shelf in the chapel

They disappeared as of 9pm last night