Good Luck Mine

Karen decided to have an “easy” day and spend the day at home. I joined Boyd and Geoff Wood on an Orpheus Caving Club trip in Good Luck Mine in the Via Gellia.

The plan was to meet in the layby on the Via Gellia at 14:00 so I set off at 13:30 to make sure I would have a space as the layby isn't that large and apparently there were quite a few expected to turn up.

As those already there had parked at an angle instead of parallel with the road there was plenty of room. There were two or three cars there as well as Geoff's and Boyd's van when I arrived.

I got changed into caving gear as Boyd and Geoff were doing the same. There were supposed to be several others from OCC but even though we gave then until 14:20 to turn up, they never arrived.

Geoff had already made his way up the footpath to the mine coe and old buildings including a powder store near the adit entrance with old rails leading from the entrance to the top of an old spoil heap looking down over the Via Gellia.

Boyd and I followed the path up to join the others including Andy Beardmore. We got our SRT kit on and started up the steeper footpath to reach higher up the valley side to reach an area near the garden of Mountain Cottage.

After having a look at a couple of nearby capped shafts, each a “mere” apart (which I think is 29 feet in this part of the Peak), we walked to the upper shaft which we would enter into the mine.

The lock on the lid was undone and the lid opened and we each began climbing down the initial fixed iron ladders to reach a platform where an SRT rope was rigged.

There was another short iron ladder leading upwards from this platform and we tool it in turns to climb up about 3 or 4 metres to gain a couple of ledges to step over to short climb to a hole. The other side of the hole was a pool of water.

When I clambered up, Boyd was looking at the pool and as there didn't seem to be room enough for two of us, I clambered back down to let him pass,

After this we abseiled down the rope, passing a deviation a short way down followed by a rebelay or two be more wooden platforms to reach the lower levels of the mine.

We followed low passages passing beneath stone stemples holding up “deads” from the lead mining and after passing other side passages, we arrived at a location where there was a dig being carried out.

We had a look at the dig site where a low passage was leading off from the bottom of a short climb and then some of us followed the continuing passage to find a section of low hands-and-knees crawling.

Returning to rejoin the others at the dig sire, we joined up again and partly retraced our earlier route to a junction and the followed the route leading back to the surface at the adit entrance.

An interesting and enjoyable trip.