[sneak]

Went out this morning for a mooch with the Boboil, Morrisey, Coalboard, Fetler and Copycat. Main aim to find some decent fossils from the open cast, Ive seen some good stuff pulled out of the recently and I wanted a bit!


Quotes of the day had to be:-

Morrisey - "Bollox hes got nothing in that bag, hes found that F*ckin spider hasn't he I bet. Hes got thousands of quid worth in there! Bastard"

Boboil - "OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW... MA THUMB!"

Fetler - (Copycat) What did you have for breakfast? "I had a shit and a bananna" Rofl.

Coalboard - "I did try to find the ignition button..."

Copycat - "Ive not got a hammer Sneak"

Great day out and a good insite into this stuff, Ive never been on an open coal mine before and really was quite impressed. The machinary is something else, and to see that coal and hear how its all been formed, actually feeling that stuff, burried and formed millions of years ago, it was fantastic. See the fossilised ferns and tree roots, etc, bloody brilliant stuff. Couldnt ger enough of it!

We had spoke to some other fossils collectors scouring the area, and with word of a bloody full spider fossilised that had been found and put on ebay for £1,500, we were well onto it. I think Morriseys new life mission is to find a spider fossilised in stone.

Im going to go down one day and find one just to take the piss

Got great fossils and learnt quite alot about the coal mining industry today. Very much reccommend a day with these lot, they know their shit!

Cheers for the experience everyone. Big up


Our tools



Miners tools








Shaft with brick lining. Gas was bubbling up in the water.



Thin seam





"Bricks....that way...Sure I saw one in that sinking mud"


Boboil and Morrisey

"Hmmm, yup, were jumping down there morrisey my boy"


Badboys




The only thing that can make fetler look of average size



Fat seem, very nice and clean. Look at the angle on that!




Found a spider!!! ...not really



Coal tub. I bet you boboils planning a night stealth mission to pick this beauty up



My haul of fossils. The good ones anyway Im bloody well pleased with em though, propa buzzin'!


Cheers guys, thanks alot, top mornin that!

[boboil]

I see that dude has dropped his buy it now price from £1500, yours must be worth at least 3 big ones Al.

Good to see The Sneakster & Copycat again, both grand lads.
We only got 1 BBRRAAPP !!! & then we had to politely ask, for a photo op.

Few pics
Fiddlers ferry in the distance, if you look closely you can see Runcorn Bridge.to the right. (must get zoom lens).


Dumper with Coalbard for scale


Would make a lovely garden feature.


Hot wire


One from the top shelf


The booty


Fresh water mussels


Plant stem


Fossilers thumb


BBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!

[Coalboard]

Now here's a coal measures forest I did earlier. The segmented stem Boboil collected is the Calamites horsetails like you get in the garden, the criss cross stems are small Lepidodendron trees. The enlarged thumb photographed by Boboil is caused by hitting it with a hammer

[Coalboard]

Originally Posted by sheep2405

It's the brick shaft that interests me, its like the on that fred Dibnah built, did it go anywhere?

Probably about 300 yard deep to the Arley seam, a tiddler, the shaft I used to go down at Coventry Colliery was close on 900 yards deep. One day we were sat in the little room at the pit bottom the onsetter used to sit in and a message came over the intercom; "There's a 20 ft pipe on it's way down the shaft, it's become detached from the chain it was slung under the cage on", about 8 of us then fit in that room which normally took two people! It went straight as a die right through the railway sleepers the cage used to rest on.
A group of us did Fred's shaft and he did the bricking as well as eating our pies, never seemed to have any cash.

[Coalboard]

Nipped up in the plane tonight to brush up on some circuits and while it was a superb evening I took a few shots of Cutacre, most were a bit shaky with it being blustery. You might be able to recognise where you went in this shot, the two red areas of ground are where Boboil and myself hit our thumbs

[Coalboard]

I really do think you should adopt Sneak and teach him English [/QUOTE]

What's English? I don't think it has long to go. Texting ( and internet forum speak ) is rapidly creating a language of it's own. I suppose if you went back in time and stood in a street in the sixteenth century you wouldn't have a clue what they were saying (or writing down) then either.

Words are gradually changing as well although this has slowed down a lot since the arrival of printing. I remember helping out a researcher at the Wigan archives transcribing the parish registers of Blackrod Church. He said "What do you reckon this word means?"

We knew the word was stating where the baptised baby's family came from but we couldn't figure it out. The word had been written in shaky longhand as "LUNTORY". I thought it might be LLANTHONY in Wales, bit far from Blackrod though.

Then I thought, speak it in broad Lancashire and see what it sounds like. I did this a few times and suddenly a revelation: LANGTREE near Standish, Wigan! The parish priest must have said "Where do you live?" and he said "LUNTRY"and the clerk just guessed at the spelling.

I had a friendly comment from she who must be obeyed recently, I had had a few job interviews and not secured the job, why not I thought. She said "Would you employ a 1970's moustachioed terrorist lookalike with an accent that makes you sound thick no matter what you're saying however intelligent?" Ta I thought and went to clean some bricks.