27 th
December 2018: with Roz, Brockers, Nick,
Tav and Jon
Had purchased some
supplies and a good team assembled to help carry the equipment, including drill
bag, sundries bag, drill-bit tube, wire and a 3.5m aluminium ladder, into the
cave. …
6th December 2018: With Duncan, Jonathon,
Nick, Tav and Alex
The trip through Chamber 20
didn’t appear to be much wetter than last week, in spite of the recent rain. At
the sand dig, the water level had risen c.150-200mm and was encroaching into…
Last weeks digging
session was abandoned for the pub when only three of us turned up at Wookey
Hole.
Better turn-out this
week, with Nick, Tav, Jonathon, Duncan, Mike and, course yours truly, all keen
and raring to go, unfortunately Roz got left b…
15th November 2018: with Jonathon, Mike, Nick and Alex Surprisingly, the sand
dig was dry and didn’t appear to have backed-up at all after the very heavy
rain last weekend. However. A seepage of water through the sediments in the
alcove had caused…
8th November 2018: with Alex, Mike, Jonathon
and Roz
It’s been raining
recently and all the way up through Chamber 20 the results of this were clear;
the drips were stronger, pools were filling-up and water was flowing down the
calcite cascade. …
25th October 2018 With Alex, Nick,
Jonathon, Mike, Duncan and David Walker (curator at the Wells & Mendip
Museum and MCRA)
At the sand dig we were
relieved to see it had dried-up and quite quickly after the fill event by the
look of it. I s…
18th October 2018 With (l to r) Mike, Duncan, Nick and Tav After persistent rain
last weekend, it was not a surprise to find that the trip through Chamber 20
was wetter, the calcite cascade had water flowing down it. As suspected the sand
dig wa…
11th October 2018 With Nick, Mike,
Jonathon, Tav, Alex and Duncan
Nick, Mike and Jonathon
at the sharp end, digging and filling buckets, then moving the filled buckets
and occasional rocks to Tav who then facilitated dispatch. Alex hauling the…
4th
October 2018
With Roz, Jonathon, Duncan
and Mike
A mellow evening. Jon and
Mike rotated the digging, Roz transferred the filled buckets to the skip,
Duncan hauled the skip up the slope and I emptied the filled buckets. The procedure
was r…
25th September 2018: with Snablet, Roz and Tav
An impromptu trip after
Snablet’s enquiry “are we doing anything tonight?” following up some beer
fuelled conversation we’d had on Saturday evening at the Hidden Earth
conference in Churchill.
We…
23rd
August 2018: With Duncan, Mike,
Jonathon, Nick and Tav
Duncan and Mike down in
the sand-pit digging, Jonathon and myself shifting the filled buckets up to
Nick and Tav who were hauling and emptying the buckets. Plenty of talk about
speleoge…
16th August 2018: With Roz, Jonathon, Duncan, Tav, Nick and Mike.
Nick, Tav and Mike down
in the sand-pit; Duncan, Jon and Roz were on hauling duties; after taking a few
photographs, I was emptying the buckets. The sediment removed varied from s…
9th August 2018: with Brockers, Tav, Nick, Jon, Duncan and Alex. Jon, Nick and Tav playing in the sand-pit with their buckets and spades, Duncan took away their buckets, while the rest of us hauled-away and emptied the buckets and then, sent the bu…
2nd August 2018: I haven’t managed to dig
in Wookey Hole for a while due to one thing or another, in the meantime, the
rest of the team have continued with the task. Good to get back and see the progress
made.
With Mike, Alex,
Jonathon, Duncan,…
Back in June a team from Dudley Caving Club was invited to try out the adventure caving experience in Wookey Hole, Somerset, England. It was brilliant and we thoroughly enjoyed every minute. It is easily the best show cave adventure in the country. My …
Due to meetings, work commitments and some
other reasons the Wookey Hole digging team was rather depleted only Jake and
Jonathon were available. Not much the two of them could achieve in the sand dig
in 20 so they went to Hallowe’en Rift.
At…
28th
June 2018: Tav, Jon, Mike, Jake and Nick.
Tav’s account, I finished
work too late. “Removed the usual steady stream of sand and clay which further
exposed the group of large boulders in the floor of the pot. With the aid of
the full team, t…
21st
June 2018: with Brockers, Nick, Jake, Tav, Jonathon and Mike.
I went to the dig-face to
look at a potential boulder blockage, Brockers and Nick were behind me. While I
concentrated on cleaning around the boulders and into an alcove, they co…
Back in February Mark and I were invited by Chris Binding to spend a weekend in Wookey Hole to take photos and video. With Mark and Chris jet-setting around the world it wasn’t until last weekend that we could find a mutually convenient date.Chris said…
14th June 2018: with Mike, Jonathon, Tav, Alex, Brockers and Jake.
Special Offer! The CDG publication WOOKEY HOLE tells the story of the pioneers and their cutting edge approaches to exploratory diving at one of Somerset’s best-known caves over the last 75 years. The book covers two periods: 1935 – 1985, and then 1986 to its publication in 2010. The introduction is by Jim Hanwell and…
24th
May 2018: with Jake, Jonathon, Alex, Duncan, Nick and Mike.
Nick, after a longish
stint working away, was keen to get back to digging, so we let him, Mike
clearing away the filled buckets to Jake, who was loading the skip. I was at
the firs…
15th
May 2018: with Jake, Tav and Duncan.
We did what we set-out to
do. The loose rocks, plus a few others, were removed from the top of the dig, we
also cleared a quantity of fine sediment as well. This should enable us to angle
the slope down,…
3rd
May 2018 : with Jonathon, Alex, Tav, Brockers, Mike and Ray Deasy.
Another fine assemblage of
willing diggers gathered, destined for the Sand Dig.
Alex digging, aided by Brockers,
I was loading the skip, Ray on the slope, leaving Tav, Jona…
1st
May 2018: with Jake, Tav, Jonathon, Duncan and Mike.
A bigger turn-out than expected
for this digging session.
At the Sand Dig, Mike digging,
Tav shifting the filled buckets back up to Jonathon, who was loading the skip and,
in between ti…
12th April: with Tav, Jonathon,
Brockers and Duncan.
Five go digging! I
couldn’t make the trip last week, but others did and had cleared some of the
bang debris, the flake had been successfully fragmented. This
evening, we continued to clear the…
Conservation work in 2003 in Goatchurch Cavern on the Mendips revealed some fine inscribed marks on calcite flowstone next to the Giant’s Steps. The marks resembled the letter W and aroused interest as the patina was considerably darker than the lighter exposed calcite nearby in graffiti dated 1704. We filed them in the mental compartment…
21st March: with Roz. A trip to apply some IRS. As usual, a pleasant trip though Chamber 20, a fine section of Mendip cave passage. There is still a good trickle of water in places. At the dig face, 4no. awkward holes, 500mm x 12mm, drilled and fill…
8th March 2018: with Jake, Jonathon, Dunc and Mike. It was good to get underground again after a two week lay-off, due to snow and other things. We continued with clearing-out the alcove and narrow rift beyond.
22nd February 2018: with Jake, Jonathon, Brockers, Dunc and Mike M. Mike M and myself dropped further down the route to Sump 23.75 to have a quick look at another potential lead, where a feint air current could be felt. This will be left on the bac…
Solo. The main purpose of the trip was to check-out the current state of the dig in Chamber 20. After the recent rain, I wasn’t surprised to find that the dig was still underwater. But, I did take the opportunity to spend some time admiring some of…
5th August 2017: Duncan Price visited Wookey Hole yesterday and reports that, after recent rain, the dig has flooded again.
6th July: with Jake, Jonathon, Tav, and that stalwart of the Grampian, Goon. The usual warm trip up to the dig, the difference was the trail of blood left by Goon. At the end, Jake and Jonathon, quickly got on with the digging,
15th June 2017: Jake, Tav, Duncan P, Pete Bolt and Max Fisher. Continuation of the slope engineering. Tav, Pete and Max with a combined effort in spoil removal, Duncan and me were hauling it away. Jake was in control of spoil dispersal management. …
8th June 2017: with Jake, Nick and Tav. After some recent torrential rain, it was a relief to find that there wasn’t any water running into the dig. We had a brief discussion about how best to proceed, as the dig gets ever deeper. The decision was…
1st June 2017: with Roz, Brockers, Nick Tav and Duncan. It was a fine evening, warm and sunny, there were grumbling’s like “too nice to go underground”. These were ignored and off we went. At the dig, Brockers picked-up where he had left-off
18th May 2017: with Jake, Tav, Jonathon, Dunc P, Matt and Mandy Voysey. Me and Jake made our way to the dig, the rest of the team tarried awhile to admire the scenery. At the dig, Jake and I started to dig,
4th May 2017: with Jake, Tav and Duncan P. The usual warm trip up through 20, even though we kept a relaxed pace. Ma and Jake took it in turns to dig, Tav and Duncan hauled and emptied the skip. T
15th December: with Nick. Just the two of us this evening. A steady jaunt to the end of Chamber 20 where we continued the construction of the stepped wall. First lowering the sediment, then I collected rocks for Nick to build up the wall. By the…
13th December 2016: with Nick and Tav. The dig at the end of Chamber 20 has dried up, it’s a bit claggy on the top but underneath it is relatively dry, at least it was where we reduced the level for the drystone wall. Nick decided to roll some rat…
Special calcite crystals that form when water freezes to ice in a cave have been discovered in Wookey Hole. Now the researchers would like your help to know if they exist elsewhere in the UK. During September, 2015, Tom Chapman, Robbie Shone and Gina Moseley visited both the new show cave extensions in Wookey Hole…
Since the completion of the show-cave tunnel to Chamber 20 in Wookey, last year, a number of groups have been digging and exploring in various nooks and crannies that had never been properly pushed by the divers. This work has now borne its first fruits with the discovery of an overland (dry) route to Edmund’s…
