Report - Cults Limestone Mines

[dweeb]

Visited with Turk and OT.

Huge complex of limestone mines in Scotland. We only went so far in, as with no maps or guide we were worried about getting lost. This place is vast, and with no real order, so it is dangerous in that respect. There had also been some large roof falls not that long ago!

Great to see pony prints and cart wheel tracks still in the mud, although no worker's graffiti like in the bath stone mines...

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[numbersix]

Re: Cults Limestone Mines REPORT

There are at least 3 ways into the non-flooded section IIRC, they're all really just holes in the rock face and you can walk between them all. I've been in there 4 times now and reckon I've been as far as you can go east and west. There may be a few of the very deep sections I've not been in. Didn't go into one because it required going under a hideously unstable looking section of roof and someone had chalked 'bad' on it with a down arrow which I took to mean bad air:

I could try again with a gas monitor, but I'd not been keen about going under that little lot! We found another deep section which had a stream running through it and we could have followed the stream either SE or SW, but because the stream bed was quite soft (and we'd already been in 5 hours), we thought we'd leave it until we could rope together for safety:

The proper entrance further down the road leads into a flooded section which we've explored as far as we could up a side passage for the water pipes before the metre deep mud stopped us. I am going to get back in there with a team, get the drysuits on and have a swim further into the main adit.

There are a lot of coloured strings around the place, but they mostly run out before you get to the really interesting bits! If you're going back, drop me a line and we can prep a longer trip.