With sickness ripping through the team it was me and Sam for tonights digging session. Last week we had diverted the stream into our on going dig with the hope it would wash out the mud for us. This however was not the case. After all the water wee had a few weeks ago it has silted up the overflow in the bottom of the dog, so what greated us was a dig with about a foot of water in the bottom, this was going to be fun!
I set off down and first tried to dig the overflow clear. This didn't really work as I could get in there enough to remove enough slit for the water to wash away. Time to just man up and dig down, hoping we found a small hole to drain the water. Not being able to see anything in the floor we weren't going to be breaking any records of the amount of kibbles we pulled out. The water had washed some of the mud away as I was pulling up old digging tools, a sledge hammer and a smaller hammer. These were not visible last week.
I was now soaking wet and freezing so Sam had a go at digging. He managed to work free a big rock, the water gurgling as he worked it free, we thought we'd cracked it and the water would just run away, not to be. Now Sam had the thought that we could get this rock out between us I however thought he was nuts. A shout up for the electron ladder and he had the rock wrapped tight in the ladder. To be fair it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be and with Sam following it up we managed to get it out.
Sam went back down and had another quick dig but now the water was up over his wellies and elbow deep as he was trying to dig. I was absolutely freezing on the surface and with not much progress we called it a day.
The stream is now diverted back towards the original dig and we will not be putting it back down this dig again. Lesson learned!