Post date: Aug 3, 2020 4:57:24 PM

Petie, Camilla

Time: 2.5 hours

A quick trip to Pollkeeran as an excuse to dust off the ol' digging gear. Steve and Claire had been here the previous week and had disinfected all the boulders so it was safe to visit once more. Camilla and I rocked up outside the chapel just as a monumental downpour began. 15 minutes later the sun was out, and we headed off. After surprising a pair of deer (a buck and a doe, probably Fallow) as we approached the pot, we went down and had a look at the stream, which didn't seem to be too big. Reaching the entrance, we found a small amount of water going in, and working our way down the cave got drier and drier as we approached the dig.

There's been two or three trips since my last visit here, when the terminal chamber was a scary-looking mess. Now there's a good bit of scaff and retaining walls and a fairly safe and comfortable digface. We started by propping a wobbly keystone near the bottom with the available scaff. There wasn't much to work with but we made it safe. Next team will have to find something to support the lowest bit of scaff (it's sitting on nothing).

With this done we started digging down into the floor, a mix of large boulders and gravelly slush. A spate of capping saw a few big boulders broken up, but theres a very large boulder now needing to be reduced. Next trip will need to scaff all the stuff above this to make it safe to dig downwards. Behind the big boulder you can see down through the floor for about 1m. There's still a fair bit of work ahead...

So, seven years into the dig and finally we're making downward progress, as opposed to simply shoring. Maybe seven years from now we'll break through!

Petie