Mongo's Hole Part 2 - Some Men Fill Mongo's Hole

Following on from the mystery of Mongo's hole , a few calls and text messages with the Coal Authority indicated they wished to come and investigate further.

The Coal Authority have been pleasingly efficient and lovely to deal with. They have communicated with me regularly , kept me up to date and finally booked in to come and excavate to see what is what. On the rainiest day for months....

They came well equipped with exciting toys and explained that they may make a "hell of a mess" moving down the hill with the caterpillar tracks. They didn't. They took  a lot of care , these guys were really professional and clearly had done this many times before.

I reckon they dug down perhaps 10 feet (in about 2 minutes, it was really impressive) before declaring that there wasn't a major problem and we didn't need to worry about mine workings. I enquired if this was "the norm" and it isn't, apparently about 60% of the time, something is discovered that needs remedial action. 

Today though, it was a simple matter of them pouring a few tons of crushed stone into the bottom of the hole (to prevent drainage problems caused by the dig), then the incredibly skillful digger operator, put back each layer of diggings back into place in reverse order (shale/clay/top soil) patted things down and declared the job complete. He even, incredibly, scraped (using a digger bucket) the little bits of soil from the undamaged grass where the spoil heap had been laying. It was such a neat job. 

As a parting gift, they handed me an enormous sack of grass seed to use on the bare patch and off they went. Start to finish in less than 2 hours and hardly a mark left on the land. An impressive job and a relief to learn there is no risk to people or trees currently from a bigger hole opening up.