Swan Mine - 28 Aug 2006

Monday August 28th 2006

Members present: Adrian Turner,  Gary Douthwaite,  Laz Abbott,  Matt Ewles

This mine was a great end to the weekend. Apart from a small entrance tube constructed of old school tables(!!) the mine is really big and stomply throughout. There are several dodgy boulders hanging in the roof that you might not want to stand under too long though!

I'd recommend getting a copy of the survey as it would be easy to get lost, however the cart tracks keep you within the main passageways. The one we had was cleverly hand drawn by Matt on the back of a bit of old card board as we couldn't find anywhere that had a photocopier, but it did the job.

It was well worth getting to the end to see the crane, really well preserved (although rotting a bit at the top). There were literaly hundereds of gour pools in the floor filled with perfectly formed cave perls - I've never seen so many before! There were a few other calcite formations too that had formed since the mine was in use; many had formed over some of the man-made suff. I wish I'd taken my camera down now, but I'm sure we'll be back some time.

For future referance, you can easily do this mine in walking boots and old jeans (and helmit of course).