Freesteel

After a very wet New Year at Bull Pot Farm, there was a few days down in London at the EPS finding various things to do. In between I did a lot of coding on Scraperwiki’s dataproxy, converting it to twister.

This weekend was a final trip to Leck Fell doing the usual stuff before I get trucked off for three months to the US of A.

Saturday was a trip down Death’s Head Hole, which had recently been connected into the lower part of Lost John’s Cave main drain below the lake ducks. Surveying.

One slight error was I had packed one of Becka’s wellies instead of my own, so I had a bit of trouble fitting my right foot into it.

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Over three day-long digging sessions in Ogof Dydd Byraf in November and December 2011 I failed to film anyone filling the rubble sacks with sand.

I did make tea and sandwiches (when they weren’t ruined by James spilling them all over the mud).

The Telegraph has the scoop.

Underground cave system links Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria

Last Sunday, 300ft below the surface, 83 years of exploration came to an end (what? nothing has ended!) as it became possible to enter into Cumbria, travel below Lancashire and emerge in Yorkshire.

Due to the brave work of individuals such as Geoff Yeadon, Tim Allen and Mick Nunwick, the separate cave systems of Boxhead Pot and Notts Pot now make up a continuous 70 mile route under the heartland of Britain.

For some of the cavers this puts to an end almost 26 years of planning (“planning” as in hitting it with a hammer), using modern techniques (hammers, scaff poles, and explosives) in efforts to link the Three Counties.

Harnessing the power of natural underground water sources to blast away (with dynamite, not water) the mud and rock that was hiding a linking passage between Boxhead and Notts Pot, the team have joined a network of 30 entrances underneath the M62 and A66 (yep, our caves pass right under Manchester).

In the difficult conditions 300ft below, the team experienced ten bars of atmospheric pressure (equivalent to diving 90m deep in the sea) as they channelled water through with a simple hose with great force, blasting their way through.

This seems to be somewhat of a loose interpretation from the Guardian’s northern blog

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It was a dark and sunny day. Well, there was some rain. But the caves were dry. Team of 4 went to work on the dig in Duke Street 2 of Ireby Fell Cavern

I have this old video of a trip down Ireby a few years ago, pumping the sump out in order to gain access to both ends of the whirlpool dig to more than double the speed it got dug out to provide a dry bypass.

Whirlpool passage is a surprisingly crawl that had been backfilled with clay and sand up to the ceiling, and it would have taken many years if you had to keep dragging the dirt out along its entire length from the far end.

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I was robbed of another weekend of perfect weather — the last one for the year — when we should have gone out to sea, but instead we were going underground.

Wasn’t so bad in retrospect. But I was wistful with skies like this:

[Putting up the scaffolding for the winch into Pool Park Hole]

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I like taking my camera everywhere to record scenes, such as the CUCC club stand at the Hidden Earth cavers conference. (We don’t win the prize for presentation.) Usually there’s just a couple of posters of the latest Austria survey, if that. It’s a handy place to hang around while missing the talks.

This was two weekends ago.

Last weekend I tried to take the Saturday off and go to Wales for a dive in the Menai Straits. But 50 miles out the car’s front brakes were squealing. The tires were very hot and somewhat deflated. I think the brakes were slightly stuck on. We limped home late in the night. Anyway, I had to be in Liverpool for an impromptu scraperwiki hack day. Such is work.

On Monday I got an invite for a quickie kayak paddle on the Mersey. My camera was in a drybag wedged to the top of the bike pannier with my wetsuit. The whole bag fell off somewhere as I was cycling from Rock Ferry train station to the actual Rock Ferry (in the Wirral) and I never noticed.

Pretty dumb.

Now I’ve got yet another stupid underwater box for a camera I don’t have.

Still. It could have been worse. I could have drowned. And the car still works, assuming the garage can fix it today.

This lovely video was from the first half of the Austria expo by team mad underground campers.

Also contains scenes of cave surveying.

It was the usual destiny with drama. I’ll provide links to the logbook when it is typed in.

We drove direct from the Pyrenees via Cannes where the McGuires were on holiday, went for a swim in the corner of the public beach, and partook an evening bike tour past all these pointless party boats where the super-rich with no better ideas in their puny minds appear to blow their money on brightly lit floating buckets.

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Our next engagement in July after Laruns was to join the Northern Penine Club on their holiday to do a very famous huge through trip that all of my friends have done.

First task was to cycle up the col while waiting for everyone to arrive.

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I’ve been on CUCC Austria Expo for 2 weeks and not been up the hill once. Have been doing survey drawing up from things in crayon from as long ago as 1990 from before we used computers bears no relation to the centreline measurements. I mean, look at the state of this:

Artistic license is required. I am pioneering the idea of printing out parts of the survey to take into the cave for correction against facts underground.

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