Saturday - 9th June 2001
People present - Duncan Jones, Pete Dale, Rob Kenning, Dave Thompson

Well, yet again we find ourselves going to Nenthead because foot and mouth was still restricting where we could go and it was raining just for a change. Arriving at Nenthead we quickly entered the cafe - got to get our priorities right! and met Dave & Rob, over hot chocolate we planned our tip - Brewery Shaft first then head further into Rampgill and try and find the Horse Gin which we had seen pictures of in the Nenthead Journal.

After relaxing in the cafe we couldn't put off getting changed any longer so we quickly got changed and headed into Rampgill Mine, which is only half a minutes walk from the car (nice!). A short distance inside we found ourselves at Brewery Shaft, the main objective of the day. Rob very kindly volunteered to rig the shaft which started from a concrete belay to a rebelay from an iron pipe and then onto the main hang from a large pipe spanning the shaft. Slowly his light disappeared into the darkness and from below the faint cry told me it was my turn to abseil down this pipe monster.

Arriving at the bottom you land on a rather dodgy looking pile of wood, metal, rock and god knows what else, climbing down this tangled mess you soon find some nice bits of machinery still intact, a bit further on and the pelton wheels are found along with numerous other interesting and old objects.

We had read about a big waterwheel at the bottom of Brewery Shaft and we had a quick look around upstream but couldn't see it so we headed downstream, after a short distance Rob stopped because the water was getting deep so at that point we gave up and set about making our way back up the shaft. Rob went up first and after a while a rather disturbing and loud thud was heard, it went very quiet, we shouted to Rob and at first he didn't answer but after shouting again he answered, none of us knew what had fallen but we stayed well away from the shaft whilst other people were going up it.

Everyone safely back up we marched our way along the main Rampgill passage in search of some steps on the left that would lead us to the Horse Gin, after failing to find the waterwheel we didn't intend giving this up without a fight. The walking went on for some time and eventually we saw the steps, without hesitation we raced up them into the passage above to be greeted by more walking and a shaft going down again. At this point we didn't know if we were heading in the right direction or not but we continued anyway, after yet more walking something caught our attention in a chamber on the left - The Horse Gin!! Finding this improved our mood and after a quick look around the area we made our way back out, we did this speedily as we could hear the pub calling us…