Decided to drop the holes below Hospital level to see what's there. First was the two holes just inside the entrance. I hoped that this may connect to Deep level and possibly even a through trip. I was also not sure if we even had enough rope as references put this drop at anywhere up to 210ft. Well it turned out to be about 40m (at most) landing in a large chamber full of loose rocks. We went left first (back under the entrance) and was stopped by another pitch of about 10m. If we had a through bolt nut we would have been able to descend this. It looked like there may not be a way on.
In the other direction a scrambe down boulders - some of them quite large and all of the loose, led us to the bottom of Hospital shaft and a blank wall. The way on machinery buried under many tons of rocks. We would estimate it's about 50m back up to the level at this point.
We prussiced back up and met 2 people from CATMAS, who told us about the many holes. From this conversation we decided the next to drop the hole with the railway lines poking out over the top. We were adviced to use both ropes as it's a long way down.
We dropped down the slope and drops you could see with some dodgey old bolts and an even more dodgey old rope. Lots of 10mm through bolts so I really brought the wrong stuff spits (know for next time). From the point you can see from the top, there's about 30m drop onto a wide ledge, with another 10m drop past some very loose stuff. Unfortunately we could go no further as we ran out of gear to rig with by only having a few hangers that fit, and that last bit was just too dogey to abseil down far. Thus marking the end of our trip.
