The only reason I have bothered to write about this is to moan at
Karli. I've not been underground for 3 months, and I have been looking forward
to meeting up with everyone and having a good old interesting weekend with new
things to do. Ha, no chance with Karli piping on about getting the scaffold
poles out of Smallcleugh for a project he has in mind. I agreed, my fault.
Unlike sensible people we stashed the poles in two places, meaning we had to go
as far as the bottom of the incline to get them. An absence of any underground
activities soon had me looking rather red and sweating a lot as we made our way
along, it just shows what a great work out it is for the body, coming out of
George Hetherington's crosscut soon highlighted aching sensations in various
odd muscles.
We ended up leaving our gear and the first set of poles in
Wheel Flats and then headed for the incline, it is nice not having anything to
carry with you when you are steaming through a mine, so much more pleasant. As
we started on the Second Sun Vein, first thing that I noticed was that the
three normally flooded sumps were dry and most of the water in the level had
also gone, has something moved or was the dry summer the cause? There was a
report by somebody at Heritage Centre that there had been a bad collapse and
deep water in Smallcleugh over a month ago, but no such sign on the main drags
through, Karli had been to Barron's Sump about 3 weeks ago and that was all
clear, still wondering what that was all about, and no one has reported finding
this since? Maybe they meant Caplecleugh - that fits its normal
description.
Finally we got the second set of poles and headed back to
Wheel Flats to have lunch. It was probably the most civilized lunch yet in
terms of seating. Across the deads we made a comfortable scaffold pole bench -
got to make the most of things. Then back out, to meet up with Pete and to see
some levels at Greenlaws. |
