Hi all, a quick update on yesterday’s proceedings.
Seven of us (Sean, Gary W, Andrew, Nick, Mart, Shirley and myself) met at the container around 10.30am in bright sunshine, which after a coffee had unfortunately turned to ominous black rain clouds. We gave it another 20 mins before walking up to the top of the village, along Water Lane, and down the footpath to Nimblejack. Here, still in bright sunshine, we divided into two teams, Nick, Andrew and myself tackling the shafts (and an adit) to the south side of the footpath, and the others tackling the shafts on the north side. The weather was changeable, to say the least, with alternate bouts of hail, rain and bright sunshine. Fortunately, the latter eventually prevailed, so most of the survey was conducted in fairly agreeable weather.
On the south side, we managed to double check everything from last year (WhatThreeWords and grid refs), picking up a couple of errors in the process (WTW positioning and incorrectly tagged shafts). However, as far as the condition of the shafts was concerned, all were good, with just a couple having had stones removed, which we were able to replace.
As usual, the North Team were having a bit of a challenge finding some shafts, as the WTW coverage becomes poorer, and the blackthorn thicker, the further west you go. They identified a few shafts that need minor attention, as well as yet another new shaft (open), which is within the 90m boundary we survey. This probably just looked like a small depression surrounded by trees in previous years, but now a few of the stones that evidently capped it have fallen through leaving it open. It looks to be about 15-ft deep, but difficult to say with any degree of confidence.
The plan is to go back (probably on Sunday 7th April) to fix the shafts that need attention (basically just adding rocks to cover the gaps), and to drop (SRT) the new shaft and survey it – this has already been given the name ‘Gary’s Shaft’ and will be No 240 in our records. There are also two more shafts that Mart and Shirley found a while back that are not far away to the north (opposite Mountain Cottage), but which are outside the limits of our survey, at least one of which is drafting strongly. If time permits, the plan is to drop these two as well.
Sean will no doubt send out an email in due course. A willing SRT victim (or three) will be needed as well as a team on surface, not least to carry the scaff bars and rope etc.
Cheers, Ash