mine – sYnc

Mines #47 – End of an era

One of the local playgrounds has been sealed with several tonnes of rock in the last few days, quite unfortunate really as we had unfinished business there……oh well !!

I wonder of anyone was inside when it got sealed? If so its now their watery grave.

Camera phone shit pix:

There are some trips when you wonder why you are lugging round4kgs of camera gear and probably another4kg of lighting when you get home having taken only one photo, well this weekend was one of those trips.To be fair it was an exploration instead of a exploration/photo trip, were up in the extreme top north west corner of a location looking for a straight run though to the south but after 4 1/2 hours of trying 9 different roads, most with several feet of water in, and god knows how many headings we were defeated by roof collapses at every single occasion apart from one (this will be checked on a revisit). There was evidence of previous visitors 15 years earlier in some places, others hadn’t been touched for much longer.It seems a combination of a dip in Strata and a fault line are causing all the dead ends….how frustrating but a brilliant learning experience at the same time.

Mishap of the day had me as ‘victim’ (again) as I stepped into a deep sump while already in 2 feet of water….the result was over the chest waders before, in a split second, I levitated out in fear of a wet camera (note to self: Take the Ortleib next time!!)

Clocked off and never came back?

Another town another place, Another girl, another face.

The Black Pig was not available for deep water duty so Plan B or Plan C was in order. After some discussion we opted for Plan C.

Not been here for a while but there were a few things that required checking such as Chav/Moron impact and I’m sad to say that the Writers have been quite a way in which is sad. Someone who didn’t get quite as far used a ball of string to find their way before running out of string, graffing the nearest wall and leaving. If you are that dumb to employ tactics like this while exploring a mine then death must truly be stalking you. If you are reading this and want your ‘navigation device’ back its in my wheelie bin at home until Thursday (along with an entire carrier bag of crisp packets, beer cans & sweet wrappers…).

I wanted to get some shots from the farthest southerly points so all of the below are from this quite unusual looking area. Whilst shooting some of these shots we could all smell rotten eggs but nobody owned up to farting and my H2S alarm stayed silent (it’s only just back from calibration)…..curious!!

Usual rules apply…No names, no locations, just pictures of somewhere. Please don’t ask for locations as refusal often offends 🙂

Photo’s are a bit rough I’m afraid, many taken hastily and should have been re-shot.

Final Destination

Mines #41

More underground fun this week….apologies to Cold War fans (there will be something nice for you next week, watch this space….).

We avoided the water for a change and instead had to contend with knackering 02 levels, panting like a marathon runner for four hours gets a bit tedious and if that wasn’t annoying enough, false floors too!!

The false floor I would have in fact have fallen through had it not been for the discovery of something interesting just a few feet away which delayed my progress. They aren’t that rare in mines but they certainly are in this type of mine, this one was about 20ft long x 16ft wide by 10ft deep and half full of water so crashing through would have been ‘interesting’ to say the least. Other notable items included some of the most bodged ceiling supports I have seen for a long while, a case of ‘use whatever is laying around’, one of the strangest was a Cog made from what looked like snapped concrete fence posts!!

It was nice to get out to 02 rich air to be honest, but we’ll be back…

Usual rules apply…No names, no locations, just pictures of somewhere. Please don’t ask for locations as refusal often offends 🙂

In Your Arches