Thanks guys. The old pipe extension on the ring spanner did the trick nicely. I now have the cylinder head off with one problem.
I dropped one of the cam bolt washers down into the bottom of the engine somewhere. It disappeared underneath the cam timing chain. If I'm lucky it will be sitting in the bottom of the sump and I can just pull the sump off and fish it out. Otherwise it could be a very expensive mistake. Any suggestions about where it might be or tricks for recovering it?