Merlins Mine

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Salty

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Had a quick trip down Merlins mine the other day(Stoney Middleton).

What a great little trip!

Does anyone know exactly why the connection to Carleswalk has been blocked? Is it purely to preserve cave passage/formations or are there other reasons :?:

thanx
 
I was under the impression that it was to preserve some passage, but never been down there myself so not sure.
 
I think it was done to prevent Gimli's Dream - in Merlins - being trashed, as it is a hard trip to get to via Merlins, but about 10 minutes via Carlswark when the connection was open. Thats what I understand anyway.
 
so can you still get into gimli's dream from merlins then.

Also was gimli a character in Lord of the Rings. :oldgit:
 
Gimli certainly featured in The Hobbit, can't remember about LOTR. And yes, I think you can still get there from Merlin's although I've not been there myself. I think it has been fairly trashed however, from what I can remeber from Ian Barker's book.
 
Yes, he's one of the main charactrers in LOTR... and no, I'm not some weird LOTR freak!

To quote Caves of the Peak District:

Gimli's Dream: A series of short crawls lead to a series of chambers which were extremely well decorated when first discovered. Further crawls and climbs lead eventually to the original connection with Carlswark, now blocked.
 
SamT said:
Well if Gimlis is now trashed - is there a case for opening the blockage again ??
Click to expand...

Yes I would think so...

It seems it was blocked after most of the damage was already done :?
 
From what I saw about two months ago it would appear that much of the barrier is naturals that have been "persuaded" into being a blockage. Gimli's is pretty in a derbyshire-muddy-sort of way.
 
Last time we were down Gimli's (about this time last year), we were discussing the fact that there were still lots of good looking stal in there, but that it was muddy, and could do with a clean - like in Moss Chamber. The main problem is the distance from the clean water.

It would be worth doing, but not if you opened up the connection to Eyam Shaft - it could end up as a Forth Bridge job, simply because you get too many inexperienced cavers in Carlswark who probably don't know enough to take care.
 
Why dont we open it up, and maybe the asshole who chopped out all the flowstone from the floor of Eyam passage would get rid of all the nasty muddy stal? :evil:
Lets leave it as it is eh
(Only a few days after it was opened and became general knowledge two of the 4ft stal columns lay in pieces on the floor)
 
Thats shocking, prehaps your right then - must get in for a look some time.

I heard a rumour last night, that sidetrack is slowly being desimated. This is all a bit second hand but it was something like

"apparently - someone has seen fit to wash their hands in gour then wipe their hands on the flowstone on the wall"

EH!
 
Yup, SamT is right - Sidetrack is not doing too well. Only been in there once (early Feb.), but some of the eggshell floors were looking sorry, and there are muddy handprints on the nice flowstone walls. Give it a few years and it'll be trashed :cuss:

In fairness bits of it are very vulnerable - it's not often there's lots of room to avoid the fragile bits - so some damage is perhaps inevitable - but some of the damage is sheer carelessness. :guns:
 
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