Pollkeeran, 13 Nov 2021

Team: Petie Barry, Aileen Brown, Stephen Macnamara, Stephen McCullagh, Barry Montague, Rob Mulraney, Rocky Winchcombe

For some reason everyone became available this weekend - perhaps it was escapism from the COVID blues - and Pollkeeran hadn't seen this much of a crowd since the early days of surface digging back in 2013. So much so, that we had to arrange a shift pattern.

Steve Bus, Aileen and I were on first, for a 9am start at the church car park. We carried up capping gear and several bars of scaffolding.

At the digface, we set our sights first on a large block in the floor. It had heretofore made a comfortable seat, but now needed to be reduced to give more digging space. The first couple of caps proved duds, but the next two were explosive perfection.

Several buckets of muddy gravel and shrapnel could then be lifted out, allowing us to put in and rearrange some more scaff bars before tackling the next target: a large rock in the base of the dig. It looked to be holding up an even larger boulder which formed a sort of wall.

Aileen had to leave before noon, but Steve and I stayed on to do the shift handover. Rocky and Barry arrived soon after and helped with hauling and digging. Just before we left them to it, I was doing a bit of scrabbling to tidy up around the target rock. I dislodged a marble-sized pebble one side, and immediately the rock snapped back to fill up the space. I jumped back up to assess from a safer distance, and all looked OK - in fact better, because there was now a half-centimetre gap between the rock and the massive boulder, proving that it had not been load-bearing.

At this stage, Petie and Rob had arrived with more battery and explosive power (and a survey kit to boot). We introduced them to the lay of the land and the rock to be attacked, and headed back for the car.

Petie takes over the story...

Arriving at the dig we met Bus, Rocky, then Steve Muh and Barry Montague. I was sent straight to the front for capping action. Got stuck into a large boulder and reduced it by 2/3rds. Barry hauled out some stuff and then we put in some scaff. Could then pull out some stuff to reveal a narrow gap between boulders to a gravel floor about 2m below. Barry and Rocky left to catch the Ireland-New Zealand game and then it was just Rob and I. Spent the remainder of the time using up the rest of our scaffold connectors. Didn't have enough to build a proper cage to support the stuff around us before digging down, so let off a final cap before packing up for the day. Rob hauled out all the digging gear, while I followed surveying. Cave comes in at 33m long, and 20m deep, the last 5m is the dug-out shaft. Next jobs; bring in more scaff bars (about 4 left), and connectors (0 left); build cage to allow downward progression.

SteveMuh