Greenlaws Firestone Level Dig - In the Little Limestone - Little Fun (11/03/12).

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The going has been tough since my last visit and it boils down to the Little Limestone - it's rather unstable and has a habit of slipping out large chunks of rock here and there. Since Weardale was a hotspot of activity (geologically speaking), the Little Limestone was heated to a far higher temperature than the one on Alston Moor, the result being a stone that has a tendency to split up in large chucks, rather than remaining attached to the wall.

Despite the hard ground, progress has been made and the working face has progressed downwards, however after I left the right hand side wall ran in, which filled the bottom right of the shaft up with a lot of new material, including the burial of tools, steel and almost the kango. In hindsight, being the great thing that it is, the side should not have been left untimbered in the name of digging further down. As Ian said, dig, timber, dig timber...