A long, long time ago, Pete Hall, Paul Wilkinson and myself
walked down the gill and after a lot of searching found the old entrance of Howgill Sink. It’s situated quite a way down the gill from Cow
Dub just before the next limestone outcrop on the left bank. The sink hole was
covered with a few rotten timbers through which had poured the whole torrent of
the gill when in flood and as such was filled with boulders, grass and other
objects.
Original condition of the entrance sink.
We spent some time
removing all the surface material and then it was possible for Peter, Paul but
not Mary to fit into the small hole and declare the bottom blocked. We built a
little retaining wall around the entrance to try and prevent it disappearing
altogether and left it in peace.
In the meantime Jim
(the mole)
As is the way of things
I couldn’t let it just end like that, so years later I banged some bits off the
offending lip so I could get in, then I managed to persuade Andy Whitney and
Sam Lieberman to return with me to try again.
We dug in the bottom
and hauled out cobbles and gravel until we had a sizeable retaining wall and
placed some better lid material over it to stop floods filling it back up.
After a few trips Andy dipped out and that left just me and Sam.
The small rift at the
base had to be walled up to stop material collapsing on the digger but
eventually Sam got to look into the very small bedding that supposedly led to
Consortium and hence Silver Streamway and the Lone Ranger Series in Link.
Sam
Lieberman standing in the retaining wall entrance
The thought of digging
in this cramped position made us think of an alternative approach, if we could
just force the rift above the bedding we may be able to bypass the ‘hanging
death squeeze’ completely, grrrreat! We set to in the
narrow rift and cleared out loose rocks, gravel and mud, slowly progressing in
the right direction.
Sam
inserting himself into the entrance
The end of the rift proved
awkward to get into and dig so more banging. For anyone who has not had the fun
of banging in a small rift, let me point out that a metre long metal rod
sometimes doesn’t want to fit where you want, or are able to hit it on the end.
Trying to get out of
the firing line of the flying debris is sometimes impossible and knuckles and
elbows tend to take a battering on the walls as the hammer is applied. However,
after several visits it was apparent that the Promised Land was not going to be
reached by this method and the rift closed down.
Back to the drawing
board we went and we began removing our walling to give easier access to the
flat out bedding in the floor once again.
Our visits have tended
to be on Thursday nights but only on days when the gill is not running. We did
once make the mistake of digging when the gill was just trickling only to find
it getting very wet underground. Leaving everything behind we rushed to the
surface to find the raging torrent lapping at the top of our retaining wall that
had prevented boulders entering but obviously not the water, oops!
So in nearly ten years
of work we have not progressed a single inch, have expended masses of energy,
lost loads of fingernails, skin and gloves. Sometimes digging is an end in
itself, just as well given our progress and why? Well there’s a way through to
Link and it’s not open at the present and that’s frustrating so why not.
Ray Duffy