Grandpa's Spade

Today a fortuitious alignment of free time and baby sitting allowed me to perform a task whose performance had eluded me for a while. I headed forthwith to filmset and decended the scramble in...

This was a bit wierd, as I'd done this loads of times (that view is from the bottom btw), but today I was imagining the added weight of fatherhood, combined with the light frost would make it a great psychological challenge. However, I still appear to be the same man I once was. This was a great revelation to me, as most people bang on how your perception of risk and danger is altered by parenthood. The risk is the same folks, you just avoid splatting a little harder.

This was my Goal
I first brought Grandpa's spade down into filmset quarry in 2007 with the intention of reopening the tunnel between gideon and filmset, which involved shifting a few square meters of slate scree which had slipped over the filmset exit. I succeded on new years day 2008, and due to a fair amount of affection for the place, left the spade in place for further adventure. For one, there was still a bit of scree coming down the shute, and also there were these amazing boulders..

Obviously I never got to platform them out, and 3 years or so after arriving down the hole, I went to retrieve my keepsake of a rather special man (To which he would probably say "Silly Boy...")

End of a chapter? maybe not, those boulders still look great and There's easy abseil / lowering access down Near Dark. Probably needs some corrogated iron tho'... Here I go again!

Entering the tunnel 1/1/2008

The hole stil visible with a bit of digging and imagination 19/1/2011