Singing River Mine,

When:  29 Feb 2012 7.00 pm to 10.00 pm.

Where: Singing River Mine, Shipham.
Who:    Darren T, Rich T, Burt, Sean, Steph and Judi.

We met at the square in Shipham got changed and made our way down the lane to the garden where the entrance shaft is. Burt had the key but it would not open the lock. After much faffing we were about to abandon the trip (if only we had) when another group arrived and their key fitted perfectly. The shaft was soon rigged and Judi was the first down the ladder then me followed by the others. We assembled at the bottom and set off for our explore. We headed for sixways chamber and the west end to see if there was any movement at the bottom of Burts dig. On the way we had to climb down an 8ft pitch, I slipped the last 2ft and landed awkwardly on my right foot, the pain was excruciating but I thought I had twisted my ankle so on we went. We headed upstream and over the wobbly plank to the lake at the east end. By now my foot was giving me hell and I was beginning to worry about climbing the 42ft ladder pitch to get out. Can’t really remember much of it except Rich went first and I followed. Steph lifelined me (more like hauled me up) as I couldn’t really put any weight on my foot. Rich pulled me out onto the grass.

We got changed and headed home, Rich had some paracetamol in his car and I had a couple. The pain soon subsided. It turned out I should have only had one as they were double strength lol. Got home and my foot was twice the size as the other one. Time for the hospital I thought. My wife and I finally got home at 4.30 am the next morning. I had broken my 5^th metatarsal and it took nearly eight months to heal.

My wife Michelle now calls this mine, “A very bad mine L” and banned me from ever returning there!

 

 

 

SRT Training, Browns Folly Tower, Monkton Farliegh.

When:  22 Feb 2012 7.00 pm to 10.00 pm.

Where: Browns Folly Tower, Monkton Farliegh.
Who:    Darren T, Rich T.

SRT Training.

 Our objective was to practise rigging and general SRT. We climbed to the top of the tower and rigged our own ropes to the bar and thought it would be a good idea to descend feeding the rope out of our bags as we went. I went first and descended without a hitch. Rich however ran into some difficulty as his rope seemed to knot as it came out of the bag. We discovered that this was due to the bag being closed and the rope running through the suspension ring.
We practiced ascending and descending and did some basic changeovers then we decided to have a go at passing a rebelay. we managed to rig a rebelay off of the stair handrails. Rich decided that he would go first and proceeded to abseil from the top of the tower down to the rebalay. This being our first attempt at a rebalay lets just say it was probably one of my most eventful times on a rope but the upshot he managed to get in a bit of a tangle and gave up. We decided it would be better to read the complete caving manual and then try again. We could hear the wind and the rain outside the tower so we climbed the stairs to untie our ropes. It was very wet at the top of the tower and was quite slippery under foot this was also not helped by the wind blowing in through the windows. We successfully packed away our ropes and our SRT gear and ventured outside to walk down to the car. Once outside we realised how much the weather had changed since we had started, It was blowing a gail and raining also the fog allowed us to see around 10ft in front of us and Rich managed to slip over and rip the button from his trousers and looked a bit silly limping back to the car holding his trousers up and carrying all his gear.

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