Journey Underground - TDI Mine 1 - Day 3

The Pictures above give you some idea about the walk that you have to take from the Car park to the Mine entrance. I used my watch to log the distance and it worked out to about a 3rd of a mile, but with an elevation gained from the car park to the top of the hill being about 150m.

After a final brief of what we would be doing on each dive, it was time to get kitted up. As we were just inside the mine there was a lot of natural light coming in, which made the process quite easy. I did forget that I put my dry glove liners in my undersuit pocket to keep them safe and remembered just as I went to put the gloves on. Which was after I had got my harness and wing on, annoying but not the end of the world.

Once kitted up we made our way down to the head pool ready to go diving.

The aims of the dives today would be for me to run the reel into the mine, with my buddy dropping line arrows as we went. The distance we would go would only be about 60-70 m, but I would have to run the reel the entire way. Once we got to the end of the of the passage, I would lock the reel off and we would make our way out.

On the way out we would run some drills, the first being a primary light failure, and the second being a lost line drill.

The second dive would be to retrieve the reel, and the repeat any drills that we needed to after the first dive.

Sounds simple but I we would soon find out that its not as simple as it seems. 

Dive 1,

Before putting my cylinders on I used a covenant bit of mine outside of the water for my primary tie off, this meant that if we had to follow the line the end of it was above the water. (You can see the line going into the water on the image above).

Once my cylinders were on, we checked our regulators and wet checked our lights and were ready to go.

I picked up the reel and we headed into the mine, and it was not pretty. Running the line went well, but there was no team communication, after doing the secondary tie off and a belay, Rob called the dive. We had a quick chat on the surface about positioning and communication, then headed down again.

This time it was better I was more aware of where my buddy was, we were communicating better and working better as a team. We made our way in this fashion to the end of the passage, getting to see the mine cart (which was a nice thing to see).

Once the reel was locked off, we turned the dive and headed out. On the way out as expected both our primary lights went out and we went onto our backups. remembering to turn them on before taking them out our harness. With this drill done we continued down the line.

When we were almost out of the passage it was time to do the lost line drill, my buddy went first which meant I had some time to just float around enjoying the view. Once they were done it was my turn.

First on went the blackout mask, then Rob moved me off the line and spun me around. With that it was time to attempt to fine the line. This was a lot harder than when I did it in Vobster, as the water was a cool 7 degrees, so my hands were a little chilly.

After fighting to get my reel sorted out, I tried to find a brick or rock to put my loop around I finally manged to find something that would work. I then set about trying to find the line. I was able to use the fact that I knew roughly where it was in the Mine, and that it was going up a slope to try and work out where it was.

After a few minutes I felt a wall with my hand, knowing that the line should be close I set about trying to find it, after another minute I felt the line and proceed to try and tie my spool off, with cold hands this was a lot harder than it should be but I manged it. Finally, I put an arrow on the line and used the fact that the line should be going up to work out the direction to go. Once I started to move rob let me know the drill was over and I could take the blackout mask off. And we headed up.

With the dive over we headed out the water to warm up a little and do a debrief. I again left my cylinders by the water’s edge to make life easier.

Making our way out into the sun and warming up was nice, and we got some helpful feedback on the dive. We still needed to work on our teamwork, and with my lost line search I needed to just make larger arm sweeps to help me find the line.

Once we were a bit warmer, we made our way back to the water for dive 2.

Dive 2

This was going to be a much more relaxed dive, we just needed to follow the line in, working on our teamwork as we went. This was also a chance to have a look around as on the way in I was busy with the reel.

We made it to the end of the line, and I proceeded to reel in. This went smoothly with my buddy pulling up some of the belays where possible and removing their arrows. We made a stop again on the way out for my buddy to redo their lost line drill.

This was a lot shorter dive, but it was nice to get to see the Mine and the environment I was doing this training to dive in. 

Once dive two was over we got changed had a debrief and started to move all the kit out of the mine to the car. It was hard work, but a lot easier to move the kit down the hill then get it up it.

Seeing as I had a bigger car, I offered to take my buddy’s cylinders with me as I had plans to get mine filled on the way from Wales to Derbyshire.

I had phoned a dive shop that was just off my route on Thursday to make sure they would be open when I was going past. Lucky, I gave them a call to confirm as it turns out they were going to shut the shop early and didn’t want to stick around. This was a massive pain as there were no other shops close on my route, and by the time I got close to Birmingham it would be about 6pm so none of them would be open anymore.

I then proceeded to ring around a few different shops and finally found one that was open. The only issues being that it was 20 miles in the wrong direction.

 I want to say a massive thank you to Rob at Cardiff scuba who was just shutting up for the day when I called but was happy to stop open for me to get some fills. 

As I was going back on myself, this added a lot of time onto an already long journey. I had been hoping to leave the Mine at about 15:30 and would be getting to my accommodation in Derbyshire for about 7:30ish.



After a 40-minute drive to get fills and an hour spent getting them (as just my luck someone turned up just before me who also wanted gas). I ended up leaving Cardiff at 6pm. With the now just over 3-hour drive ahead of me I didn’t end up getting to my accommodation until just after 9pm.