Saturday 24 May 2008 A mine near home

We joined some other cavers were planning to set up a winch to drop down a shaft into an old mine near home. They set up a good scaffolding tripod and a neat little winch powered by a small, two year old Honda engine. First we had to move two concrete railway sleepers after digging a layer of soil out of the way and assemble the scaffolding. Some of the party were lowered down around 60 metres before swinging into a side passage and then it was my turn after Karen. I sat on the seat which was just a bit too wide to go in the gap width-wise but my thigh bones were too long to fit through the gap between the railway sleepers when the seat was in line with them! Damn! So I stayed on the surface with a couple of the party who were manning the winch. The others returned to the surface after 2 or 3 hours reporting an excellent trip.