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Jul 17, 2022
English Chronicles XII
25 March 2001
The Grind and the Mines
Over the past 3 weeks, I've been workin' my butt off trying to learn future year budgeting, as we are in the process of making next year’s financial plan for the base. It's been a huge training curve for me, since this is all new. Most workdays therefore, have been around 11-12 hours! So, the most I've done aside from work is sleep... in fact, I even had to cancel out of another trip to Dublin for St Patty's day because of it. But, we pretty much finished up last Friday, with a presentation to the Wing Commander on what his budget entailed. Last thing to do now is get approval from our headquarters and we're done!! Yeay!
This past weekend, I found myself in a remote, dark and isolated location. No, not the padded room of the mental ward (though pretty close from all the prior weeks work). I went caving in the Derbyshire mines!
Over the weekend we had our "summer hours" change over of time. The bad thing was that it was Saturday night and the trip to the mines was Sunday morning, which meant I lost an hour of much needed sleep for this tour. Our meet time was 0600, which meant I had to be up no later than 0430 to get ready and out to the base. (And if you do the math, that's 0330 in the "old time".) Lessley opted for this trip, so she met me at the base just before 6 and we went inside to meet our guide, Dave W. There was only one other person going on the trip, Glenda, which meant we'd have a lot of time, one-on-one, with the guides.
We headed out by quarter after 6 and slept on and off across the trip which was north and west of Mildenhall. Most of the journey was farmland views; pretty typical of the area we're in. But when we got further west, more of the forest and scenery came out. Still, much of the land was agricultural, and many of the dividers were fences made of piled up stones. I was surprised at the sheer number of these "walls" that seemed like they could take months to make... each! Inside a majority of the areas were grazing sheep and horses, seemingly not affected by the recent outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease.
As we neared the Derbyshire (pronounced Dar-beh-Sher), around half 8, more rustic and relaxed looking houses appeared; very homey and welcoming. It was a bit cool out, and the land was coated with a light fog. We went into a small bakery/breakfast restaurant to wait on the local guides who would take us down into the cave mines. We ordered some breakfast and tea/coffee, and sat by the fire, while Dave went to call on the guides. Turns out, they forgot about the time change and hurried out to meet us. When they came in, they introduced themselves; Dave (not Dave W), an older chap with a full beard, thin and well worn by many obvious trips to the caves, and his cohort Brian, a bit younger than Dave with an Irish look about him, was more heavyset and stocky.
They sat down and went over what we were to expect. Dave showed us a map of the local mines and natural caves, and outlined the ones we'd be spelunking. The first would be "Merlin's Mine", which would give us a good practice run on rope use, rappelling, ladder use and climbing and crawling. Then we'd move on to "Nickers Grove", about 500 yards from Merlin's, for the "real deal". He folded away his map as we finished up our breakfast, then headed out to the vans. Following our guides we drove to the starting point, at a T-junction off a main road. Dave and Brian geared us up, with waterproof one-piece suits and wellies (Wellington boots), battery harness and helmet with light, and rappelling gear.
We hiked up the road a little ways and cut up into the forest along the hillside until we got to the first of Merlin's cave entrances. Outside the cave, we practiced using a "figure 8" and ropes for rappelling off the side, while attached to a tree. The "drop" was only a few feet, but it prepared us on how to use the rope for a faster or slower decent. When we were comfortable, we headed in.
The cave was damp, but not as cold as I thought it'd be. We started off with a stand-up walk, but were soon reduced to hands and knees as our headlamps shone our way ahead. There were several puddles of muddy water to waddle through and on occasion knocked the old helmet into the low ceiling. It was really exciting though, being in and away from civilization. Dave explained some of the intricacies of the lead and showed us some examples of what the mines had done many years earlier. He broke open one of the "rocks" and inside was a sparkling delight of lead and other minerals. As we continued on, we ran into a couple of tight squeezes where I literally had to exhale all the air in me to wiggle through. (Need to loose the beer gut! <grin>) After about an hour and a half of crawling around the "practice run", we worked our way back out and went back to the vans for a quick break before heading to Nickers. We were only half covered in mud by this point, but it gets better.
As we hiked to Nicker's Grove, we took in the outside air, which seemed much fresher than it had before going into the caves. We listened to a story on how "Nicker's Grove" got it's name and where the term "nick" comes from (slang in England which means to steal something). As the story goes, back when the lead was a huge commodity, miners would do anything to get more access to the lead, sometimes even killing other competitors. But, there were also honest miners who went through a legal process to take a mine, if it wasn't in use. There was a spool for pulling lead from mines on the outside of an entrance. If the spool was in use, it would be kept clean and smooth; if not, it was obvious by sight that the mine was not in use. To legally "assume" ownership of the mine, a miner would cut a mark into the spool while a person of authority observed. After a month, they would go back and place another mark in the spool. If you had 3 marks (or nicks) in the spool, that proved that the mine was abandoned, and you could take over control. Hence, nicking the mine.
We reached the next entrance and scouted about for the alternative exits to make sure they were accessible. With helmets in place and lights on, we ventured in. The first stretch was walkable. Water on the ground was above the ankle and the air was a bit stale. The moisture inside was obvious as the walls were coated in light dew. There were a couple holes to get past, but nothing too extreme. Soon we were back on hands and knees, again bumping the helmet on the low ceiling; you could here the occasional, "dang it!" The first major obstacle was to work ourselves halfway down a 50-foot drop (or pitch as the pros call it). Dave and Brian set up the riggings and we rappelled (or abseiling, the English term) down to the halfway point where another corridor started. To get to that passage, we had to swing over and catch on to the ledge and pull ourselves in. Once everyone was safely in the passage, we continued on.
The next obstacle was a downward climb over rocks and drops, where instead of abseiling, we used ropes and rock ledges to work our way down. This was only about 15 feet down... no sweat. The rest of the crawl was fairly good, and we found our exit. Now the choice was to either end here, or crawl back through where we could use our climbing skills in the areas we had come down. Glenda opted to end it, and headed back to the vans. The rest of us took a short break before heading back the other way. On our way, we found a small bat hibernating in a tiny nook in the wall. It was out cold, and had no idea we were checking it out. Too cool!
You ever realize what muscles you rarely use? You do when you start scaling up a wall, hanging on for dear life! Back at the second obstacle, we shimmied our way back up the hole, over the rocks and ledges. When everyone was up, we took a short break and Dave had us turn out our lights. If you think you've seen pitch black before, this is way different. There was NO light what-so-ever... he had us imagine what it was like for the miners, who at the time only had candles on their helmets, affixed in place by wax. As I mentioned earlier, it is quite damp in these caves, and the ceiling drips on occasion. If water landed on the candle, it went completely dark! Scary thought since they were in the process of digging the mines out, and might not know how to get out! Anyway, we crawled our way back to obstacle one, a 25-foot climb up the vertical pitch. This involved a wire ladder no wider than maybe 6 inches and a special technique of "hugging" the ladder as you climb. The rest of the way was easy walking, with an occasional bump of the helmet, but we all made it out safely, though maybe a bit more sore! Overall, we had spent over 4 hours in the caves... too awesome! We checked each other out when we reached sunlight (well, with the overcast of England, just light), and we were covered with mud from head to toe! <grin> Got some great pictures of that, which'll be out around the same time as all the other pictures I've been promising.
Hiked on back to the vans where Glenda was waiting on us. Started getting changed and cleaned up, and as we were putting things away, there was a screeching noise in the street, followed by a crash! Sure enough, someone was turning a T-juncture right next to us, and the car behind didn't stop in time. The traffic on this road was bad, so we had to wave down cars to get them to slow down. No one was hurt, thankfully, but the one car was pretty well smashed. Someone got a phone and called for help, while someone else grabbed a hand broom and swept away most of the glass. What are the chances of that, huh? So, we continued our business while they took care of their problems. Dave gave us some closing remarks and we thanked him and Brian for taking us along on the journey...
We hopped in our van, got comfy for the long, sleepy ride back, with a pit-stop at Burger King for a quick bite and a refill on fuel (petrol as they call it here), then it was on the road for the 2-hour trip home... Once back, tired and sore, but full of fond memories, we all said our goodbyes and to home and bed we all went!
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