Saturday - 20th October 2001
People present - Duncan Jones, Pete Dale, Barry Edwards, Our DCC Guide : Nigel ??

Met up in car park and whilst waiting to see if anyone else was turning up we got shown a small room, which had a few mining artefacts in it and also a mine shaft in the floor!.. A flick of the switch and the shaft is lit up and you can look through the glass and down the shaft, cool, everybody should have one.

A short walk led us to the entrance of Wood Mine, well, one of the entrances - we went down the higher entrance which entailed a short ladder climb to get into the level. Nice easy walking passage led us around Wood Mine, eventually we reached a wet section which required a swim and a duck, Nigel went through followed by Baz, myself and Pete had other ideas after briefly standing in the water we thought sod that and used the dry bypass.

A short while after we were left with no choice but to get wet, we had entered Hough Level. At first the water level wasn't too bad what was floating in the water was causing more concern, it could have been a rat but on wading past it the waves we created caused it to break up, very nice. A short distance after that we reached a climb up followed by a climb down a rather dodgy ladder, somehow I was going first, I got down a rung or two and one of the small metal rungs broke on me. I very carefully negotiated the rest of ladder, but I did so quickly.

At the bottom of the ladder were the boats, we had heard of a wet section in here and if we were lucky the boats could be used, great we thought we have the boats, our excitement was short lived. Me and Pete jumped in a boat and pushed ourselves off and over the flooded mine shaft, but ahead we noticed the roof becoming lower, very low in fact. The boats would not go through the low section, despite Pete's best efforts it wouldn't go, I nearly got crushed as Pete tried in vain to get the boat through but we were forced to admit defeat and return the boats to where we found them.

Well, defeated we had no choice but to swim for it, thankfully there was a rope in situ that we could pull ourselves along with, Nigel went first followed by me. I wasn't looking forward to this, but I had no choice so I reluctantly got in the water and dragged myself along towards the duck, through that ok the second duck was more of a problem, I somehow managed to take in some water and emerged on the other side coughing and spluttering. Pete and then Baz came through and they made the same mistake as I did. And just in case anyone is wondering the water was bloody cold and tasted crap!

Eventually the water became shallower and led onto some dry passages which we followed for quite some distance before emerging at an entrance, a brief gasp of air and back in we went. We reached a series of ladders that took us up into the Engine Vein Mine, a series of dry passages led us round the workings. One thing that you notice in this mine is the amount of work that's gone into it, big iron staircases have been brought into here amongst other things! After a final look around including some older workings we made our exit and headed off to the tea rooms, where Nigel drew us a nice wizard.