Northcliff Sough, Red Rake

These are two mines near Stoney middleton. We went in Redrake first, quite a dodgey place as it's all pretty-much ore workings in shale. It has several levels and 20m pitch or boat crossing to get into the further workings. I was the only one to go down the pitch but did use the boat on the way back. Unfortunately Byron got freaked out by the SRT as even the boat way required a little bit of SRT so me and Rob explored the rest of the workings. A short up pitch brought us into the largest area where another pitch up of unknown vintage went right up into the massive stope. (As Byron was waiting we left that for later). We then explored a side passage which was partially flooded this went on for a while passing smaller stopes before finally ending in a too small rift, where mining had ended. We then went into Northcliff and explored this place it's basically 3 separate mined passages the most interesting being to the left where it slopes downwards for quite some distance with pararell stopes (with false floor in places) on the right. There was a hole needing SRT part way along, which rejoined the passage. Eventually the slop ended at a sump.